I’ve completed my first year (Level 4) of my illustration course. I passed all 6 of the modules with grades that I’m happy with. In semester 1 I did 3 modules; Digital Arts 1, Contexts and Cultures and Visual Messaging and Communication. These where followed up by 3 more modules in semester 2; Working in Professional Contexts, Documentary Illustration and Drawing Exploration. During the summer I worked on some areas that interested me from the modules.
I found the semester 1 module Digital Arts 1 particularly challenging and for that reason one of my favourites. Prior to this module I had almost no experience with digital art. I learnt the basics of Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign. I found InDesign the easiest to use, it’s more of a graphic design tool so I think I’ll use it least. Although I did use it in the semester 2 module Documentary Illustration to create my digital flip book. I struggled a lot with Illustrator and found it frustrating to use. I hope to become more confident with this tool in digital arts 2 next year. I think Photoshop is the most important of the tools for me to use. It’s a very complicated tool with huge possibility but I’ve become familiar with the basics and have been expanding my knowledge. I created some pieces that I’m proud of using Photoshop. On top of using the Adobe Softwares I’ve been using Procreate and have spent lots of time advancing my skills. I still think I prefer traditional drawing styles but now appreciate the potential of digital tools. In particular I always begin my creative process on paper with initial sketches then I’ll take its into a digital software.
Contexts and cultures was more of a theoretical module that required less creative work. I found the modules interesting as I was able to learn about different topics such as subcultures and the hyper real but it wasn’t one of my favourites as it didn’t have much creative, hands on work. The work on subcultures was definitely my favourite, I liked designing the outfit for my subculture and chose to expand on this topic to make it the subject of my essay. Writing essays is something I’m quite confident with, having just finished my A levels. I was able to learn lots about the Punks and can use this as inspiration in my future work. Also I really liked the trip we went on to Shoreditch to look and the thriving street art culture.
Visual Messaging and Communication is the module that I felt best matched my own skill set from semester 1. It was a much more hands on creative module which had 3 main sections. The portrait of objects, sell your house and buy gold and music packaging. The portrait of objects was enjoyable but the work largely remained within my comfort zone so didn’t really push me too much. However, the work on sell your house was more challenging. I like the 3D model we made and really enjoyed playing with lighting and angles to convey mood. I used these ideas in the second part of that brief where I made hand drawn sketches to illustrate the text. I found experimenting with hands on approaches to be very fun and produce outcomes that I really like. For the third section, I used a combination of hand drawn and digital work to produce the album packaging. It was good to apply some of my knowledge from Digital Arts into this brief. This project had the most creative freedom with made me more motivated to produce something good as it was for a topic that I’m passionate about.
Working in Professional Contexts was a theoretical module with minimal creative work. It was very informative and I learnt a lot about the creative industry and how it operates. The first part of the module was a group project where we had to design a new merchandise campaign for the brand Penguin. We worked very successfully as a group and I found the whole experience very positive. It’s made me look forward to future group work as I could see the creative benefits of it in this project. The second part of the module was to plan how we’d tackle a client led brief. I chose the Great Hall project as I was interested in making the model figures. I got to learn how to use 3d scanning technology which was really fun and helped open up my skills in different fields. Using the 3d scanners was my favourite part of the module as it was so different to anything I’d done before. I then continued the work for this project during the summer. I used the plan I made during the semester to guide me. I learnt more about editing the scans, preparing them for printing and how to use the 3d printer. I hope to continue using working on this project and produce some nice figures.
Documentary Illustration is a module that really grew on me as it progressed. Initially it was all about going out and creating observational drawings. I find drawing in public challenging and stressful but I became more confident by the end although it’s still not something I really enjoy. I’m glad this module pushed me to try something new. One session I particularly enjoyed was the one around comic books. We got to tell a story through the style of a comic book. This is an area of illustration that really interest me and that I’d like to pursue further. So I’m happy that I got an introduction to this through the module. The second half of the module was possibly my favourite project of the year. We got more creative freedom as we could choose our own topic to study. I chose to base mine around a couple of locations in London. I then went to those locations and created illustrations from what I saw. I named the project Natures Beautiful Freedom and created a digital flip book with my illustrations. I used this project to expand my technical drawing skills with watercolour and pen. Overall I’m really happy with the end result of this project.
Drawing exploration was all about hands on technical drawing so suited my skill set. It really helped me to expand on my existing skills. There was 2 parts to the module, figure drawing and drawing exploration. I had a decent understanding of figure drawing already but this module allowed me to expand my knowledge and experiment with lots of different materials and techniques. I particularly enjoyed working with charcoal and ink. I am now much more confident with drawing figure and have continued to practice during the summer with more complex poses and angles as it’s a fundamental skill for illustrators. I was initially hesitant about the experimental drawing part as it’s really not my usual style of drawing. I ended up liking it a lot more than I initially thought. It really made me think about mark making and different ways of using a medium. I picked up some experimental techniques that I’ll use again in future work.
Samuel Green Illustration 