This year I would really like to enter the Macmillan Prize. As its a competition for creating a children's book I think it would be the most useful to my practice and as its a students only competition this will be my last year to try. This is a competition that I have been excited to enter since I first heard about it 3 or 4 years ago and would like to put a lot of my focus on to hopefully produce a good book. I've put the brief below.
Illustration Friday:
For one of my live/competition briefs I'd like to do an Illustration Friday every week or every other week depending on how busy I am. Illustration Friday was one of my favourite parts of Responsive last year and this year I'd like to make it into a substantial brief that I can continue to be working on all year. As the year goes on I am most likely to get stressed about a great many things but IllFri was something I always enjoyed doing and has a quick turnover. so I'm hoping to keep a brief that'll keep the joy in creating while I get stressed. It also is good practice that I won't be able to sit on anything for more than a week.
D&AD/YCN:
I'd also like to do a D&AD or YCN as they have good briefs and good exposure. I'm hoping there will be another children's book one I can do but I can't see what there is yet. If there are no book illustration briefs I think I'll do the penguin brief but I'm not sure if that would be substantial enough. I'll need advice on this brief in particular.
Backgrounds:
I have spent too long ignoring the backgrounds in my work and focusing on individual characters, in level 6 I'd like to change this and do a brief dedicated to them. I'm proposing doing 3-5 illustrations for 3 certain types of background (city/town, forrest/nature, fantasy/sci-fi etc.). While this might sound a little vague I think this is one of the things that I really need to do to improve my work, particularly in preparation for creating another children's book as my last one had a clear difference in the skill, when it came to my characters compared to my backgrounds. I also think some scenes without characters would be good for my portfolio and would be applicable to a great range of practices.
Character/portraits:
This brief, like the last, is mostly for furthering my skills and creating lovely portfolio work. However it also is a direction that I stated moving towards in the summer when I created a few different pieces for friends and family and is something I am interested in investigating further. I find it incredibly interesting to take what you know about someone and to try and convey that while also re-imagining them into a character. I would like to create 10 - 20 illustration of people I know and interact with on a regular basis. If possible it would be best to have each illustration be tied to a story they've told me but I'd also be happy with getting their personality into the character. I've also been thinking about how the coffee shop I draw in a lot puts up artists work and if I could put my work up there then I would quite like to do a mini exhibition of this, preferably with the portraits being of those who work there but I'm not sure yet.
The sculptors daughter:
For my cop research I started reading and making sketches of the sculptors daughter (see cop blog) by Tove Jansson. It's a slightly altered story view of her childhood seen through the child's eyes and mindset. This book has the most beautiful imagery that I really wanted to illustrate and I think it could make a good brief and good practice to illustrate a more grown up book. I would like to create at least one illustration for each story within the book and a wrap around cover. I think it would be good for my portfolio to show that while children's book illustration is my focus I don't only illustrate picture books.
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