I tweeted my screen print to Grimes as it seemed like the most accessible way to contact her, but I think she might have ignored it. At least this was a good opportunity to make a twitter account as another platform to have for my work.

I also found her tour manager, Karen Soskin on Linkedin and sent her a message about the poster but never heard back. Oh well

Tutorial with Patrick

This was really useful:

• Off the back of the lecture with Good Wives and Warriors, advertising has become quite an attractive pathway for me to take in the future. Look into contacting advertising agencies/companies. (Blinkink/art, BigActive)
• D&AD type briefs are very much advertising based. These are a good way to get myself thinking in terms of the field. Have another look at the briefs and really try and un-pick them. Think about the creative side of things first, and then stick the product in there. Think outside of my box.
• This leads into me needing to think bigger. Never consider an image finished - always think about how I can improve it or change it. This includes screen prints if I want to improve them for portfolio purposes. i.e. Grimes
• Being an illustrator/designer and being a printmaker are two different things and skill sets. Don't worry too much if I don't become a master printmaker as long as I'm a good designer, as the designs are looking good even if the prints aren't top notch.
• Be more ambitious/experimental with the screen prints - prepping paper by hand before printing onto it might yield interesting results and unique one-off prints
• Be more positive about my work so as to not make it lose value.

Studio practice related:

• Re-evaluate where War Horse images are going - they are at risk of seeming to patronising at the moment as they are not saying unique that the text isn't already. Look at graphic industrial aesthetic of the early 20th century. Re-think colour palette.

Maintaing a screen printing practice

So I want to keep screen printing after I graduate and have already mentioned East London Printmakers' Studio which I want to purchase membership to. I'm looking at their prices list to see how affordable it is, and they also have a list of other materials vendors.

https://www.eastlondonprintmakers.co.uk/about-us/price-list/
http://www.cadisch.co.uk/screen-printing-inks/Default.asp?whichpage=2

Buying 500ml of System 3 acrylic seems to be chapter to get directly from these guys than even Cass Art which is surprising.

• 500ml of System 3: £9.00 from East London Printmakers
• 1l of System 3 binder: £10.84 from Cadisch. Slightly cheaper than buying 2x500ml from ELP (though it would probably be more economical to buy their 5l for the long run)
• 500ml ink pots: £0.40 from ELP, though I can provide my own tuppleware. 
• 3M brown tape x2: £2.49 from Amazon, cheaper than ELP
• A1 200gsm Stockwell cartridge paper from ELP: £0.40 per sheet
• A1 370gsm Lambeth cartridge paper from ELP: £.0.55 per sheet (if I want to make prints on thicker stock)

• Emulsion from Cadisch: £2.87 per 100g, available at 900g for £25.89
• Emulsion from ELP: £2.65 per 100g, available 1kg for £26.50

• Therefore, emulsion is cheaper from ELP.

You can hire screens from ELP per day/week which I'll probably start out doing. Prices start at £2 going up to £7 depending on size.

You can pay per emulsion coating as well starting at £1.50-£2.70 depending on screen size

If I want to buy my own to save money in the long run:

• A3 kit including Stretched mesh and squeegee - £59.00 (+£54.84 for a second screen if I want to be printing two colours, which I do)

At the very least, my first 2 coloured, A3 screen print using my own materials would cost:

• screen hire/week = £8
• 3x500ml of System 3 = £27.00 (3 because of the need to mix colours, though will probably require more)
• 1l of binder = £10.84
• 1kg of emulsion = £26.50
• 1 x brown tape = £1.24
• 10 x A1 stockwell cartridge paper = £4.00. This equates to 20 A2 sheets to print on for a 20-edition run

£77.58

If I don't bother buying my own emulsion and use it per coating, this becomes £51.08.
The thought of carrying around lots of ink and a kg of binder sounds cumbersome so it might not be worth the effort at the very beginning.

Good Wives and Warriors lecture

http://www.goodwivesandwarriors.co.uk/New_2010/home_frame.htm

These collaborative designers were interesting to hear speak, although it was obvious that they carried out their process very differently to what a purely illustrative practitioner would.

Hearing them talk about their process for this book cover is interesting, and while it seems that they just tried to throw as many concepts in as they could, it doesn't detract from the overall image, as I suppose it lends itself to their ultra detailed way of working. I don't think I'd manage to make something like that work quite as well, nor would I try as I think making simpler images with a strong concept is more interesting.

Some interesting things from their talk:

• One of them did an internship working for an illustrator called Hannah Stouffer, which I found very interesting since you don't hear about illustration interns that often. I asked her about it, and apparently it involved a lot of "shaking her posca pens" for her and other little errands. However, she did say that by observing her she learnt a lot about dealing with clients and was surprised at how much she was charging for her work, since she didn't know an illustrator could acceptably charge that much.
• Publishing jobs don't pay very well - a couple hundred pounds maybe. Advertising pays a lot of money - This swatch brief got them £17,000. The amount of work you do is hardly ever proportionate to the amount you get paid.
• They work as Good Wives and Warriors only 3 days a week. Their other jobs are textile designer for Topshop, and artist assistant in a studio. They said that working only 3 days a week as Good Wives and Warriors lessens the pressure they feel to keep it highly commercial and allows them to be a bit more experimental and do their own personal, more 'fine art-y' projects.

Portfolio session with Patrick

General notes from the session:

• 10 pieces in your portfolio is a good start - never more than 20. 
• The most comfortable size for the portfolio is A3 - big enough but not too big.
• Start positive and end positive - i.e. good pieces.

• When meeting a client, do a lot of research behind them, specifically the person you are going to meet. 
• Don't just bring whatever you think they want to see or think they want, but other stuff that they might be interested in. You can get a sense of control and push them in a creative direction.
• Before a meeting, ask them if they want you to do anything, for a 'creative steer'.

• Testimonials look good on a website along with a client list

AUDIT my body of work and find 10 core pieces:

http://issuu.com/es251397/docs/10_pieces

I'm not totally happy with all these pieces, and this task has made me realise that I really don't have much work to show from the last 2 years, which is why I'm hoping to rectify this ASAP with Extended Practice.

• Manuel Gottsching screen print poster (level 6)
• Flight Facilties screen print poster (level 6)
• Grimes screen print poster (level 6)
• Mind Melter screen print poster - competition brief (level 5)
• Waking Life movie poster - competition brief (level 5)
• Vice Rule Britannia animation D&AD competition brief https://vimeo.com/123204993 (level 5)
• Ubiquitous Mobility picture book about the overabundance of technology in society http://issuu.com/es251397/docs/cop_book (level 5)
• Metamorphosis and Other Stories by Franz Kafka series of book covers and box set http://issuu.com/es251397/docs/505_presentation_boards (level 5)
• The Judgement by Franz Kafka inner illustration (level 5)
• Light for Leeds College of Art student magazine (level 6)

All images were completed in 2015, but I have a feeling that by 2016 nothing from level 5 will be something I will want in my portfolio. I'm not really sure what I was doing in level 5 but I don't really like much of the work I produced that year anymore. I think this is good though because it means that I'm pushing myself even more this year to produce good, professional-level work.

I have this image that I screen printed in first year which I am still quite pleased with. I would consider putting it in a portfolio at this stage, but the screen prints themselves were A1 in size and the colours were far from what I intended originally. And while the registration was mostly good, only a few of the prints were aligned straight on with the paper:

So in total I have one piece from first year that I would maybe consider 'good'

and only a few from second year which I would consider 'acceptable', which places a lot of pressure/importance in this final year.

Little White Lies - Cate Blanchett

LWL have a creative brief to draw Cate Blanchett as her new character Carol. 

I'm pleased with the technical quality of the drawing, but I didn't really know what to do with the portrait once I had drawn it, or how to really turn it into an illustration, making for an image that is lacking in substance.

I guess this was just a nice exercise in technical drawing/inking.

House of Illustration: E.H. Shepherd - An Illustrator's War

I went to an exhibition at the House of Illustration on the weekend which featured drawings by E.H. Shepherd during the war. Most notable was that these drawings were done on the front lines from life. 

Some of the illustrations still managed to retain some of Shepherd's light-hearted cartoony tone which I think made his images about war particularly special.

The image above was my favourite drawing of the exhibition as I feel that, even though the colours are really muddy, it captures the atmosphere of trench warfare really well.

It was also really interesting how he was used to go ahead and draw the landscape and approximate the distances, which he would mark on his drawings with a ruler for the troops to determine better where to fire artillery fire.

I want to apply some of the skills I saw in his work as a draughtsman to what I produce specifically for my entry to the Folio Society War Horse competition. His figures are incredibly gestural and show a lot of emotion. Perhaps I should also try and be more light-hearted in my tone in order to make my images less predictable.

Victo Ngai

Victo Ngai came and gave some really insightful comments on her practice and the discipline of illustration in general.

I think one of the most interesting things that she said was to find the difference between what you like doing, and what you like looking at. This is what helped her realise that she was more inclined to drawing rather than painting, though she could still take inspiration from painters. I think that I have yet to make this differentiation which is why I'm so unsure about where my work is going or what it looks like.

Editorial:

• Reverse-engineer editorial briefs so that you can draw what you want to draw - how can a desire for drawing animals translate into an appropriate solution to a business/economic article?
• Use the edge of your page to imply the scope of your ideas
• Even if you are illustrating a serious subject, make your work whimsical to try and encourage your readership and make them feel better about something. This is what she did for her illustration about breast cancer

Illustrating for books/stories:

• It's all about picking the right moment - in this illustration she unpicked a scene that only really made sense after reading the story - the composition divides the illustration and reflects the woman's wants/desires to be free from her husband and how far apart they had grown. I hadn't thought of using big compositional shapes like this to communicate themes before and found it really interesting.
• Hiding faces hides emotions, makes the reader want to read the story.
• In this poster the composition centralises the main female character, but the small size of her juxtaposes this and conveys the themes/message of the movie.
• Consider what including/omitting certain objects in the composition implies.

Advertising:

• Keep fulfilled by doing something personal while doing something really corporate.

general:

• Vertical perspective is the type of perspective in old Chinese paintings in which things further away were just put on top of closer objects.
• Find something you want to draw and make up a story for it to give yourself some context/inspiration.
• As long as your visual vocal and language is consistent you shouldn't try to make everything realistic.
• Picking colour palettes from others is only a starting point - will probably have to add/change it to make it work/more personal. Take palettes from paintings too.
• Take inspiration from a wide variety of sources to get yourself a more unique 'Frankenstein' outcome.

Bendik Kaltenborn

Bendik was at Thought bubble this weekend and I'm trying to make up for the silly mistake I did of booking a weekend away at the same time by e-mailing him and others.

I'm trying to e-mail people who will help share insightful comments on their design process which will push my work forward or change the way I think about things

Sonnenzimmer

update: they did reply, apparently such questions are answered in their book 'Didactics', which I've sent a request for in the library. Looking forward to giving it a read when it comes

http://sonnenzimmer.com

I've been obsessed with these guys' work for the last week or so, especially since what they're doing is inspiring me for my screen printed posters brief for Extended Practice. I sent them an email asking a bit about their design process and practice. Hopefully they reply.

Linkedin

I'm trying to get the hang of Linkedin, but it's difficult to remember to keep checking up on it. I'm accepting invitations to connect with other designers but am struggling to come up with interesting or relevant questions to ask them.

I did message one guy from the Czech Republic called Miroslav Lakosil because he had a sketchbook of his published on Amazon as an ebook which I found very interesting.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Fineliner-Sketching-Workout-Sculptures-Victoria-ebook/dp/B00VIQLFDG
Apparently publishing an ebook on Amazon is as simple as uploading a PDF which they convert for you.

I'm gonna keep trying to remember to check up on my Linkedin everyday or so. Alongside this I'm also gonna try and keep my Behance up to date as I haven't touched it since second year.

Little Paper Planes

http://blog.littlepaperplanes.com/

This is a really nice blog with some really nice design and illustration

Career Track Tuesday - 27th October

Finding a job - Alternative Ways of Job Hunting

I went to this Careers Track session, and while a lot of the stuff that was taught had already been covered by John, such as ways of getting yourself out there and networking, there were a few points which I did find really interesting:

• The "hidden" job market - only about 30% of all available jobs are advertised publicly. The other 70% are got through employers contacting people they know first before bothering to ask outside their network. 
• The vacancy filling process from the employer goes something like this: Lateral moves or internal promotion > Contacts from existing staff > Networking /Word of mouth > Professional organisations > Recruitment agencies/Job centres > Adverts/Websites
• Most people look for jobs starting from the red, whereas employers employ from the green downwards
• A lot of university websites don't restrict access to their careers prospect sections. It's worth having a look through them, particularly those for University of the Arts London. I was given a very long list at the session which I'll be going through

It was also another kick to start emailing people. I've set myself a deadline to contact House of Illustration and Shotopop, a design agency that John told me about, before Christmas. I also want to have a chat with Mike in the print room about his experience at a print studio before coming here.

NEST Magazine submission

I submitted this image to the latest issue of the Leeds College of Art student magazine, NEST. The theme of this issue is "light", and so I decided to make an image that plays on childhood fears of the dark, and how kids naturally feel safer in the light.

I designed it with an isometric view which I've never done before, but really enjoyed. I haven't heard back from the editor whether it's been accepted or not, but if it has I'm looking forward to seeing it in print in December, bound with other students' works.