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.