Jane Horton

Reflection on tutor feedback Assignment 2

I’ve had loads of really useful feedback on my latest assignment, the only thing is that it makes me want to start again, but I need to press ahead on the next section of the course and the third assignment.

Slightly frustratingly, because I’m keeping a paper based log, and hadn’t uploaded all my exercises to my blog, I missed getting feedback on some things, so I’ll be uploading the development work for the missing exercises shortly.  The only exercise in this section that I didn’t complete was the mark marking exercise.  I started it, have compiled my own mini sketchbook with a range of papers, and proceeded to start drawing a courgette using lots of different tools and a range of marks.  It didn’t hold my attention for long, and I realised that this was because I wasn’t learning anything new, being an experimenter by nature, I didn’t need an excercise like this to make me try different media and papers, I do that all the time! So, I abandoned this exercise and moved on to things I knew would engage me.

Of the exercises I did get feedback on: the fifties exercise for example, I really do want to go back and do what my tutor suggested and thrash about a bit with the lovely 50s patterns, and produce something quite abstract.  It definitely was not an exercise I felt I resolved when I first did it.

Though I use my iPad (and iPhone) for a lot of my artwork, I do have major reservations about it because of the lack of texture and the ease (to easy!) with which one can create an effect, without fighting with a medium the way you have to on paper. So its useful to see that my tutor also notes that one of my exercises was too ‘software driven’.  Therefore the combination of iPad art and photographed art work, and back and forth, printing out images, overworking, re-photographing, painting over etc is what interests me.

So, the choice of digital art for this assignment was something that concerned me, and I wasn’t 100% sure of, hence the choice of a hand painted blue border, roughly applied, to bring it back to it to a textural feel.  My tutor’s suggestions on my assignment outputs has made me go back and re-visit the finished pieces, and I’ll be uploading the changes shortly. Fundamentally, I am now choosing solid coloured backgrounds to bring the images to life, at his suggestion, and they do work better like this.

The final dilemma is that I find it hard to select from the range of ideas I have, which ones to go ahead with.  My tutor seemed to like the ‘For Sale image’ idea and I wondered if I could take this further, and he also picked on the woman with squid image which was really just a doodle and wasn’t done directly for assignment 2.  I did experiment with this further following the feedback and feel that developments from this could be successful.  Then a lateral idea emerged.  This was a ‘William Tell with an apple on his head’ type image, which I could develop by creating a cartoon head with a range of fruit and veg on his or her head, and I think, now, if I was starting from scratch, I would go for this approach: its fun, has a bit of wit. However, I am conscious that I could be waylaid by this, and want to crack on.

My tutor also commented on the notion of the ‘summer’ image I created having a 3D effect simply because I photographed it on the floor.  This interested me, so I raised the image by a few centimetres so that there would be more of a shadow behind the letters, and this has given me something else to think about.  All really useful pointers!

Finally my tutor asks what the connecting factors and themes are in the sorts of illustrators and designers and artists that I choose to investigate, so I shall be looking into this as well.  Thanks for the feedback.

Reflection on Assignment two

I think I spent too long working on this assignment and got a bit stale in the end. However, I did enjoy painting the vegetables and was quite pleased with the summer meadow, especially when doubled in length. In coming up with the images I spent quite a while looking at what treatment other illustrators had come up with.  I was, overall, not that impressed with the many vegetable illustrations there are to be seen, (there being far too many glossy airbrushed veg around, or rather twee pen and ink and wash veg too). I certainly think Emma Dibben is the queen of food illustration, but I am also conscious that this is a somewhat subjective view, since I like the splashy inky approach of her style. I suppose ultimately I would have preferred to carry out the assignment like that but resisted the temptation since I did an onion like that in assignment one and felt I should try other things.

I was conscious that I did not make the images uniformly square but rather painted some horizontally and some vertically and was lead by the shape of the screen and the paper I could print on. That’s a lesson learned .. to decide what shape I want the image to be first and be led by that rather than the screen or paper shape.

I agonised about whether to do other versions of the vegetables, experimented with collage (see image of pumpkin) but was conscious of the need for the images to be highly representational for the brief set, so stuck to the digital drawings.

In my notes for this assignment you’ll see that I also considered linking the summer poster with the vegetable drawings by dangling them from the poster, or linking them via fishing rods or garden tools.  In the end I did neither since I felt this was overkill, too clumsy and cluttered.  If I had created one entire image with this effect it might have worked.  In the end I felt that big bold paintings/drawings was what was required.

Do I think this assignment was a success, could it have been better?  The trouble is with work like this that once you have done it you can always see how you could improve it and come up with new ideas for approaches.  The greatest difficulty it seems to me is drawing the line on what one has done. Ultimately I was quite pleased with the drawings but felt I hadn’t pushed myself sufficiently to try new things.  However, along the way in this section of the course I’ve discovered some wonderful illustrators like Oliver Jeffers and Jonny Hannah which will provide food for thought throughout the course,

Reflections on comments by my tutor on Assignment 1

Rather late in the day, though I had inwardly absorbed and responded to Christian’s comments on Assignment one, I realise I hadn’t noted down my thoughts and responses, so here goes. 

1) It was really helpful to hear that my tutor thinks I use colour confidently, and that this, combined with my ‘loose’ approach I should harness. That’s great because these are aspects that I love, and I will definitely try to do this.  I love colour, and like to pick the brightest colours in the spectrum where ever there is choice to do so. I can’t help but be loose in style, I am messy and loose in my work and find it boring and difficult to be anything other than this.

2) My tutor’s comments about not getting preoccupied about my worries about not finding a voice are reassuring and indeed, since I have begun to look intently at contemporary illustrators, I realise that many ‘illustrators’ cross over many styles, approaches, media, and indeed do not get their knickers in a twist about whether they are regarded as a fine artists or illustrators or printmakers or whatever, since they may be one or the other or all, at different times, or all at the same time! (see Benoit Jacques, or Jonny Hannah for instance).

3) I tried to combine painting and digital art in assignment 2 and also did a bit of collage but I think I will focus on trying out print, paint and digital and a mix of all of these if possible in assignment three, in an interdisciplinary way, as suggested.I also want to try focussing on a painterly approach, indeed I am tempted to so a summer meadow bank for assignment two in paint.

4) Regarding the suggestion that I show more of my working processes, sketchbooks and ideas developments: I have tried to do this a bit more in this assignment, but I think it is true that by keeping a blog as well as a learning log on paper, in a sketchbook, there are quite a few things I haven’t blogged and regard them as too messy to blog, probably because its in the public domain, which is a bit vain, since probably its only my tutor and a couple of others that will ever look at it!  I will try to photograph more of my sketchbook work in future…. though lots of it goes onto my Flickr account in any case, since I sketch all the time, some related to this course, and much not.  (Roll on the next Dr Sketchy event, on a Victorian theme, in a bar in Sheffield).

Which artists influence me?

The list grows and changes all the time, but the durable ones are: Barbara Rae (whom I’ve had the privilege of meeting and interviewing), Ralph Steadman, Grayson Perry, David Hockney, David Gentleman, Edward Bawden, Lucian Freud, Quentin Blake, Degas, Marino Marini, Howard Hodgkin, Paula Rego, Brian Wildsmith, John Piper, Edward Gorey, Maggie Hamblin, Henry Moore, Manet, Chagall, Paul Klee, Eric Carle, Picasso, J G Posada, Clifford Harper, and Hoffmann (author of Der Struwwelpeter). There are probably loads more that I can’t think of right now. In addition to these long termers I’m fast adding new (to me) illustrators. These are the ones I’ve blogged about recently and a couple of others I’m familiar with from the Guardian. I am looking at these illustrators again and again… Oliver Jeffers, Benoit Jacques, Gary Panter and Psillos. Then there are those that I like at the moment like Jill Calder, Swoon and Charley Harper. I’ll add to this list over the next few months. Ones I want to take a closer look at are Saul Steinberg, Neasden Control Centre, Michael Sowa, Mr Bingo, and Alex Kanevsky.

Decisions, decisions

At some point I am going to have to to decide on whether, for this assignment, I am going to submit digital drawings, Pen and ink, or painted drawings. I guess I will just have to experiment some more, and then decide on the approach I’m going to take.My inclination is always to do something scratchy and messy but that might be not what is required for the brief. And another thing, (there are lots of things to think about), the background! Should the background be white, or should I use complimentary colours?

Reflections on this assignment

What have I learned? That its hard to convey a message, especially a complicated message, and that its best to be clear about precisely what the message is, unambiguously, before you start attempting to produce an illustration.  Failure on all these counts!

Technical stuff. Well in my head I envisaged borrowing some ‘type’ from a friend and inking them up to print over the image.  I contemplated this but felt it would actually spoil the image and went for inky lettering instead.

On being ‘safe’.  I realise I stuck to familiar media for this assignment and I want to push myself to discover new ways of working, and hope I’ll be pressed to do so. I use watercolour and pen and ink a lot.

On composition.  I am pleased I junked the paper weight idea early on.  It was a good decision since it simplified the composition and the message. I realise that decision making, risk taking etc is an important part of illustration.

Reflections on illustrators in the last 50 years

Looking back on illustrators and picking some to emulate made me realize what a huge impact childrens’ book illustrations had on me as a child.  In particular Kathleen Hale, for her dreamlike drawings of Orlando, Ardizzone for pen and ink and Wildsmith for wild, mad, luscious colour and wondrous evocation of animals, and also a more obscure illustrator called Herbert Danska, who did a set of magical illustrations for Oscar Wilde’s wonderful story: The Selfish Giant. Later on Bawden and Ravilious seeped into my consciousness and Bawden as been been a favourite of mine as an adult.  I remember even being hugely disappointed when my reading had moved on sufficiently for me not to have illustrated childrens’ books any more.

Key Steps in Illustration - Learning log

Just started this OCA course and am going to blog my reflections ….

First exercise is to look at a few great illustrators’ work: I already love Edward Bawden, Ardizzone, Ravilious and E H Shephard.  Looking at John Minton was new to me. What strikes me about his work is the huge variety of it: drawing, painting, collage, printmaking, everything. I adored Orlando picture books as a child and now I know these were produced by Kathleen Hale who lived till she was 101!  I love the otherworldliness of her illustrations. They are dreamlike, and allowed me to create a whole world in my imagination which was entirely believable and existed well beyond the confines of the page.