Evaluation

Leeds College of Art BA (Hons) ILLUSTRATION	Level	04
OUIL402 Personal & Professional Practice 1	Credits	20
End of Module Self Evaluation

NAME	Wilf Dessent

1.  What learning have you inherited through this module and how has it impacted on your own understanding of professional practice? Consider yourself as a student at University as much as an illustrator
It has been valuable for me to start to understand the sort of illustration work that is currently being used. It can help me to judge weather the work I’m producing is suitable for professional standard illustration. I have found it interesting to see how important a consistent visual handwriting is what gives you personality as an illustrator. The process of finding artwork has made me more aware of how illustrators promote their work and the platforms they use to display it to the public. The visual diagram was really helpful for me, It allowed me to understand what the key things are that have been helping me improve my practice and specifically improve my drawn designs.
2. What approaches/ types of research have you found most valuable over this module? Why did they have such an impact?
I found going to the comic art festival had great impact on my motivation to draw. Seeing the comic artist draw things in front of me was inspirational and made me want to keep developing a visual signature of my own. I think primary research and learning through experiencing things is something I want to do much more of in the future. I found Pinterest is a really good way to discover current illustrators and artists that are working in the industry. Also looking at street art in different places I go I like seeing the types of work people are putting up for the public, it is really inspirational to my personal practice. But overall Id say looking at current illustrators work and asking myself how they have used their drawing skills has been the most valuable. And also looking at art I’m interested in!
3. In what way has PPP informed the way your work in other modules and your illustration practice as a whole?
It has informed in the sense that I need to develop a consistent drawing hand style. Although it’s good to experiment to learn new things I think it would be valuable to start to refine my way of drawing, as this is what will communicate my character and personality. And to experiment with what I draw within my handwriting rather than new media and process completely. And also develop my skills in the direction that I enjoy. Looking back at it now it has helped remind me that our practice is built up of lots of things we are interested in so I need to carry on being interested in things and carry on drawing in a way I enjoy.
4. What weaknesses can you identify in your PPP submission and how will you address this in the future?
I think I should look at more illustrators that work conceptually rather than just the drawn aesthetic. I should reflect or more work that looks at methods of communication and information. I think it would have been a better submission if I had done more of my own responses to artist work. And looked how I could have gained skills from the research directly. If I had consistently blogged about work of my own that I liked and though worked well I would have been able to reflect better on my successes as a whole. I was late understand what the purpose of PPP really was, so next year I can be more consistent with reflective research of my own skills and artist work throughout the whole year. I’m still really unsure at where abouts my work sits in a professional world, I think finding the answer to this could be a good aim for next year. 5. What communities of practice and professional contexts do you intend to investigate further as you approach level 5? Why do they appeal to you?
I want to do much more screen printing next year, I think it’s a good way to make final solutions to my designs and also gives a nice finished professional quality to them. I want to continue to look at how character can be included in a concept. I’m interested in creating and developing character and I think it is a fun way of communicating. Making illustrations for clothing and products is something im interested in so I think I want to explore this in my personal work and have a go at printing some T-shirt designs.
6.How would you grade yourself on the following areas: (please indicate using an ‘x’)  5= excellent, 4 = very good, 3 = good, 2 = average, 1 = poor
	1	2	3	4	5
Attendance		x
Punctuality		x
Motivation			x
Commitment			x
Quantity of work produced	x
Quality of work produced		x
Contribution to the group		x
The evaluation of your work is an important part of the assessment criteria and represents a percentage of the overall grade. It is essential that you give yourself enough time to complete your written evaluation fully and with appropriate depth and level of self-reflection. If you have any questions relating to the self-evaluation process speak to a member of staff as soon as possible.

A copy of your end of module self evaluation should be posted to your studio practice blog. This should be the last post before the submission of work and will provide the starting point for the assessment process. Post a copy of your evaluation to your PPP blog as evidence of your own on going evaluation.

Notes

Final PPP presentation

Visual Diagram - Final Poster

Final A2 Poster:

• I feel like it communicates my way of working quite well and I like how the faces in the corner show roughing and repetition of my first ideas.
• Looking at it now I think I might have overworked some of the sections to much. I think if some sections had been simpler shapes it would have been more effective. 
• The face doesn't work as a whole as well I thought it would but it was difficult to work on the different sections and use different photoshop effects on them.
• If I was going to do this again I would do the same process but on a simpler face and leave a rough section that is simper and looser pencil lines.
• I would have really liked to do a section of the face with screen print, because it is an effective way that I had been producing designs and also something I have only recently discovered benefits my drawings. But it was to complicated to leave a section blank and then screen print onto a digital print. If I had more time I would have found a way to include screen printing onto the face.

Visual Diagram - Ideas

Mind mapping all the different things that had been helping to make pictures this year really helped me to think about what had been skills have been most useful to my work. A lot of things could have been taken into account but I want to focus on the practical drawing process and methods because this is what I enjoy most think describes me best. The main things are:

• Drawing
• Roughing.
• Learning and developing ideas through roughs.
• Developing pencil sketches with different process.
• Repeating a drawing to understand it and refine it.
• Use character to help communicate.
• Digitally colouring work. And using a wacom tablet.
• Using shape.

I wanted to focus on how to explain the process I have been using in a diagram. I had the idea to make a patch-work face where each bit had a different type of drawing process on.

It could be a good way to show how I develop my rough sketches in different ways. I think using one of my tribal looking faces in the diagram would be a good way to show some of my personal style.

I though about showing the different process and medias on loads of the same face. This would also communicate the repetition that I use when figuring out an idea.

I then had the idea to put the repeated face sketches behind the patch-work face. They could work well as a background in some of the sections. I started to think about how each section could show the stages of a process, from a rough, to pen, to colour and pen and then digital. Or show different medias completely like, shape, digital, cut paper, pencil, fine liners, paint pen.

I tried a rough that showed the stages of how a rough would progress to a digital images and show experimenting with different line quality. I really like this design and can start to see how this idea would work. The only thing I don't like is the way all the colour would be at the bottom of the face, I think it would feel un balanced and have a slightly unfinished feel to it.

I wanted to balance out the different process across the face. It was hard to figure out where abouts they should be placed on the face and which work well next to each other. 

This is my favourite design, I like how the colours are balanced out across across the face. The middle section is going to be digital because it is the boldest, it will show how my image deconstructs to a sketch. I will show how I've learnt to develop my sketches and how each give a different effect to the rough. Im going to have 2 digital sections, a paper cut out section, digital shape, paint pen, two fine liner sections and two rough sections.

I though about some different colour schemes but I really like primary colours together, I think they will suite my design.

Neist and Wilo

These are two graffiti artist that I found on instagram, they make some really nice work, typography, line quality, pattern and also colour combinations.


Neist:

This work really stood out to me, I hadn't seen anything quite like it. He has a really nice way of producing letters but his style also translate well into drawing abstract buildings and pattern. I think he draws the ink and pen colours out first and then works the line on top. It has given me ideas to try out some designs where I let the coloured media dictate the shapes of the pattern and then work into it with line and mark making.

Wilo_r2f:

I just like the overall line quality of this piece. I think the yellow tones really brings out the quality and character in the shapes and lines. It is also nicely composed how the dense line work sits towards the bottom of the piece and is contained within the yellow square.

Jaypee

I like the finished aesthetic to these characters. He uses digital colour really effectively and I like the slight use of digital block shading a tone, it gives them a nice form and makes them less flat. Using a slightly darker shade of the main fill colour to produce the tone works well, I think I should try this out on some of my character outline.s. This is a good example of how digital work can benefit the natural line qualities of the artist.

London

I went on a trip to London for the day, There is loads of cool street art throughout the whole city but this piece that I found really stood out to me. I really like the characters and the bright colours, It reminds me of some of Basquiat's faces. I like the simple block like shapes used to represent the facial features. Abstract tribal faces like these are really inspiration to my personal work. I would like to see how I can start to use imagery like this in my professional practice and make it suitable for different concepts.

Decent Peoples

I really like the work of decent peoples, I like the smooth black outlines. She uses some really nice tribal line patterns and decoration. They are produced with spray paint for the backgrounds and fill colours, and then outlined with thick black paint markers. She uses a flat chisel tip marker which produces some nice calligraphy style lines. It inspires me to try some of my own faces in this media and on a larger scale. 

Warwick Johnson Cadwell

I saw this print and really liked the crisp characterful line quality, the way it was drawn intrigued me so i looked into the artist.

I really like his sketched they are really gestural and wavy. He uses nice firm bold lines and lets his hand style take over the drawing.

I love the outlines he uses to describe the body shape, they are fun and character fun. The artist does some of the illustrations for the tank girl comics. 

3 Posters that communicate me as an illustrator

I like how my posters work as a set. I enjoyed working with type and experimenting with how to arrange it. I like how the text surrounds the characters, I thought having some characters of mine would work to make posters that communicate me. I think I need to think about using type more with my illustrations in the future.

Personal:

Professional:

Ambitions:

The Ambitions poster is my favourite, I think it is the most has the most specific information on it. It has short sentences rather than single words. I guess it easier to think about what you want to do and not what you already are. I think the profession and personal might be to similar and hard to understand the difference. The personal poster has words that show how I work and draw, and the professional shows how I communicate ideas and my relationship with working. 

End of Modular Self Evaluation - Visual Language

1.  Which practical skills and methodologies have you developed within this module and how effectively do you think you are employing them within your own practice?

I have developed skills in observational drawing, and looking at how different line types can be used to explain the subject. I have learnt lots of different visual qualities that can be achieved by using bold gestural lines. Also how using reference imagery in an un-direct way where I can apply my imagination to it, and get ideas for characters and other images. A method I developed was drawing the same subject lots of times and letting it evolve into something new, this gave exciting and unpredictable results. The method of created vector images from simple line sketches is a key thing I learnt in the shape section, and also using a Wacom tablet. I learnt the difference between Photoshop and illustrator and they have totally different purposes, Photoshop is best for editing existing imagery, whilst illustrator is good for creating vector designs.

2. Which principles/ theories of image making have you found most valuable during this module and how effectively do you think you are employing these within your own practice?

It has been valuable for me to start think about the rules and methods of good composition. Although I was un-happy with most of my visual outcomes, the process of trying to achieve a good composition has made me realize new techniques for displaying images within my frame. Roughing is a process that I find more and more valuable as the course moves on, doing quick roughs with no craft involved, purely to look at different arrangements that my designs can have. Looking at how illustration can be applied to 3D and camera based work has been exciting, and made me realize how illustration doesn’t have to be flat line based work – communicating our ideas can be done in all kinds of ways, even including ourselves in the work. Looking at how Photoshop can improve designs, and also take away quality from handcrafted designs has been really important. It is something that will be vital for making professional work – as I am very interested in the combination of hand and digital work. Working with collage and found imagery has been useful to consider, re arranging and adding craft to found images could be a really good way to communicate an idea.

3. What strengths can you identify within your Visual Language submission you capitalise on these?

I think my strengths lay within the line-based drawing. I really engaged with this and found it most enjoyable. I liked experimenting with what can be achieved with fast and slow line types, gestural or controlled line, complex overlapping line and clean clinical lines. I enjoyed seeing how these gave a different effect to the image. I learnt a lot from this and would like to apply process like this to other medias and methods to learn what can be achieved. I learnt a lot from the shape task. I was surprised at how well my character designs translated into shape. It has made me realize how effective shape can be with no outlines and also how it can improve designs. Combining shape with my line quality styles is something I keep considering and am yet to experiment with. I would say I have strengths in experimentation, and trying out different ways of achieving the outcome. Teaching myself the different methods and process is done through experimentation – finding out what will work and what doesn’t.

4. What areas for development can you identify within your Visual Language submission and how will you address these in the future?

Development is definitely needed within composition, and drawing things within a landscape. I often draw things that are floating and are not grounded in a natural environment. Drawing more landscapes and objects from observation would be a good way to become more confident in the area. Working within a frame is not something I fully engaged with, I found it difficult keeping inside the frame – my drawings often evolve in an un-controlled way. I need to improve on accurate drawings that are carefully placed within frames for specific reasons (scale, depth, line of sight etc.). Application of colour is something I need to improve, I had a lot of un clean and un professional looking coloured pieces. I need to experiment with more coloured medias and keep using them until I’m comfortable with them.

5. In what way has this module informed how you deconstruct and analyse artwork (whether your own or that of contemporary practitioners)? It has made me think about the process more, and also what media and tools where used to create it. It has made me look much closer at the line qualities of artwork and the hand movements that would be needed to produce the line. Same with mark making, I’ve found myself wondering how marks and pattern have been made – what drawing tool or gesture? It has made me look out for digital enhancing, and weather colour has been applied digitally or by hand. It has made me question the composition of artwork and ask myself why things have been placed where they have, and if this is the most effective way to display it.