ep: evaluation

This module has been long and enlightening, to put it shortly. I have learned so much throughout these months and my practice has grown and developed so much. I really enjoyed the freedom of the module and being able to choose my own briefs, this really helped me to pick and choose when to play in my comfort zone or branch out. I could choose whether to work more on personal briefs or keep entering competitions and I think it gave me an idea of what to expect when entering the world after university. It will very much be like how this year has gone, except with less blogging and essays. I was able to work on my interest in character design, through the Drawing My Friends brief, and figure out more about who I want to be as an illustrator, as I have always had this image in my head of being a concept artist or character designer. Therefore being able to work on these types of briefs helped me to shape my practice and work out what it is I want to do. It also helped me to discover how much I enjoy working on children’s books and children’s illustration. I love creating worlds and stories to tell children, creating characters who they can relate to or want to cuddle at night. I really enjoyed combining children’s illustration with my love for character design, because I feel like it gelled better like this, rather than me drawing characters for a game or animation. I felt more in control of my practice, and as someone who has always said they don’t want to become a freelance illustrator, it looks like that is where I am heading.

I struggled a lot this year with my mental health and this effected my motivation and my willingness to go to the crit sessions. I struggle badly with social anxiety and it has got gradually worse over the past year, making it difficult to gain peer feedback from my tutorial groups as I can’t bring myself to go. This is something I need to overcome when thinking about the future because my practice strives when I am being given peer feedback. Either online or face to face, I know that with my practice I need to be given feedback. This is one of the reasons why working within a studio environment in the future appeals to me, I just need to find some illustrators who live in Manchester who will share a studio with me. I really value peer feedback because it allows me to get different opinions and possibly notice something that I didn’t see before.

Out of some of the crit sessions that I did attend, there were positive murmurings when looking at Montgomery. I think my peers are so used to my drawings being cute and whimsical it was fun for them to see me push myself out of my comfort zone and try to draw something, or someone, pulling an ugly or contorted face. It was not only fun for them to look at, but fun for me to draw, and this brief helped me to push myself when it comes to my character’s facial expressions. Although this sounds menial, it is so vital when trying to make a story or a character with personality if they don’t have any facial expression. It made me push out of the comfort of everything looking perfect and symmetrical and have fun with expression rather than being scared of it. This is also true when it came to Biff, who helped me to develop facial expression drawings even on a dragon.

As this module was mostly self-directed, that gave me pressure to keep good time management. I think this year I did well with making sure that I was up to date most of the time, sometimes there were dips of motivational struggle, however I always brought it back and posted those drafts and worked on those sketches and I’m really proud of myself. For once in my evaluation I can say that I kept good time management. That truly is some growth if I’ve ever seen it.

Even though the module was self-directed, I really enjoyed working on competition briefs as well as my own briefs. Having the freedom to choose which one to work on made me feel more confident and professional. It also meant I could choose briefs to suit me and work on my own briefs at the same time.

ep: project report // portfolio

ep: notable moments - 2000 words

Notable Moments

09/10/17

I really like doing card designs! It’s really fun to try out something that I have never done before, really pushing myself to try new things is what I’m going to try and do for this module.

03/11/17

Struggling to work collaboratively for Lifting Towers. I find myself always wanting to be the perfectionist and have things my way and I need to learn how to talk about things professionally, especially things that aren’t going right, because I feel myself becoming annoyed and I don’t want to be unprofessional. I hope that I can work collaboratively and this is just a one off occasion and I’m not a big hothead.

UPDATE/ worked collaboratively with a photographer on Roomzzz brief! It went really well and we worked really well together. We had really good communication which I think is one of the most important parts of doing a project together. I have worked with photographers in the past and for some reason my little doodles always seem to work really well with photographs. Maybe something to consider in the future, teaming up with a photographer(s) in a collective.

16/11/17

Won a competition, feels really good to be validated as an illustrator, especially someone like me who really struggles to see the value in their own work. I wasn’t going to submit to the brief at first because I was concerned about doing a piece of art on such a large scale but I’m glad that I pushed myself out of my comfort zone because the payoff feels great. This brief helped me to realise that pushing myself out of my comfort zone and entering as many competitions as I think I fit into is the best choice, if I don’t win it’s no big deal, but when I do win it feels great. I’m glad that Network Rail recognised that I tried really hard to make a good piece of work for the station.

15/01/18

Started a side project that I’m calling ‘Drawing My Friends’. I want to work more on my character design and see if it really is something that I want to consider as a future career. Am I good enough? Always have these self-doubt thoughts. Childhood dream of working at Disney feels far away right now, need to work out how to either get it back or start creating new dreams.

17/01/18

Whilst working on my COP work, which is about cats and how they are perceived in a creative society, I’ve started to draw a particular cat in my COP journal. I am beginning to fall in love with this character and am having so much fun drawing him. There’s something about how his facial expressions are so different to what I normally do that is making me want to draw more. It feels good to be doing something different. Working with ink and trying not to be so careful with my drawings, instead going with the flow and seeing what the outcomes are. In the past years whilst at university, I have become known as the one that always has to have her work looking perfect. I am going to try and use this brief to work around this and see if I can break out of the perfectionist barrier. Having a different outlook might have been helpful when previously working collaboratively on the Lifting Towers brief and instead of striving for perfection in everything I do, just having fun and seeing where it gets me.

Decided to call the cat Montgomery. He hates everything. I love him. I have discovered a new way I am enjoying working, I am having fun writing stories that I can tell with my illustrations. Making me think that children’s illustration is a good path for me because as I am drawing this I feel like my work is actually getting somewhere that I want it to.

For some reason, drawing Montgomery (which counts as character design, right?) is making me feel like I am getting a little bit closer to my Disney dream, or something similar at least. Trying to push through the thoughts of self-doubt, I worked hard to get where I am today, I draw so much and practice why should I not be good enough?

21/01/18

Finally the end of COP. Feel like now I can solely focus on extended practice. Although I have been keeping good time management and making sure that I am entering briefs and trying to come up with some plan to create a self-directed brief. Feels good to finally say I’m having good time management, feel like the past 3 years of falling behind have finally whipped me into shape.

15/02/18

Finished first Montgomery children’s book page. Really love how it turned out, so why am I having second thoughts about finishing it? Something about Montgomery’s character makes me feel like he either doesn’t belong in a child’s universe or should at least first have his debut to an adult audience. Having thoughts of Montgomery swearing ‘fuck off’, expletives are funny right? I think I have some humour in me, although a lot of the time it’s self-deprecating so maybe working on a character who thinks he’s too good for everything might help me to start getting out of my own head.

Really want to create a Montgomery zine! I think it would work so perfectly, I can hear his really gruff old man voice shouting at the kids to get out of his yard. Still could have the same premise as the children’s book, Monty hates everything – But loves one thing – Sebastian (his owner). Would make a really cute little booklet and might be something to consider selling at the Art Market.

04/03/18

Self-portraits. I can never decide on them. I do so many, yet I always feel like I change too much or my style changes too much. Why can’t I stick to one design? It’s not like my face changes. Need to start setting in stone how I want to work, what I want to work with, what mediums do I like? Really enjoy the self-portrait briefs and how they push me to re-evaluate my practice and try something new every time. Even though this is good thing, it’s also a bad thing because it means I can never decide on which ‘new’ thing I like best. How much trying something different, is too much trying something different?

05/03/18

Really enjoyed researching into zines, they are very fascinating. Found some really good inspiration and I feel PUMPED to make my zine now. Glad that I have discovered that zines don’t have to be magnificent and complicated, because I favour the simple zines for aesthetically pleasing purposes and time management purposes.

14/03/18

Thought I would revisit the ‘Drawing My Friends’ brief, and to my surprise I am really loving the outcomes. They feel like real character designs with personality and charm and for once I don’t want to redo it! Feel like this is such a good moment for me. Although this is only a short mini brief, I suppose sometimes you only need a little bit of light to get out of the dark! (That was deep). Want to try and combine styles and create new full body images of the sketches. Even though I said I wouldn’t, I just can’t help but want to. It feels like my practice is finally coming together, with Montgomery and my Friends brief, it really feels like I’m developing a body of work that I would be proud to show to peers and publishers.

22/03/18

I missed the Templar deadline. I’m really disappointed in myself because I feel super confident in the ideas that I generated, I just didn’t time it well and got all flustered and caught up in the perfection again. Although, it’s not all terrible because I have decided instead of submitting to that deadline, I shall create a new Major project! Got really attached to Biff the dragon, which is probably a good thing because that means the character designing part is working, because I wanted him to be a loveable and adorable character.

Want to create a children’s zine, works perfectly now that I am doing an adult zine for Montgomery. Biff feels like he could really be a children’s book, like for real. Want the zine to have a good message/moral, like most children’s books. Biff has no wings, which could symbolise disability and hopefully make all children feel like they have some representation in the world. Using story-telling to make the world a better place! Inclusive children’s stories! Got really excited when thinking of the possibilities for Biff.

27/03/18

Didn’t get picked for the Papergang shortlist. Quite disheartening because I was quite confident about my submission, but instead of having thoughts that I’m rubbish, just trying to have thoughts that maybe my work wasn’t for them! Although, looking at the shortlist, it kind of sucks to see people on there that just copied a pattern throughout the whole set when OhhDeer said not to do that, basically not putting the work in. Whereas I tried really hard on mine and made sure that all the products were different. Don’t want to sound whiney. Got to get on with it!

31/03/18

Got emailed today from a photographer, they want me to help create their branding! I seem to attract all the photographers. Excited to work on this brief because it gives me a chance to try something new and different. I’ve always loved typography so it also gives me more of a change to try out this skill, as well as composition and colours. This brief also feels more like I’m a real illustrator, because I’ve got to make sure that I do everything to the client’s satisfaction and there’s someone waiting to pay me so they expect the best. It feels pretty good.

Trying out these skills for the photographer’s promotional pack has made me think about my own, I need some more branding and I want a business card, that’d be cool. Then I’d be a real professional. I know that I want to carry on with the name Elizabeth Faye, I know it’s not technically my real name but to be completely honest, I hate the capital letter ‘B’. It seems really silly, but I’d much rather be Elizabeth, and I think it sounds a lot more professional too.

4/05/18

Finished Biff zine today. Both of my zines are done! It feels good to hold them in my hand. Doing zines is so rewarding and having something that I can hold in my hand makes it feel worth it. Learned some new binding skills from my flatemate who is pretty good at it, much prefer the hand-stitched zines as opposed to the stapled ones. It makes it look more personal and keeps them flatter, I found that last year when making the greyhound one it wasn’t flat and I didn’t like it.

The only thing that I wish I could change would be that I had a print slot to print them off onto proper paper instead of just the mock-ups. I emailed for a print slot 3 weeks in advance but never got a reply and when I went in they were all already gone, but it’s no matter. Next time I’ll just have to make sure I have better time management. Well, next time like when I’m a professional because this is probably one of the last times I’ll be using the print rooms here in university. Kind of terrifying.

08/05/18

My final self-portrait is done. I decided to go back to my roots and create a similar portrait to ones that I did in the first year of university. I will always be that girl who has a mental breakdown in a blanket, but I am always that girl who overcomes it in the end and does pretty cool work. At least I think so.

ep: statement of intent - revised

ep: final self portrait

Here we are! My final self portrait which is going to be showcased at the exhibition. I have tried to tie in everything that I have learned from doing my past self portraits & the projects that I have been working on. Finding new skills using halftones and colour (which i used to be quite scared of) and I really like how it's turned out. I think it really talks about my time at university, as throughtout these three years here i have been known to wrap myself in a blanket, literally & figuratively and have made jokes/drawn onto it many times. Here's a look at some of the past blanket Beths:

Here's a little gem that my flatmate found from second year, new blanket new me.

And the originals:

It feels good to go full circle and go back to my roots, and i think this is the true representation of me as an artist. I just love to be cosy and comfortable (and i also have blanket breakdowns sometimes) even though sometimes they are me stressed, it's nice to look back on because i always overcome the stress in the end and it pushes me forward.

ep: montgomery - merchandise

who doesn't love a bit of merchandise?
i think Montgomery & Biff (who i'll do a seperate post for) are the perfect characters to be able to fit across so much merchandise. I picture tshirts, badges, stickers etc.

i decided to do a few mock-ups so i could see what it would look like.

ep: biff - merchandise

ep: free sticker friday // awesome merch

i just recently found out about the awesome merch competition that they hold every week where they ask people to submit sticker designs and one person a week is chosen as the winner! i thought i may as well submit to it because i have nothing to lose and it would be really nice to win.

ep: biff - finished zine

I am so pleased and excited at how this turned out! Also feeling very proud of myself! This process has turned out to be very rewarding and I have a new found love for children's illustration and i think my cute character designs sit so perfectly in this genre.

ep: drawing my friends 2.1 - finished photoshop

they look like a girlband. i like that.

if i had more time to work on this i might like to try colouring them in etc, but for now they look pretty cool.