Initials Brief - Studio Brief 1

Questionnaire

I based the questions on myself and my ideas are based around my family, and the things that I miss about them.

Thumbnailing ideas

Composition

Simple line drawings

The heartbreak of losing my granddad

His gardening

His cooking

He was a wise owl

   My niece

Progress crit - Peer feedback

Final Outcome

The Concept

When answering questions based on my life I found that most of my answers stemmed from my family. For example 'What would you save in a fire' I said that I would save my family and photos and nothing else would matter. It got me thinking about how I could best represent this in an illustration. I mapped out a few thumbnails of literal drawings then tried to incorporate emotion into them. For example, the death of my granddad has affected me quite a lot and I wanted to show heartbreak towards that so I thought of the things that I missed about him. I miss his cooking, and so I drew out someone cutting up hearts on a chopping board. I feel that some of my initial ideas are stronger than my final design.

My final piece is based on my niece and is quite playful to represent her bubbly personality. She is blowing bubbles of things that remind me of my family. The owl in a tie for my father, a wise businessman, the decorating brush for my grandad, painting nails for my sister etc. I used fine liner and water to replicate the watery texture of blowing bubbles. It smudged and bled on the page which turned out quite nice. I would have liked to have used colour in this piece I think it would work well and if I had more time I would think more about the composition of the bubbles and perhaps adding more to include more detail; as well as making the head larger.

Feedback

I received some really interesting feedback that has allowed me to think about other media I could have used, things that worked well and things that could have been improved on. It was also interesting to see that people found strengths in my rough sketches that I personally wouldn't have used myself. For example someone picked up on one of the rough sketches I had done of an owl and said the simplistic use of line was really nice and had that have been to a larger scale probably would have worked even better than the owl in my final piece.

Peer Feedback Sheets

'Beautifully drawn initial idea, cross hatching effect. Visually pleasing and getting each message across.'

'The poster seems to show personality traits of the person it's based on. Effective use of medium to create the black and white piece.'

'Perhaps needs a few more sketches for each subject, maybe in different compositions.'

'Really like the idea of incorporating different visuals within the bubbles - gives lots of room to play with the letter forms.'

'Good use of tone and line combined with the negative space.'

'Really nice sense of personality to the work.'

'Maybe play around with working on top of different papers and textures to give the images more depth.'

'I think some of your drawings would look really nice in indian ink or even an intaglio print' 



Self Evaluation

I feel within this brief I have let myself down. I was absent due to illness and felt that I have constantly been playing catch up and not shown my full potential. With such a short time scale left I know that I have not been thorough enough with my drawing process and thumbnails that could generate more ideas. This meant that I struggled to come up with ideas incorporating initals. My concept towards including imagery of my family I feel is strong; but I do not think that I have been clever enough in using initals well. I also know that I could have used more media to explore black and white. Overall I am not happy with my final outcome. I think the media I use worked well however, in the sense that it reflected blowing bubbles giving a watery, smudgey texture which my peers picked up on. I think that I could definitely experiment more with ink in future briefs for more soft and subtle drawings. When thumbnailing ideas I need to remember to pick up a variety of media rather than sticking to fine liners or biro for quickness and ease. For me this brief has been an eye opener into how I need to approach future briefs and to put more effort in. Looking around at the peers in my class and the amount of thumbnail drawings they did - quite frankly I was embarassed. I did not enjoy the brief given too which I think hindered my motivation but I need to learn to use things to my advantage and power through. I would like to see my final outcome in colour I think it would work better and reflect my nieces bubbly personality more.