Contextual Research: Mark, Tone & Pattern

Raphael Garnier

Garnier's work chooses to focus entirely on mark-making and patterns in his work, and how that affects and varies the tonal values. All lines are thin and solid. The charm and personality is found in the mark making. It is really interesting to see in practice how a solid fill contrasts against an object filled with lines - and how the closeness of those lines gives the indication of light and shadows bounding off the object. Different textures are successfully executes; the bark of a tree through organic and free-flowing lines, a stony solid texture by multiple facets, a soft spongy object with dots. The visual spectrum of marks and arrangement of objects really makes Garnier's work visually interesting.

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Adam Higton

Higton focuses on stylised, naive and evocative character design implementing differentiating frequencies of lines to evoke a sense of tone, gradient and variation. His quirky characters, made up of simple shapes and forms, evoke feeling of 70's retro funk nostalgia for books such as the Mr. Men, shows such as Parsley the Lion, and groovy flower power thanks to the playful proportions and 'style'.

Visiting Lecturer: Louise Lockhart - The Printed Peanut

Website • The Printed Peanut • Facebook • Twitter • Instagram

Louise Lockhart, known as The Printed Peanut, talked to my course today about her journey to becoming a successful illustrator and developing her own unique practice. I was introduced to her work last year on the Access to HE course, during my final major project, when I was illustrating my own children's book. It was a real treat to finally meet Louise and learn about her techniques!
 As an illustrator, Louise has created editorial pieces, advertisements, stationary, clothing, homeware, soap packaging, games, and books. As well as this, she has worked on collaborative pieces for the Heal's Cat Design Trail, a pass the parcel game with Donna Wilson, a calendar illustration for Flow magazine and postcards for Beyond Measure.

Louise uses her own unique system of collecting different textures and paper (for example the inside of envelopes, dolls' house wallpapers and packaging), before scanning them into the computer and applying them digitally to her paper cut arrangements. These are then put through a Risograph printer - similar to a photocopier - to add a grainy texture. Her work then evokes timelessness and a  vintage aesthetic, with undertones of folk art. Her strongest influence includes Matisse; who worked relentlessly with shape, colour and pattern and ephemera such as textured papers, old food packaging and old toys.

Reflection:
I love Louise's work and admire her dedication and hard work to carve out her social media following and unique practice. From her early days of working in a small gift shop in Canada, screen printing in her bath tub and making very little money, she has persevered to create an instantly recognisable and quirky aesthetic that can be applied in many different ways to prints and products. Her work is very charming, reductive in its use of basic shapes and minimal colours and has a vintage aesthetic due to her use of risograph printing. I am intrigued by her technique and application and would like to experiment with paper cut and the use of risograph in my own work, as someone who focuses on a lot of detail.

Contextual Research: Editorial Illustrators

•  Kelsey Heinrichs works a lot in editorial illustration, creating pieces for Wired Magazine, GQ, The Wall Street Journal and The National Post. He has a more digital approach to his process, which aesthetically is often technical and structured. He mixes a limited palette with sharp, thin outlines and visual language - such as cross hatching, lines and marks - with subtle shading. His compositions are strong, incorporating tiny details of shapes and objects.

• Jun Cen's portfolio is comprised almost entirely of editorial illustration. His work is a lot more organic, borderless giving a softer tone of voice, textural and patterned with a sense of motion / vibration. I hope to be able to incorporate these enticing elements into my own work. His illustrations have been featured in Nautilus Magazine, The New York Times, Spectrum News, The Boston Globe, Vogue and ELLE Men China.

• Sam Chivers encapsulates elements of both Jun Cen and Kelsey Heinrichs, successfully blending mark-making with the mechanical, the organic with the technical and digital with a sense of being hand-made at the same time. Chivers' editorial work has been featured in The Guardian, GQ, Adobe, Playstation, Washington Post, Wired Magazine and New Republic.

• All 3 of these illustrators have their own style, approach and tone of voice and each is successful in the themes and concepts they are communicating - using shape, form, composition and colour to portray characters, environments and architecture. I will be using these illustrators as my main point of reference when creating my developmental and final editorial outcomes.

Contextual Research: Line Quality

Tina Berning

I find this illustration really interesting in the way that the whole figure isn't shown. It is so simplified and confident in its line quality that the viewer can and will fill in the blanks. The slight variation in texture towards the right-hand side of the skirt alludes to a casting of light, giving tonal value. This image is loose and therefore full of character, personality, charm and the hand of the maker.

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Ping Zhu

The speediness of the line quality really shows here in terms of where the ink shows through and where it doesn't. This quickness in Ping Zhu's sweeping motions has created an atmosphere of blustering wind, an injection of heat or coldness, emotion and motion. There is a definite different between the outline of the characters and their guitars as opposed to the hair and outfits which provides variation and separation of elements in a successful way. Again, this is full of personality - not drawing accurately and having a quirky slant to the images.

Big Heads: Stanley Chow

Website • Facebook • Twitter • Instagram • Tumblr

I experienced my first Big Heads session today with Stan Chow, a well-known illustrator who works with marketing, advertisements, editorials in magazines and website illustrations. He has been working for 20 years after getting a Foundation and HND certificate and reached prominence online for his footballer depictions. This is how I became exposed to his work, as my brother is a big Manchester United fan and owns some of Stan's prints!

• He began with painting but quickly moved into digital illustration as the internet became
more prominent and images were attached to e-mails.
• This way of visually communicating was fast and accessible with a wider audience.
• People began to contact him about purchasing his prints, rather than commissions, so he developed a print shop to sell his illustrations.
• Social media had a big impact on his online presence and the growth of his fan base.
• His illustrations epitomise the things he likes - Manchester architecture, footballers, sci-fi characters and celebrities
• Stan focuses his attention to creating caricatures and representations of people's faces
• His success rate is due to the likeness of the person and how quickly he creates his illustrations



• Quality and speed of the work as well as his impressive clientele
• Earlier in his career he invested more time into bigger projects and making preliminary sketches
but now that is he constantly busy he has developed a process where he is quick and draws
directly onto the screen to maximise his time for multiple projects
• Similarly, his research methods are quick consulting Google images which he will then translate into shapes and vectors
• The majority of his time is spent tweaking the facial features to get the exact likeness of the celebrity
• Simplicity is key and it is important to remove irrelevant decoration to ensure the images are instantly recognisable
• His work has been applied to animation, Get Me There cards in Manchester and USB sticks showing his versatility
• Stan's advice is to illustrate the things you enjoy doing rather than for the sake of getting work. Concentrate in
• Pricing is the hardest part of being an illustrator and it is important not to be polite and feel like you have been undersold
• His influences included Mike Mignola when he was younger
• Making pictures will help you to get better and naturally develop your style. Don't force it.
• Stan feels his location in his home city gives him space to breathe and be more relaxed with his practice as opposed to working in London where everything is very fast-paced and living is expensive

Reflection:
I really enjoyed hearing from Stan Chow and think he had a lot of valuable advice to give as a well-established and successful illustrator. For me, as someone who is also from Manchester, it is great to see someone so local that is globally in-demand and has achieved so much without travelling thanks to the power of the internet and the platform that social media provides. It shows just how robust the digital age is and the impact it has to reach out to an audience - and it is certainly something I will be adopting as my practice develops.

Personal: Deadlines, Time Management and Real Life

I've learned a very valuable lesson in terms of time management, deadlines and real life that I wanted to reflect on and share on my blog...

Since Wednesday my Guide Dog has been suffering with Conjunctivitis (an infection in her eyes causing constant watering, inflammation and discharge) meaning that I was absent on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday while I went back home to Manchester to take Tami to the vets as soon as possible for treatment. Tami being poorly made me feel like I was in a very vulnerable position. I couldn't go to uni because Tami is my mobility aid, my confidence booster to get out there and live in a sighted world, my eyes and my best friend. She means the absolute world to me and for her to be under the weather meant that I, in turn, shared her pain and helplessness. I was as I was before I was matched and trained with her; highly dependent, alone and afraid. This turn of events really highlighted how important Tami really is and the change she has instilled in me and my life. I wouldn't even be here at university without her as I was previously unable to travel on my own, heck, even go out on my own at all as I was too self-conscious about using my long cane in public. I am now strongly independent, confident and on the path of following my dreams - and it's all thanks to the love, comfort and loyalty that Tami gives me daily.

In my haste of contacting my mum, arranging an appointment on the afternoon I discovered her eye infection, weighing out Tami's food for the next 3 mornings and evenings to package up and label (Guide Dogs have a very strict diet so as not to gain weight while they are a working dog), getting ready and grabbing my laptop - I forgot my sketchbooks, materials and poster roughs for Monday's deadline. I feel this was justified under the circumstances, but I quickly noticed my error when I arrived home. As such, I was only able to work on and complete blog posts while I was staying at home and looking after Tami; giving her eyedrops twice a day and mashing antibiotics into her food. I blogged 4 posts in total, some of which were rather lengthy, so I did feel accomplished to a certain extent - but in the back of my mind I knew I needed to complete my sketchbook development and get started on the actual A2 poster.

Upon arriving back into Leeds on Saturday afternoon, I visited the college library to purchase my poster paper (which I was planning to do on the Wednesday after my COP lecture) and collect my work. I spent Saturday night and most of Sunday working on finishing my research and development and the poster itself - but time ran out and I only had a half-finished poster to present on Monday morning. Even though I really tried my hardest to complete my work, I still felt disappointed that I couldn't share my work with my tutors and my peers and felt like I had let myself down. Looking back now with more clarity, these events couldn't have been foreseen or predicted - so I quickly stopped blaming myself, instead channeling my energy into the second brief of the module.

I am very impressed with how quickly I turned things around though! Yesterday evening I worked really hard on my typology poster and finally have it at a stage that I am much happier with. Upon reflection, real life unfortunately can get in the way and no amount of preparation can have me ready for it - but working hard to make up for lost time, really focusing, concentrating and applying time management were of huge benefit to complete a project and improve my sense of wellbeing.

Tami is now much better, meaning that I feel much happier and comfortable to be back at uni, so now it's onwards and upwards!

Some Rules for Students and Teachers

by Sister Corista Kent and John Cage

• Find a place you trust, and then try trusting it for a while.

• General duties of a student: Pull everything out of your teacher,
pull everything out of your fellow students.

• General duties of a teacher: Pull everything out of your students.

• Consider everything an experiment.

• Be self-disciplined: this means finding someone wise or smart and choosing to follow them. To be disciplined is to follow in a good way. To be self-disciplined is to follow in a better way.

• Nothing is a mistake. There's no win and no fail, there's only make.

• The only rule is work! If you work it will lead to something. It's the people who do all of the work all of the time who eventually catch onto things.

• Don't try to create and analyse at the same time. They're different processes.

• Be happy whenever you can manage it. Enjoy yourself. It's lighter than you think.

• We're breaking all the rules. Even our own rules. And how do we do that? By leaving plenty of room for X quantities.

Hints: Always be around. Come or go to everything. Always go to classes. Read anything you can get your hands on. Look at movies carefully, often. Save everything. It might come in handy later.

Exploring the Wacom Cintiq

Today I used a Wacom Cintiq 24HD tablet for the first time, after my Visual Language session, and wanted to share my experience and response to the equipment.

I am already very familiar with Wacom products; specifically the Wacom Intuos Medium Art Tablet, which I have owned for almost a year now, experimenting with the Bamboo tablet as early as 2006 before that. I have never had the opportunity to explore the Cintiq, however, so immediately jumped at the chance to do so when it was mentioned by my tutor! I was extremely excited at the prospect of drawing directly onto a screen, rather than relying on my poor hand-eye coordination (which results in my digital art journey being a lengthy process), enabling me to rapidly produce digital work quicker than ever before. My personal logo, for example, took nearly a month of daily trial, error and refinement; using the eraser tool constantly to remove my feathered and unsure line work, due to my small window of failing vision in one eye.

I signed out a pen specially designed for the Cintiq and instantly noticed a difference; the pen itself sits within a rocker, unscrewing at the bottom to reveal a range of extra and replaceable nibs - as well as a metal ring to help with the process. I was impressed already! The pen tool that comes with the Intuos range also has a replaceable nib option, though nibs and the remove tool have be purchased separately and can be rather costly. I spent roughly an hour experimenting with the capacity to sketch directly onto the screen but first encountered a problem with getting the Photoshop window tactually  display on the Cintiq! I had to ask a Level 5/6 student for assistance and it was brought to my attention that as the two monitors are working together, the Photoshop window on the Mac has to be swiped to the right towards the Cintiq to 'share' the program. Nifty! I will most certainly be remembering this for future exploration sessions.

Above is a quick four-step sketch I did to play with some of the buttons and options on the monitor, using the most basic Photoshop brushes as no custom ones have been downloaded into my palette yet. I am so, so impressed with what the Cintiq has to offer and what it presents to someone like me, a severely sight-impaired illustrator, who struggles with the standard tablet and is not always able to immediately track where the pen is drawing on the screen. I now have the opportunity to continue to create digital work but with more time efficiency and ease of use. While the equipment is extremely expensive - around £1,500 for the Cintiq itself and an extra £300 for the Ergonomic Stand - I believe that it is something worth investing in (with continued practice, of course!) as I can not put a price tag on how much this well help tremendously in my future professional career as a digital illustrator.

Study Task 2: Practice

For this Study Task I will be focusing my research on UK-based illustrator and musician Sarah Tanat-Jones, who I first discovered through Twitter a year ago and have been following closely ever since. She is represented by illustration agency Handsome Frank and has clients such as Asos, Waitress, Benefit Cosmetics, CNN, Goop, The Guardian, The Independent, The Observer, Sainsbury's, Universal Music, Vanity Fair, Virgin, The National Trust and Wetransfer. Sarah draws by hand with brush and ink before digitally colouring with a palette of bold and bright shades.

As well as an impressive portfolio of work and clientele, Tanat-Jones has a strong presence on the internet through her Website, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn and Behance. While the majority of these links focus on her portfolio and professionalism, Sarah's Twitter page allows us a glimpse into who she is as a person; witty, opinionated, political, inquisitive, a feminist, a humanist, ethical, a traveller, an arachnophobe, a musicoholic, pro-EU and anti-Trump.

Her main website, sarahtanatjones.com, has a simple and easy-to-use layout, as frequently seen with other contemporary professional illustrators, drawing the viewer's main focus to her portfolio of work with clickable thumbnails to reveal the name of the piece, the themes, the client and the materials used. As well as this, Sarah has a main point of contact (e-mail), details about her agent, a professional photograph, client list, links list and small autobiographical paragraph in her About section. These are the primary fundamentals that a client will want to see when browsing an illustrator's website.

One of my favourite quotes from Sarah is this handy piece of advice featured in an interview with DigitalArts Online: "Don't give your 'money job' your all, be strict with setting times to do the work you love in the evenings. It's not easy, but it's so worth it. And it's useful and valuable to experience that kind of pressure. It makes you more determined for illustration to be a success. I worked in offices for a good five years before going freelance and I learned loads about working life, office politics, different skills. I actually really value that time." This quote tells me a lot about Sarah's ability to multi-task, persevere in order to achieve her goals, determination, resourcefulness and life experience - using what some would consider to have been a waste of their time and a barrier to their dream job as a valuable source of skills. Additionally, I also like value quote from the same interview and feel it feeds into this module as a whole, "I think that freelance illustrators are at their best when they are dedicated to the business side as well as image-making, but it can be hard and time-tabling a period of time each week to deal with professional practice can help."

Having grew up in Brighton, moving to London, going to school in Edinburgh and now living in Glasgow, Sarah's tendency to travel feeds into her overall practice and is an overarching theme in her portfolio. She keeps a travel diary consisting entirely of quick illustrations of places she visits and people she comes across in train stations, coffee shops and around cities. Food is another big theme, with illustrated items such as fish, lobster, crab, and rustic vegetables being featured, due to high demand from editorial clients including Waitrose Magazine, Brummell Magazine and Vogue, as well as being inspired by walking past her local fishmonger's on a daily basis. Even breakfast at a friend's house has inspired an illustration of a blender and raw ingredients in her aforementioned diary! As a musician herself, and a big lover of 70's New Wave, Sarah has produced towering illustrations that were projected onto architecture and open space for The Scottish Opera's retelling of Carmen, self-initiated music icon illustrations featuring greats such as Siouxsie Soux, Joan Jett and Patti Smith, more contemporary music giants such as the Spice Girls and One Direction and a Pop Boys series of young heartthrobs Justin Bieber, Zayn Malik and Drake.

Highly opinionated in topics such as politics, gender equality, culture and society, Sarah tends to respond with quick illustrations posted on Twitter conveying her annoyances at racism, sexism, ableism, consumerism and general closed-mindedness in her easily recognisable highly-stylised, quirky, colourful and textured way. She has no hint of animosity in her work, however, and shows a gentle, grounded and thoughtful tone of voice through the rounded shapes, limited text, bright colours and simplistic forms - rather than perpetuating the violent words, actions and imagery of world events and politics.

 

I really enjoy Tanat-Jones' work because of the themes she responds to - all of which are current, heavy topics - and that she debunks the speculation that illustration is no longer thought-provoking or politically charged and is instead withdrawn from big debates favouring aesthetics over discussion. She has a good balance in he use of both digital and analogue processes, is clearly skilled (winning D&AD Best of New Blood in 2009), is hard-working and determined (as seen in her interviews and strong portfolio) and has achieved great success in transitioning to freelance illustration, producing well-received work in a variety of advertising, editorial and merchandise pieces for well-stablished clients.

I feel that Sarah's work, and even her personality, draw comparisons to my own. She doesn't see herself as an illustrator or musician divided, instead celebrating both and letting them feed into each other's discipline - playing her music when creating illustrations and creating linocut prints for her album covers. I feel I identify with this as I equally enjoy writing and illustrating, not wishing to focus on one more than the other. I want my stories to feed into my illustrations and vice versa - being self-sufficient, creative and ultimately free. Interdisciplinary yet focused. I wish to achieve as much as Sarah has through serious hard work, dedication, love of image-making and successfully using social media as a platform to share my work, my ideas and my opinions. Her work captures a rhythm of line, tone and colour that I would like to learn to emulate through practice and refinement. Her pieces work as stand-alone images as well as the context they were created for and I strive for that ambiguity and adaptability.

"There's great movement throughout Sarah's images and while she had to town down some of the violence that's in the opera (Carmen), the passion, the sorrow and the despair is all there in beautiful swooshes of colour and sweeping lines." It's Nice That, June 2015

Discussion: Practice

Illustrators each have an individual practice. This defines elements such as the techniques, processes and methods that are used, the thought process, ideology and recurring themes that are respond to (which may be specific or subtle), the type of environment the work exists within, as well as the unique business sense, promotional aspects, clients and presence in the media or on social media.

Expanding knowledge and practical skills is key which can be fulfilled through researching and refining themes and ideas, expanding self-knowledge of a subject as well as the resources. A practice should be informed by research, investigation and experimentation. Looking at other practitioners is also very beneficial to get a sense of what is being created and what already exists. Illustrators need to channel their own thoughts and opinions; creating responses and pushing the boundaries of method and application. In terms of style, each illustrator has their own set of visual devices and individual take on creating pictures - how they translate a subject and choose the media to represent it with, as well as the subject matter that is selected to respond to. At the same time it is not just about style, that isn't the only definition of an illustrator's practice. It involves current and past clients and connections, the landscape that the work lives in, the ability to solve problems, ask questions and tackle the subject matter through their illustration effectively.

Style comes from someone's individual personality, ideology, life experience, influences, interests, mistakes, experiments, personal motifs, consistency and coherency in visual language and devices. There is a problem with the idea of a 'style' - it can be a very limiting and suffocating thing to have in your work but paradoxically it is, indeed, a thing that exists and helps us to identify artists and illustrators by the personal stamp they put on their work. People can be too fixated on having a personal style but it isn't something that should be forced as your portfolio will be derivative. The work of an illustrator should not just be a copy of someone else's because the techniques and visual problem solving were desirable - it is our job to make sense of and interrogate what we like about the style and bring elements of it into what we are doing, recognising there is something authentic being conveyed through improvisation and making that organic and natural to our own image-making.

A style can instead be described as a tone of voice or personal expression - often used when describing the aesthetics of a medium or a piece of work. When we draw we have lots of systems; keep testing, being speculative and trying new ways of solving the problem. Nurture another illustrator's approach but make it your own. Take style and recognise what may be communicated when talking about practice. Sketchbooks are key as they represent the sense of self within the experimentation and clearly describe the process of making marks.

To summarise, defining elements of an illustrator's practice can include their clients, projects / exhibitions, locality / upbringing, knowledge, life experience, heritage / family history, employment and / or additional jobs, time period / era, tools, alternative perceptions, sub-culture or counter-culture and ethical or political views. Illustration as a discipline has sparked discussion that it no longer stands for anything with political or ethical ideology.

Manchester Print Fair

Earlier this year I visited the Manchester Print Fair - my very first experience with seeing so many illustrators in one place and so much work displayed outside of a gallery space! I took lots of photos but these were the ones that turned out best. I wanted to blog about this event as I still think about it often and have been been so inspired by all of the different aesthetics and products of illustration!

There were many things that I would like to consider this year:

- Making prints

- Making illustrations that can be applied to other products

- Entering print fairs

- Making my first zine

- Experimenting with different processes such as lino printing, mono printing, risographing

- Consider table set ups and the things I could sell in future

- Business cards

There do seem to be a lot of trends at the moment, such as Americana, scandi-folk, foxes and woodland creatures, and I want to try and avoid these so that my work can be timeless and individual.