Illustration Research Project 2

This second one week project:

Continue to critically evaluate your own practice by reviewing the practice of someone else. Do this by selecting TWO contrasting practitioners. One whose work you admire or are influenced by, and another whose work is less familiar and that you have possibly discovered during your secondary research. Analyse their process; for example, you may consider exploring their work by adopting their methodology. In this way you are supporting your secondary research through primary investigation. What wil you learn through this exploration? How will it influence and enhance your own practice without simply becoming a mimicry of style?
Collate your findings onto 3 x A3 landscape run-outs.

I approached this brief by immediately reaching for my all-time favourite childhood book ‘Babar The Elephant’ – Jean De Brunhoff.

I have a great deal of childhood memories and nostalgia linked to these stories (in particular ‘Babar The King’), when as a small child my mum would read me the original vintage book (printed in the 1930’s).  The writing was advanced and complex for a children’s story, the illustrations, imaginative and quirky yet rich in detail with drawings to scale and in perspective, illustrative delights to be withheld every few centimetres (the closer you look the more you see).

The colours used in the book have always fascinated me, Jean De Brunhoff appears to stick to a set colour scheme throughout the whole book, yet each page jumps out due to this colour scheme and clever co-ordination.

As a very personal viewpoint I generally prefer vintage children’s books and toys to contemporary as I feel the Illustration’s complexity gives them a great deal more character and contemporary toys which walk/talk and make noises possess far less charm than vintage toys and games, not to mention putting a block on the imagination of children who are less likely to devise games and situations for their little characters when their contemporary toys walk and talk.

I felt that comparing my vintage favourite to a contemporary children’s story book might help enlighten me on what is popular ‘now’ and why (maybe delving into another story and learning more about its context would alter my views, or not…)

Purely for the purpose of displaying illustrations from the story, I chose to use one full sheet, customised into a hand illustrated elephant template (also to personalise).

Babar the Elephant board 1

During the tutorial all student’s design boards were adorning the classroom walls, in amongst thirty-three peer’s work I felt my original boards became lost and looked un-uninviting in amongst the other beautiful design boards on display.

I also saw that classmates had designed their own characters based upon the style of the Illustrator(s) which they were studying. I didn’t want to miss this opportunity, so re-visited my research boards and created an Illustration with a similar layout and using the colour scheme from one of my favourite pages in ‘Babar The King’ (apart from my illustration and background colour/border the content is almost the same as my original).

I very much enjoyed creating my own characters in this style and using Jean De Brunhoff’s colour palette, I was aiming to create a detailed piece which is visibly hand drawn (Jean De Brunhoff’s were created before computers).

Maisy Mouse Board 1

In the same style as my initial board for Jean De Brunhoff’s ‘Babar the Elephant’, I used a mouse template to drop illustrations from Lucy Cousin’s ‘Maisy Mouse’ story books inside (not having a story book to scan, it was hard to find images which didn’t go pixcellated) – I’ll go back and amend some of the less sharp images before submission.

Maisy Mouse – board 2

As before the content of the board is the same apart from the background colour and my own illustration and annotations based on Lucy Cousin’s style.

I was convinced that I wouldn’t appreciate the illustrations in Lucy Cousin’s work as much as I love the ones in Jean De Brunhoff’s ‘Babar the King’, however after watching several video’s on Lucy Cousins and a  ‘Maisy Mouse’ episode I started to grow fond of the characters; I imagined that Maisy was illustrated digitally and was surprised to find out that she was in-fact painted using ink as an outline and watercolour paints.

The target market for the Maisy books are toddlers so this explained the simplicity of the characters, shapes and naivety of the images…

Although this might sound obvious, I was very intrigued by the story lines for Maisy; whereby she is supposed to be a toddler herself and therefore enjoys participating in activities which young children of the same age often do, she works almost as a role model, she’s independent and a good friend.

In this instance my personal view to contemporary children’s books having less charm than vintage has been changed (my personal opinion is now that both stories have an equal amount of charm)…..

This second one-week design board project has taught me a great deal, especially seeing the importance of presentation and ensuring one’s design research stands out and is aesthetically exciting to the viewer. Seeing all of the work up in the classroom made me aware of how easy mine initially was to miss, to even be read it needs to have visual impact and when writing to publishers or presenting ideas to clients in the future the first step is ensuring they are engaged with the product.

Secondly, I have spoken of my personal preferences throughout this blog post, but am aware that when designing for the market, I might well be Illustrating for people with entirely different tastes to me e.g. Designing for small children or elderly people I need to remove bias of personal taste and put the hours into researching to ensure it is  correct for my target market.

Thirdly, I was asked to create three pages and I have created four, I need to focus on being concise and finding a way of communicating the relevant information in smaller paragraphs/bullet-points so that they are not overlooked.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

MA Secondary Research Reflections

Currently studying for an MA in Illustration from Kingston University, I have decided to set up a new blog to share my secondary research and analyse my learning, making it easier for me to reflect upon my progress and improve on any weaker areas. As well as assisting me when writing analytical essays on my findings and learning.

Visual Research Boards Project one:

Build upon your initial secondary research by investigating the historical/cultural and contextual significance of illustration, and by asking how illustration differs from fine art for example.

Bring 4 x A3 landscape runouts that collate the findings of your investigation for presentation to your peers.

Page 1Page one focuses on Illustration and how it can be used in a spectrum of diverse contexts to appeal to its target market.

Looking through contemporary Fashion Illustration literature and 80’s books on Graphic Design I decided to discuss this point by looking at one of my all time favourite Illustrators/Textile Designer Celia Birtwell.

In the above images (1&2) the viewer sees a series of Fashion Illustration’s in Birtwell’s signature style, the illustrations have a function to the viewer to indicate the intended look of the garment’s, the cut, how they will fit on the body and the print as well as appealing to a lifestyle/look Birtwell’s audience/followers aspire to and might buy into….I feel they serve as an Artwork in themselves as well as a visually descriptive tool for a product/garment design.

In contrast to Celia Birtwell’s Fashion Illustrations, Image three illustrates medical support wear for sports injures by Bauer & Black. The image clearly illustrates the use of the product and its flexibility without serving as an artwork which has aesthetic intent.

Page 2

Page 2 was created to look at the history of Illustration and how it originated. I found this area incredibly stressful to research, firstly covering such a broad area in such a small amount of space and secondly it was very hard to  find trusted sources/essays explaining this history in any depth, so I just touched upon the origins of illustration as cave paintings.

It was fascinating to have the lack of Illustration history available explained to us by our lecturer. Art history is accessible and easy to source information on whereas illustration isn’t, why is this? Is there a hierarchy? If so why?

This made me aware of the abstractness of the questions and the importance of being confident in expressing my ideas and findings as well as arguing and challenging convention.

Page 3

Page three compares examples between fine Art and Illustration, how they differ. My initial ideas of the main difference between the two art forms was accessibility…Illustration targeting a specific target market and ensuring an idea/character/story is clearly visually communicated to that market and conceptual Fine Art often being accessible to a very niche market only.

Upon further reflection I found myself going in circles at the differences (any other art forms under the same creative umbrella e.g advertising, graphic design and surface pattern design) are communicating similar ideas to fine art and I believe the starting point for all areas would be from the same place; research….research of the select topic, context and research of the specific target market, whether being used to sell a product or create a piece solely for impact/shock/making a statement.

Could the main difference between an Illustrator and Artist be solely that an Illustrator is working to set a brief (often commercially) and has to ensure the artwork created is accessible to who-ever they are targeting.

Image 6 (featuring Superdrug wet wipes) I felt to be a perfect example of targeting a select audience through Graphic Design/Illustration. Without many words the image of a sticky ice-lolly and leaking jam donut on the front of the packaging instantly had a physical affect on me, making me want to wash my hands or indeed use wet wipes to cleanse my hands from a sticky feeling. When pointed out by my lecturer I also noticed the Phallic symbolism of the dripping ice-lolly and at closer inspection the vulval imagery of the donut with jam oozing out (which could also be evocative of menstruation) and the need of wet wipes.

Image 7

Image seven as an example of a conceptual/fine Art piece featuring Art duo Gilbert and George (video) drinking Gordon’s Gin and repeating the words over and over ‘I Like Gordon’s, Gordon’s makes me drunk!’ This piece wasn’t created as an advert to sell gin for Gordons.

I was excited by my findings from this first, one week project and feel as though my ideas are being pushed.

It was interesting to see how the other thirty students on my course interpreted the brief, such a diverse selection of images, writing and ideas. However from the beautiful, imaginative creations of my fellow classmates I felt my presentation was indeed lacking and needs more personalisation (this needs my attention).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

First blog post

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