As suggested by my tutor, I revisited the plan I had designed originally.
This is the original plan:
I have followed the plan as anticipated apart from two things:
- Project 2: Deconstructing the process involved in creating illustrations has taken longer than anticipated. However I have also learned a lot. I find that the research I carried out as part of this section is helping me all the time. I create backgrounds with confidence, understand the interaction of colours better, ask myself what I want to convey when I design a character and am more aware of my options when I choose a technique to render an illustration.
- After doing some research, I had decided on the following steps for project 3:
Illustrate Greenwich from different perspectives:
Illustrate a sense of scale in Greenwich through a series of digital illustrations in a painted style.
Illustrate time and history in Greenwich with a series of digital illustrations that would include some mark making.
Illustrate time of year and day in Greenwich through a series of vector illustrations.
Potentially illustrating the concept of time in general through a series of minimalist illustrations.
I was aware that I might make some changes to this part of the plan if I felt that it was necessary.
I have decided to follow my tutor’s advice and want to spend more time exploring the potential of a scene and a composition rather than rushing through illustrations. It means that I might create fewer images.
Since my last submission, I have not made much progress with my everyday sketching project. I was concentrating a lot on the illustration I created for the other project and had not realised that I had skipped quite a few days. I will try to keep maintaining my practice in this area in the future as I can see how my digital illustrations have benefitted from regular sketching. On a positive note, I have experimented more with watercolour and enjoyed the process:
I have carried on with the creation of the first lllustration for my other project. It has taken much longer than expected as the illustration contains a lot of details and I have worked slightly differently. This has involved some experimentation and the progress was slower. I now feel that I might have found a way of rendering an illustration that I really enjoy. I want to push it a bit further and add even more fluidity to the lines both with the initial sketch and when I render the illustration.
I have carried out a bit more research about illustrators for the literature review and dissertation proposal and have decided to focus on three illustrators who use different forms of stylisation and often illustrate for magazines and newspapers: Paul Cox, Ruby Fresson and Alex Green. It was quite challenging to narrow it down to three artists. I have written a rough draft of the literature review and dissertation proposal with bullet points as I wanted to put all the ideas together first. I was hoping to write a good draft of the disssertation but I ran out of time. In my comments, I have tried to remember that I was writing a literature review and not the dissertation itself but I had to correct myself a few times. I have not named the artists or used the Harvard referencing method at that stage as it was more important to have all the different points in the right place.
Catherine Roux Degree in Illustration 