Applied Illustration- Studio Brief 1: Research & Proposal

Out with 504, in with 505, and although i attended the session, i was there,in real-life, taking part in the studio activities, i couldn't tell you what happened, or what i took from it, or even what the hell we're supposed to be doing the final outcome?! Everything just went in and straight out the other side without it computing - i think the shear amount of work that has been building up and that needs attending to & finishing had just hit me & i couldn't really focus on the new module at hand.

I went back to read over the brief and in short this module is "designed to help you to focus on 'finding a home' for yourself within the creative industry"

I read back over the brief to re-associate myself with the task actually was,as my mind is still currently mush.

Based on research into appropriate areas of contemporary illustration practice, you will develop a body of work and write a proposal that focuses on areas of personal and individual creative interest. This research should also identify where this particular focus may engage usefully with the wider creative industries.

This research will focus on one of the following areas:

Publishing & Book Design
Editorial & Reportage
Character & Narrative
Product & Packaging
Children's Book & Education
Object & Environment

The following 4 areas should be considered and visually explored in my visual journal as i research and make my practical investigation:

1: line, shape, texture

2: people, animals, places and objects

3: real, imagined, referenced

4: mood, meaning, method

The key aspect of this research is that your choice allows you to become strongly engaged in developing direction. It should be thorough, both critically and practically and also reflective and evaluative.

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As for the studio task, we were put into random groups and asked to go and research 3 of the 6 categories of contemporary illustration listed above.Our group chose Object & Environment, Character & Narrative, Product & Packaging. We split into twos and tackled a category each - Me & Jess settled on Object & Environment between us. To me,in my mind, that involves outside illustrations, that you'd find as a part of the 'environment'. So i researched into murals, art installations, signage, billboard adverts  bit of sculpture and 3d based designs. All lot of them were by artists who i already have a keen interest in, and who's way of working i would very much like to incorporate into my own practice.

Above are the examples of illustration that i'd associate with being part of Object & Environment. Artists include Mat Sewell, RekaOne, BoyKong, Gary Stranger, Supermundane, Will Scobie & Dan Leo.

Once we all put our findings together we went around the studio ,stuck our photographic findings on the wall,and wrote lots and lots (& lots) of words on big sheets, identifying words associated with themes,culture, ethics & technical matters.

It's tasks like this where i really feel I'm not as intellectual as i need to be,or would like to be -  as i wasn't really able to bring much to the table. I found it hard to think of anything related to the topics that we were making notes about, whereas everyone else had plenty to contribute and say about them, and as i mentioned at the beginning, I left the studio session pretty bewildered about what just happened, and where I'm supposed to go next.