Evaluation

1.  What skills have you developed through this brief and how effectively do you think you have applied them?

In this brief I actually drew a portrait of a person that wasn’t a character and looked like them. This is something that I would normally steer away from as I have in my head that I can’t draw real objects and people. In this brief I found this to be false even it was overly referenced. I’d like to try this more in the future but to try and find a balance between it just looking like the photo and it looking nothing like them. I also worked more with borders in this as I’ll often finish the drawing and lose interest. With the border there it gave me a space to work in and gave the work a more finished feel. This was especially true when I drew the border as a tv this meant that I’d taken it further and actually developed it past where I would often stop. 

2. What approaches to/methods of image making have you developed and how have they informed your concept development process?

I had to work more digitally in the first two briefs, which I don’t think I did well with me but my failings with it have taught me to consider how I should draw with the knowledge of what is going to be done digitally in mind. My failings have also taught me that I should stop avoiding the digital side just because I don’t like it and actually learn how to use them to my advantage. For the last brief I worked in coloured ink which I’ve highly enjoyed as it had everything that I normally love about drawing with a dip pen while standing out much more.

3. What strengths can you identify in your work and how have/will you capitalise on these?

I've realised that having a border, particularly an interesting one can make my especially simple drawings look much better and more finished. I would like to try this again with other scenarios. I also have enjoyed working in dip pen again as it mostly forces me to just draw and accept the little ink blots and mistakes instead of stressing about them or starting again. I would like to draw more often with a dip pen but digitally colour and edit them.

4. What weaknesses can you identify in your work and how will you address these in the future?

My main weakness has been my time management as I've run out of time a lot on this module and It has got to the point where I can’t let it happen again. I'm going to go back to doing daily to do lists and start making sure I work to a certain time every day. My other weakness is how hard I can find it to get motivated when I become disinterested in the brief, this happened in all three as none of them were fields I would normally work in. To address it I normally try to find something to like about it, this worked really well with the last one when I did the tv’s but with studio brief 1 it affected my group because I wasn't as helpful as I could have been and in studio brief 2 it meant that I spent so much time happily drawing the characters that I ignored the digital side even though I knew I had no idea of how to work it.

5. Identify five things that you will do differently next time and what do you expect to gain from doing these?

.Work until at least 5 everyday – this should ensure that I get a steady amount of work done at a steady pace rather than having to do the bulk of it in a stressful panic at the end of the project.

.Do daily to do lists – this should constantly remind myself of what I need to be doing while still having the satisfying feeling of accomplishment as I’m able to cross out what I’ve done. It should also allow them to be in a constant state of change so that If my ideas change it’ll only affect the days plan rather than changing months timetable.

.Not allow my disinterest to stop me from working – I expect this to mean that I’d get more work done. Even if I’m doing it at a painfully slow rate. It would also ensure that if I’m in a group my behaviour wouldn’t affect the group too much.

.Talk to either Matt or Fred when I have no idea what I’m doing or when I’m behind out of my own stupidity – this would hopefully help me to get motivated again and would show the tutors that I’m try to work through it.

.Blog every week (maybe every three days) – as well as being unmotivated to work I have been avoiding writing and it has meant that I’ve had to blog most of this module in the space of two or three days. I’ve found this horribly unpleasant and stressful. I can’t allow this to happen again.

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

Finals

These are my finals as I've already spoken about what works in the last post I'll say what I think doesn't or what I'd do differently. The main thing I'd do would have been to work out the measurement for the finals and drawn it within a are in the same format as I think that the extra space around the other postcards is much stronger than the slightly stretched looking finals. There is also unnecessary space around the stamps as it's wider than I thought.  I would have also liked to have spent more time researching and practising how to write these as they are uneven and don't look as good as they could. I am happy that I got to hand write something though and the joined slightly quick lettering suits the feel of the poem. The other thing I would have done is have more block colour, particularly in the postcards, as the hair and beard on Gil really works. I would also not try to hurry up my guillotining when someone's behind me as I cut through one of my final pieces and had to submit it on normal paper and I'd check that my printer has enough ink as some of the colour quality was lost. 

Development

After drawing Gil scott heron and deciding to return to how I'd drawn the mouth and the nubs I drew out a plan for the finals. I chose to do four lines from the poem with a simple one for the stamp and an expended one for the postcard.

 I decided that I'd do each line in a different colour, as I wanted to do more colour while keeping it simple. I played around with doing fill colour for the postcards but I think that if I do that it'd have to be done digitally to create a smoother look. I really like the look of having a border around them as it makes the simple drawings look a little more finished. I also played with having the tv as the border as the poem talks about adverts and what will not be televised but the tv I drew didn't look anywhere near as good as the border. 

For a while I was intending on doing them as a screen print so I drew out the stamps to scale down and print but I decided that I didn't have the time to go through the whole process. On the positive side however it got my stamps to evolve and get to place where I am nearly happy with.

In these I made some changes as I talked to Orlaith about the nubs (the head one) and she belived it looked more like a mountain than a head. It's actually more based on an easter island head so its a fair point and its mixed with the rocker I drew for vis lang but as it's going on a stamp it has to be clear so I changed it to a side view which allowed me to keep the square look I liked. I also changed the hairy women as I think its compositionally stronger with another woman just out of shot. it also heightens the point of it being about their hairy arms.

 I had an epiphany about how to do the poster. As all I knew was that I wanted to have his face on it I knew it needed something more so I though of doing the technical difficulties screen with the playing children replaced with Gil and the words replaced with the revolution will not be televised, as the revolution would not be televised.  When I was going to screen print I had to change this idea to being static instead of the colours as that many colours on a screen print would have been difficult and time consuming. I kept the static even after deciding not to screen print as I liked the way they were all one colour. I also thought that as it's the stand by screen I should border the poster with a tv, particularly as there would be the room for one. So I looked up some tv's, I looked at ones from the '70's as that's when the poem was and because I find '70's tv's much more recognisable and visually appealing. After drawing out a few I talked to matt about the favourites and I tested drawing the stamps and the postcards within soe of the tv's as I really liked all of them. I also thought they would add to the quality of the work. As I had a decent selection of different tv's I was able to choose a variety of complex to simple ones to suit the size of each piece. 

These are the final ones I did for the stamps I chose this tv to be the border as it was simple enough to work small and its format would fill the space nicely. The other thing I changed was to add some ground shading to the beer which I think makes it a stronger drawing.

These are my final postcard drawings and I will be putting the text above and below, which I didn't do on the stamps as it would be illegible and to add an extra bit of difference between the stamps and the postcards. I chose my favourite tv for these as I thought that the format suited having the text and I love the slight angle. I also think that the shading on the side and on the ground give it a bit more depth.

The final drawing for my poster, I chose to get rid of the static too as I thought it over complicated the image and made it too busy. I chose this tv as it was my second favourite and I thought the level of detail would look great when blown up to A2.

I wrote all the text out in dip pen to be joined with the drawings.

sketches

I actually drew this right at the start when I had no idea of what I was going to do but I really like it. Though I think it may be overly referenced as it looks a little too accurate, the eyes I drew do work well against that however and I'm really happy with the hair and beard in particular. I like to use fine liners to fill a space like that again. I wasn't sure where I'd take this though and after studio brief two I wanted to work more with colour.

With this in mind I tried to make him more of a character and bought some coloured inks as I'd like to work in dip pen. I Thought it worked quite well in its first picture, with just his face drawn. It had the bare necessities of what is recognisable to me, his prominent cheekbones and his nose (though I am unhappy with that nose and should draw a different one). I then drew in the surrounding features and tried to colour areas but colouring shall require more practice as it came out too rough. I don't think he looks enough like Gil Scott Heron to be worth doing so I returned to drawing the nubs and the mouth. 

This is just a page of mouths without sex appeal.

This is where I drew the beer out in a much better design, it works best as the bottle that the duff inspired can. I also found that rather than block colour, which made it a little rough and busy, the shading lines looked much better.

I drew the first one out again as I preferred it but I did it in colour with a dip pen and played around a little with it. As I liked it at every stage I took regular photos to make sure I didn't ruin it. I also took them because I really like the first one it reminded me of illustrations like Norma Bar's and of Mr Bingos  hair project. I think this illustration of Gil Scott Heron works rather well and would like to use it for my finals.

This is where I tried to combine the character version and the referenced one ... it didn't work. 

Interesting Lines

For each line I started to do some roughs for what I cold do for each, in the hope that something would jump out at me. The main thing that became clear was that I needed to have the line with each illustration for it to make any sense. I wasn't really happy with most of them, they seemed too complicated. I really liked the mouth and the nubs as they were much simpler and stood out better. I decided to move more into working like that.

Research

This is my research for Gil Scott Heron, There was some pretty interesting facts and the BBC documentary showed the impact he had on people but it became clear that he was only really known for his spoken word poem/early rap The Revolution will not be televised. 

After choosing to focus on The Revolution will not be televised I wrote it down to properly process and document it.

After going through it once I went through in each stanza looking for the lines that stood out to me as interesting (blue) and all the references, with what they mean (red). 

When I was finished I wrote all the interesting lines to one side for me to go back to.