SB3 - Creative Strategy INITIAL THOUGHTS & CRIT DISCUSSIONS

TASK

Produce an 8 minute presentation or film reflecting on your year and how you currently see yourself as a creative practitioner. Focussing on successes, challenges and intent for level 5.

• what have you learnt about?
• what mistakes have you made?
• what are your strengths?
• what are your weaknesses?

I've started to formulate some ideas that I want to discuss, considering struggles, successes, and intentions.

• Foundation/ What went before?
• Challenges of university life
• Processes and results/ devised methods
• Tone of voice/ what do I want to say?
• My values
• How does practice colour my life?
• Expectations/ What wasn't I expecting?
• Transformative moments
• New skills
• Then Vs. Now

REVIEW OF YEAR

Following on from my foundation work, I came to the course with the aspiration to develop a wider practice that was responsive to a multitude of issues and contexts. My aspirations were lying primarily within children's book illustration and while I think this still stands, I have been opened up to a wider context in which my practice could operate. Encouraging me to work  outside of my comfort zone, some briefs have posed difficulties for me in my developing practice. Working with vectors created a technical challenge in which I had to master digital image making and an understanding of simplification. This is something which has started to come through in more recent briefs, enabling me to characterise basic shapes with more textural details through layering, achieving the crafted aesthetic I have always been concerned with. Simplification has also been channelled in the omission of information in my observational work, developing my understanding of the difference between drawing and image making. 

As a student I feel I have been challenged by self-belief, feeling doubtful at times in my ability to respond to certain tasks. I think this is something that has arisen from the studio culture as I have felt a little intimidated by the studios, feeling safer working at my desk and home. This is just an issue of confidence which I need to build on in level 5 in order to maximise my work efficiency. A success of my studentship has been my commitment to development, exploring a variety of approaches and subjects in order to immerse my practice fully in the discipline. COP has been a really important element of the past year for me as it has enabled me to maintain my interest in critical writing. I feel that I have definitely developed my ability to respond critically to art and illustration and understand more conceptual and critical elements of even the most juvenile illustration work. 

ETHOS AND PRINCIPLES

I have developed new ways of seeing, especially through the visual narratives and visual language modules. Visual narratives established a barrier for me as I felt stuck with the subject matter of folklore, however I feel that my developing approach to research has enabled me to find my own outlet within each brief in which I can create work that excites me. Being able to merge the issue of folklore with British cultures served as a transformative moment for me as it demonstrated the flexibility of the illustration discipline to essentially answer any issue. 

I think the course so far has definitely driven my concerns for the world. I've have become more informed about the place of illustration in the world and how it serves as a tool or device for problem solving. Across the modules and in my wider reading, I have become concerned with the importance of books and reading and from this I want to drive my practice. I feel that illustration is a persuasive tool and as such, I should be able to celebrate the values of books through visual media. Regularly concerning my work with a mischievous and playful tone of voice, I feel that I have developed a value of story telling and narrative, particularly through character design. In more recent tasks, I have been led to identify connections between my external interests and central practice. Identifying visual media as a way to uphold heritage and tradition has been a recent transformative moment, and something which will enable me to justify subject matters that interest me.

MANIFESTO/ RULES/ LEVEL 5

Working within more open briefs, I think level 5 will be an opportunity to respond to the values I have identified throughout level 4, focusing on illustration as my device for celebration and maintenance of cultures and traditions. With the tasks across level 4 being concerned with specific subject matters, I have been working with issues outside of my chosen areas. I am interested to maintain these challenges but also work towards a more personal context with character and narrative as a focus relevant to my intentions. 

A concern for authenticity has developed in my preliminary practice through crafted approaches to image making. I am keen to further this through traditional media, particularly screen print in order to ground my work within a physical context relevant to my theoretical concerns. I would really like to develop a connection with the community of illustrators, primarily through markets and print fairs in order to develop commercial awareness but also the sense of community and knowledge shared through these events. In terms of studentship, I think it is important that I maintain my open-minded approach to briefs and keep exploring media. There are many processes I am unfamiliar with so I think as I begin to work with more personalised intentions, greater media play could benefit my development. 

In the group crit, we discussed the issue of creative practice and what it is to be creative. I define creativity as responding to a personal driving force, creating novelties and inventing solutions in response to your own realisations. We also discussed tone of voice and how our visual tone of voice is a manifestation of us. What are the other parts of us that make up our ethos? I feel that my ethos is most certainly driven by my playful and childish nature. I feel that we are encouraged to develop realistic and sophisticated approaches to art so quickly at school that we are driven away from the playfulness of child art and while my work is concerned with craft and multi-layered images, I am very much concerned with a subversion of this education. Rejecting photo-realistic values of drawing for playful, fun images that tell stories. I know need to focus on how I can verbally and visually communicate my emerging practice through simplification of these ideas and structuring a visual reflection of the year.