5 Things I Want To Improve

1. I think that my observational drawing skills need improving. I often draw from imagination and my illustrations are a simplistic style that does not always reflect the real object that it represents. I need to keep practicing the method of drawing from life in order to inform my work.
As an illustrator, I will be challenged to draw things that I do not know much about, so I want to be able to deconstruct the mechanics of the subject with competence.
I believe that the more you practice something, the better you become. I hope that this course pushes me to build upon my weaknesses using this principle.

2. I lack confidence in my work. I struggle to show close friends my work when I am not happy with it, so presenting it in a critique situation is not a strength of mine.
I struggle with Generalized Anxiety Disorder and I don't want it to rule my life; I want to overcome this as a personal priority, but I know that overcoming anxiety would also affect my ability to contribute to group tasks within University and enable me to accept my work as an illustrator.
I want to be able to share my progress and ask for advice instead of hiding my sketches away and struggling alone.
This is a big wish, but I am moving forward with every blog post!

3. I need to be more decisive. I struggle to make even the most simple decisions, fearing that I may be making the wrong choice. I often ask other people to make the choice for me but I need to gain control and take responsibility for my actions. Have your own opinions.
Stop asking your mum what you should do!
I know that this strategy would never work out for me in the future and it is already dragging me backwards. As a learner and a professional, you must have your own mind.

4. I would like to improve my skills in printmaking and try out some techniques that I haven't attempted before, such as textile printing and aquatint etching.
I'd like to sign up to workshops and learn new picture making processes. Don't be scared, get out there and make the most of it! Don't waste your time or let opportunities pass by you. University is a gym and you have a gold membership - use it!

5. I want to improve my knowledge on the subject of illustration and learn about new practitioners that I've yet to encounter. I want to expand my interests and visual vocabulary of artists. There is so much still to learn.
Go to exhibitions. Read more books. Know more things! Discuss, share and research.

5 Strengths That Make Me a Good Illustrator/Learner

1. I am imaginative. I think that this makes me skilled in constructing narratives and characters that are exciting and appealing.
I am never lacking ideas, there is always a story to tell and an adventure awaiting! I don't tend to struggle much with brainstorming or ideas generation because I have so many things in my head already.

2. I am a committed and determined student. I will always try to do my best and use my time effectively. I am a perfectionist, which in many respects restrains me when I am working artistically, but in terms of professionalism I think that this mindset makes me a productive student and person in general.
I possess a willingness to improve and learn. I want to know more about the industry and I want to be a better illustrator as well as a better human being. Accepting and acknowledging my imperfections leaves me open to criticism and prepared to develop/grow.

3. Analyzing existing work and reflecting critically upon my own progress is something that I really enjoy. Writing essays is something that many people dread, but it's something that I look forward to.

This strength helps me to maintain motivation when conducting tasks that others may find tedious. Being able to reflect on my own work means that I can identify where I am making progress and where I need to focus in order to improve my work. Having the skills to analyse other artists' work means that I can decode the successful elements of their practice and follow similar principles within my own.

4. I want to change the world.

I know my audience well. As an aspiring children's book author, I try to understand my readers' psyche. I want to create books that change the way the world works and how children are socialized to view and understand it. I have a purpose and a mission.

5. Despite often lacking confidence in my practical work, I am a very confident public speaker and enjoy tasks which involve verbal presentations. I also have leadership skills which help me to manage collaborative tasks efficiently. I was Head Girl in Sixth Form, which challenged me to take responsibility and speak on behalf of the Academy. I'd like to channel Head-Girl-Jay into the studio and ask her to speak up. She has a voice.

5 Reasons Why I Chose This Programme (Leeds College of Art)

1. Its reputation. Leeds College of Art has an outstanding reputation and I have only ever heard amazing things about the course here. I know students who are in their second and third years studying Illustration at LCA who have had an incredible time so far.
I did my Foundation at Leeds College of Art and wanted to stay within the creative buzz of Leeds.
I loved the Foundation and hoped that this course would continue to deliver a great quality of teaching and facilities.
Being a home bird, I also didn't want to move too far from home. In fact, I ended up staying at home and commuting every day, managing to balance the comfort of family and a cultural stretch to the big city in a (very long and very EARLY, but luxurious) bus journey.

2. The work that has been produced so far. I came to visit the end of year show and was blown away. I'd looked at the online gallery on the website before, but seeing such a diverse and highly crafted amount of work in the flesh was really encouraging. I wanted to be one of those people, I wanted to follow in their footsteps. Not one House Style cramping everyone together as one prescriptive approach to illustration, but a varied collective of visual communicators.

3. BIG HEADS! Networking with successful illustrators (and my idols) is quite a unique and special opportunity that LCA has to offer. I can't wait to see who we get to speak to on the next Big Heads and have enjoyed watching previous discussions on the YouTube Channel.

Emily Hughes was my favourite interview. She's also one of my favourite storytellers.

4. The tutors are all working practitioners. They know what they're talking about. Teresa Flavin, one of the tutors on the course, is an established and successful children's book illustrator whose work I adore. It's great for these tutors to be able to offer real advice and experiences, rather than theoretical assumptions about the 'industry'.

5. The connections that this course has established with publishers, competitions and design agencies is really impressive and I loved how this course, unlike most others, offers so much advice and preparation for life as a professional illustrator, not just as a student.
At open days, I saw impressive examples of work placements and post-degree success stories ranging from Hallmark to Disney. I'd not seen this much consideration of the students professional practice at any other institution.

5 Reasons Why I Chose To Study Illustration:

1. I'd love to teach or go into education. I want to be an expert in this field and inspire those just starting out. Having a degree in Illustration would be the first stepping stone to being a further education tutor on a Foundation course, or lecturing about Illustration on an undergraduate programme.

2. I want to make a difference. I want to teach through stories and fables. I want to learn about how children decode visual cues within stories and about the psychology behind their interpretation of an image. Do they understand? Illustration can be a universal language that crosses all communication barriers and I want to use this as a means of conversation cross-culturally.

3. I want to learn how to contact publishers and how to be an illustrator that they would like to work with. I want to know how to exist as a professional creative. I've got the stories, now how do I make them accessible?

[Source: www.nosycrow.com]

4. I love children's books. I want to live and breathe the work of Tove Jansson. I want to surround myself with stories and characters! I want to know other illustrators and hear what they are saying. I want to be a part of this conversation.


[Source: http://kitkadesigntoronto.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/Moomin-book-1-700x466.jpg]

5. I want to get better at what I do. I want my work to exist alongside the greats. Studying illustration was a choice that I hoped would provide me with the direction and tools to produce exciting work. I don't want to be famous, but I'll always strive for my work to be classics.

Orientation Week - Group Analysis

As part of our first week of the degree, we were split into groups and asked to discuss each other's chosen illustrations. I was nervous about this task because I hadn't yet spoken to some of the people in my group. I had no indication of what type of illustration they were interested in, or what they were like as people. I worried that maybe they wouldn't contribute to the discussion or that they would be negative in their attitude towards the work.

Briar had chosen an illustration by the artist Hellen Joe.

Her chosen illustration was very different to mine. The intended audience of Jansson's illustration was children, whilst Joe's work seems to be aimed at an adult/young adult audience.
The above illustration was featured in an arts and comic magazine (Frontier), whereas Jansson's illustrations are made to complement her classic children's books.
The viewers of Joe's work are likely to be individuals who are interested in comic art and design, thus would be existing readers of Frontier magazine.

Our group had a deep discussion about the concept of this image. We all commented that it seemed to be a reflection of alter egos and false identities, but we also got onto the topic of fetishes and darker subjects such as murder and gang violence, reading from the visual cues in the image (colour code of red connoting blood and danger).
I found this image increasingly disturbing the more I looked into it.

The image itself seems to have been created using brush pens. It has a conventional comic/graphic art aesthetic, featuring block colours and a Japanese manga style. This, again, juxtaposes the naive approach of Tove Jansson.
I think that Joe's style might have been chosen in order to match the house style of the magazine she was featured in, or possibly to suit the existing interests of their readers.

Bronte brought in an illustration made by Dadu Shin.

This image is a piece of editorial illustration which was used in a book review inside the San Francisco Chronicle (newspaper). The book is titled 'Death of the Black-Haired Girl'.
Editorial illustration requires the illustrator to work closely with text, similarly to how Tove Jansson combined words and pictures. However, Jansson happened to be the author of the books she illustrated, so had more control over her choice of image and how she composed them.

The audience of the text in which Shin's work is featured is likely to be residents of San Francisco who are interested in books and literary subjects.
The purpose of Shin's work is to summarise the book's content, without giving too much away (hence the enigmatic and mysterious concept and content - faceless bystanders, fly on the wall perspective.)

Restrictions in printing colours in newspapers (in order to maintain low cost of production) is probably the reason why this image is in monochrome. We also thought about the atmosphere that this colour choice depicts: a vacant, cold, serious and static environment.

This illustration is not my normal area of interest due to its dark subject matter and intended audience not being young children, but I have enjoyed investigating it and have become quite fond of this image and would like to see more work from Dan Shin.

Megan looked at the work of Rocio Montoya

This illustration exists in an online art magazine called www.trendland.com
From this series of images, I imagined that the intended audience would be fashion conscious young women, but the actual audience might be artists or technologically savvy art/design enthusiasts.
The internet allows anyone to freely post to the internet and automatically publish anything they want, and also access anything they want too. This means that Montoya's audience is likely to be an extensive amount of online viewers.

Our group talked a lot about the concept behind these images; we explored the connection between femininity and botanical elements, we brought up words such as fragility, delicacy and structure.

I really love the combination of photography and biology in these illustrations. To me, they seem almost like a scientific study. I would like to see what the rest of Montoya's work is like and whether all of her illustrations use this same technique or if she has developed this at all.

Megan seemed especially excited by the process that Montoya uses to construct her work. I was inspired by Megan's knowledge of the artist and how she works. It was great to see my peers talking about the things they love.

I was pleasantly surprised by just how well this discussion went. Everyone made a fantastic attempt to put forward their opinions and ideas. We took it in turns to contribute and all treated each others interests with respect.

It was brilliant to see such a diverse range of illustration, exposing me to different art that I haven't seen before.

An Analysis of Tove Jansson's Illustration

My adoration for the Finnish storyteller Tove Jansson stems from a nostalgic sense of childhood and adventure that she almost magically weaves between her words and into her visual world. 

I am a great fan of Jansson's work and this is just one of many original illustrations from her children's books focusing on the tales of a fictional family of creatures called 'The Moomins'.

Jansson's illustrations originally existed as comic strips in a Finnish political magazine (Garm), having the purpose of entertaining adults with political jokes, before being published as a series of short children's books by Jansson.

Tove Jansson's intention with her illustrations was to capture the world of Moominvalley. Although this could be achieved by words alone, her illustrations visually document the atmosphere and enhance the fantastical world that readers can experience through reading.

Moomin is still largely popular today, but the characters have since evolved to suit the ever-growing demands of her audience. Now, her illustrations (and reworked editions) exist as moving image in an animated series and as motifs for clothing and products. 

I feel that the recent developments of the Moomin Characters have diverted and become highly commercial. I don't feel that these digitally printed images, adoring merchandise of all sorts and sizes, would please Tove Jansson's initial plans for the character. Although they certainly do have an audience and are successful in a commercial sense of art, these images no longer tell the stories as they did in their original context. I don't think that Jansson would be pleased to see the materialistic exploits of her innocent Moomin.

The hippo-esque form of the Moomin character that has become a signature for Tove is an example of her knowledge of her audience. She knew how to create a unique, mythological being that was so unusual, yet so natural and recognizable to become a timeless classic. Moomin is chubby and appears soft, even in illustrations in which he is a simple line drawing. Moomin is charming, he is universal and he is completely different to anything that has come before him. The Moomin stories have been translated into several languages and are enjoyed by audiences all over the world.

I think the legendary status of Moomin is the mark of a truly talented illustrator.

Jansson's own background and the context in which she produced the Moomin stories majorly impacted the illustrations that she created. She lived in Scandinavia and even inhabited her own island off the gulf of Finland, so her love of nature and the landscapes that surrounded her are evident throughout her work. Although Moominvalley is a fictional place, and the characters are also very abstract, it is easy to draw connections from these to her culture and Scandinavian heritage.

The pictures she creates echo the space she lived within and the world she wanted to see.

The first Moomin book was published in 1945, qualifying why Jansson was not using any digital media that we see dominating illustration today. It also explains the topics of her stories and the stereotypical gender roles she features within her work.

The medium she favoured was acrylic paints, but the expense and practicality of printing with multiple colours at the time demonstrates why so much of her work was printed on single colour plates.

She may have also liked to juxtapose between these murals of fully coloured scenes and completely monochrome shots in a deliberate conflict of emotions and tone of voice, depending on the story at hand.

The ideas behind her illustrations match that of her fiction works. Mostly adventures, these books often have a darker element beneath the surface. Jansson's stories discuss important issues such as human nature, death and betrayal. Disguised within innocent children's stories, she often had lots to say: teaching lessons and morals, from basic manners to the life cycle and the consequences of one's actions.

Her illustrations relate to these serious topics by featuring a very dark and tense atmosphere, almost unnerving at times, achieved by using highly detailed pen and ink drawings.

 Some people have suggested that her characters were not simply reflections of family roles, but rather psychological states of mind or representations of Freudian personalities. The illustration above, in particular, gives me a similar inclination. Snufkin is drawn in complete silhouette, distant from the other characters and somewhat out of place in the scene; the connotations of this aesthetic is that Snufkin is growing apart from the others, that he is a loner or that he is conflicted in some way.

Perhaps it is the renowned Finnish introversion that lead Jansson to convey so many complex concepts within her work, a way of teaching without speaking. Perhaps this is why her books were so popular in Finland and parents relied on her books to offer their children the answers to their questions.

I think that the theme of ADVENTURE is so heavily repeated within Jansson's work and is conveyed so effectively within the depth of the above illustration in an attempt to appeal to the childish desire for exploration and make-believe.

I believe that it is because of Tove Jansson's skills in constructing dream-like scenes and delving so deep into the heart and soul of each and every character is why so many adults are drawn to her children's fiction as an act of escapism, to a world where things are better.