Samantha Landells

During my Christmas holidays I decided to experiment with creating some quick food based characters using my digital skills. I decided to create these fun little characters as a break from my environmental painting. I would like to continue working on this whenever I have a spare moment to hopefully create a full A3 print. Strengths: I really like the style of the characters with the rounder eyes as I feel it causes the facial expression to be a lot more inviting and friendly. Weaknesses: I dont feel the designs of my characters are as refined as they could be, perhaps I could do some research in order to explore the best way of effectively reaching my goals of creating cute characters.  Opportunities: I would love to develop these characters as they could be used for a variety of products and prints, for instance they could be made initially as part of a flash sheet, however each design can also be used as an independent asset all by itself. Targets: Work on the style ...

Today during our digital workshop we were instructed to digitally construct one of the three environments we had decided upon for our projects narrative triptych sequence. I decided to create my third environment setting which would be the inner cave, which I was aiming to portray as the hidden paradise. I decided to create my third environment as I felt it was the one I had spent the least amount of time focusing on up until this point and I was struggling to visualise how I wanted my scene to end up. I found that by creating my inner cave environment using my digital skills was extremely useful as it is a medium I am much more comfortable with compared to my traditional skill set. However, I am still aiming for my final version of this illustration to be completed using completely traditional mediums by painting them, as I feel that throughout this project I have really developed my skills using this method and would really like to continue to progress it further. I used the method...

I was unsure whether or not to include this within my blog as I am acutely aware that the majority of artwork within the illustration is not my own. However, I felt it was a nice inclusion of a quick side project I created as a Christmas gift for a member of my family. I photo-bashed the majority of elements making alterations where necessary to form a Rick and Morty, Final Space themed poster as they are extremely interested in these two shows. Considering the family member I created this for does not have a knowledge or understanding of illustrative techniques I decided to use photo-bashing as my main technique to ensure I could include statement pieces from the two shows. This was also meant to only be an extremely quick project as I needed to be able to get it printed before the break up for Christmas. If I were to repeat this process in the future I would like to create my own assets and elements to create a completely unique poster from scratch. However, it was nice to see th...

Today we focused on creating two detailed sketches focusing on portraiture, we were asked to use dry media for one and wet media for the other. I really enjoyed this session and feel as though my skills are developing regardless of my lack of traditional skill. I can clearly see a set style my work tends to take and I am happy to explore and develop this further over the course of these sessions.

Today we focused on using a variety of media on different coloured papers, I found I did not enjoy this session as much as the previous ones as I felt slightly stressed during the class due to the constricting time limits put on each task. Regardless I am happy with the life drawings I have created as I feel they have certainly improved from my first class, despite still not being great. I have also been able to focus on the styles created during the use of different mediums which will help me to identify which mediums I feel work best for me, which I can then use during my final drawing.

During today's session we completed two digital workshops, the first was to create a more simplified environment of branches close up. Whereas the second was to create a more detailed forest landscape following the guidelines of multiple light sources and much more refinement. My initial approaches to both of these workshops did not work as I had intended, however once I restarted each technique I found I was able to create some very interesting illustrations. I do not think I would like to reuse the style used in the first workshop where we had to create the simplified tree branches, as I just couldn't get the colour schemes to work cohesively. However, if I were to repeat this process I feel there are a lot of elements I could improve upon which may alter my feelings towards the overall process. For instance I would like to work on my colour scheme as I feel I really struggled with this along with my scaling. As I originally found I had tried to overcrowd the area and jus...

This session was much more relaxed, due to the people I was surrounded by and the calming music that was being played in the room. It really helped being given tasks which were aimed towards creating a humorous result rather than something which was meant to be more realistic. I found that by taking a less serious approach my drawings seemed to greatly improve. I also really enjoyed using the variety of non-conventional mediums such as oil pastels and transfer paper as I feel these mediums helped me focus more on the form, yet I did not have to be 100% accurate as for instance the oil pastels are quite broad whereas you cannot see what you have drawn at all underneath the transfer paper until you remove it. I really enjoyed this session until it came to drawing in very short time periods like 1 second, where I noticed my anxiety sky rocketed again and I became closed off due to the serious tone the class took on again.

During my narrative and sequential sequences module I have been shown how to create a digital painting of an environment from scratch using an airbrushed style. The environment I decided to create was the entrance to a cave as I felt this would provide me with a few different areas to work on which would have different textures and require slightly different methods. I really enjoyed the process of creating this illustration and found the technique very interesting and appealing. I still find it difficult to register that by using such simple techniques well I can create an established environment, this is certainly a process which I will continue to use in the future as it was so time efficient yet provided in my opinion a very appealing result. I really liked my inclusion of noise at such a high level as I found it caused the design to take on a slightly more childish appearance to something that may be seen in a children's book. However, it was quite difficult to print the d...

I have been tasked with creating a flyer advertisement and business cards for Churchill Contract Services Ltd which provides a variety of cleaning services. It was important to ensure the flyer remained professional whilst still being visually attractive and interesting to the audience to ensure they would spend enough time digesting the information within the flyer rather than simply discarding it. I did this by following the requirements of my client whilst adding some flare to the overall design. For the business cards, I wanted to ensure they were direct yet maintained the colour schemes of the company in order to create a much more identifiable card. I have had to create a blank version to include in my blog as I am unable to use one of the final business cards as it had sensitive information on it. Strengths: I made sure to use the companies branding for the accenting features of both the designs to maintain brand recognition and cobsistency. I made sure to follow...

During this module I was tasked to create a risograph print alongside a dinner guest setting illustration. Originally I started this task late as I had not yet enrolled onto the course however I managed to catch up by using methods and techniques I was moderately comfortable with. Although I had not used my digital art skills for quite some time I found I instinctively travelled towards this medium for the creation of my risograph as I was worried about having a piece ready for print in time. Due to this I was aware that I needed to try and focus more on the use of traditional techniques during the creation of my dinner guests module as I had not showcased this set of skills enough during my risograph. Following this observation I made sure to create all of my assets using traditional methods and mediums for my dinner guest setting before editing and refining them on the computer. Overall I enjoyed these two projects however, I found I really struggled with the perspective drawin...

I found this session to be extremely stressful and further reiterated my concerns about struggling with traditional techniques and processes. I found it very difficult to remain calm under pressure and can only hope that I show some improvement over time.

After being provided with the research task for this module I decided to complete some independent paint experiments as I am considering steering completely away from the use of digital methods, in order to enable me to develop my traditional skill set. I have studied a variety of styles and artists and then used the techniques I have managed to identify from them in order to replicate their work, to help me better understand their individual processes and how this can affect the overall style of an illustration. I then took my two most preferred styles and aimed to use them to replicate one of the primary images I had sourced. I feel these experiments have went very well as a starting point for my exploration into different mediums, and I have managed to learn some valuable brush skills which will be extremely helpful during the creation of my final illustration. I do however feel that I still have many areas to explore as I was not completely happy with the way some of the finer ...

Hello, and welcome to my blog. I completed my BTEC in Animation, Illustration and Visual FX and found that following this I wanted to go into a career within the creative industry primarily focusing on the creation and understanding of Illustrations. Originally when I came to attend my Ba Hons in Animation and Illustration I was unable to complete the course, however I feel my time away gave me the time I needed to truly define what I wanted to get out of my degree and which course would be best suited to this. This is why I have come back to study my degree in Ba Hons Illustration as I found that during my time away I was focusing much more highly on the creation of illustrations and graphics. In the future I would love to create my own children's books as I am a keen reader myself and am forever in love with how children's illustration books can be used to teach young people about the necessary values and morals they will need in later life. However, I do not want to ...