Personal and Professional Development: Evaluation

This blog was created to document and demonstrate my development and growth over the course of my years studying Ba Illustration. Over the course of the two years a lot has happened including the Covid-19 pandemic where it seemed the whole world was turned upside down. However, despite these external factors my growth and development as an artist has clearly shone through.

I have really enjoyed the use of this blog during my time on my course, at the beginning of my projects I was excited to begin working on my blog alongside, as during my first year of study I found this really helpful for idea generation and identification of my strengths and weaknesses at the time. Due to this I was hoping to continue this throughout my second year. Unfortunately back in December I fractured my dominant hand which caused a lot of problems all round for the completion of my projects as I was unable to use my hand until late February. I was forced to take a step back from my blog and focus on my more urgent deadlines which caused me to fall behind with my blog posts but I have worked hard in order to complete them and remain up to date with this task to the standard I have been aiming to maintain throughout my 2 years of study. 

I have found my blog especially useful to incorporate personal projects which I have been completing throughout the year, alongside my modules as they have not always been directly relevant to the current tasks so I am pleased I had the opportunity to discuss their designs and success. This helped me stay motivated with projects to ensure they were of a standard which could be included within my blog as I aim to ensure all of my personal projects have been shown at their final stages of development.

I feel I could have managed my time better for this project as due to my hand I ended up running behind schedule which made it difficult towards the completion of my second year. However I am extremely pleased with the work I have been able to complete and evaluate despite everything. I feel I made the right decision to complete the more imminent tasks as it ensured I didn’t fall behind on the modules which I had a lot less time to work on. I tried to continue working on my blog alongside this and made alterations to my posts where necessary by merging topics of discussion to ensure I could cover as much as possible.

By completing this blog I have needed to really focus on the way I communicate and deliver my findings, which I feel has then supported the annotations within my sketchbooks and the development of my contextual studies module research, as I have tried to be a lot more critical of my work, to help push me towards an even higher quality.

Within this blog I have incorporated a variety of tasks and illustrations, from the development of my illustrations to agency reviews, academic reviews and independent research. This was to ensure I continued my independent studies to support broadening my knowledge and understanding on a variety of discussion styles and writing styles, which will help me in the future when needing to contact clients.

I found I really enjoyed this process and was even inspired to possibly work on a poetry themed book, both designed and written by myself over the summer so I could continue working not only on my skills of communication through text but also on my ability to use simple spot illustrations to portray a narrative. I feel this would be an amazing project to work on and really interesting as it aligns with my desired specialism of wanting to enter the industry for publishing.

I would also be heavily interested in completing the creation of my latest children’s illustrated story ‘Gobby the Guardian’ over the summer as I am looking to hopefully work on my skills within children’s illustration during my time in Level 6, so I feel this would be good preparation for the continuation of my studies.

I would love to continue with the development of my blog throughout the summer to document this process as well so I have a reference in the future of the targets I have strived for and achieved. I feel this would be helpful as it could be provided to clients and interviews in future to show my motivation to complete the targets I set for myself. Not only this but I feel forcing myself to keep updated with my blog over the summer will help me remain motivated as I will set myself a schedule to aim to achieve my posts by, so I will need to have progressed in order to complete these on time.

I have chosen to compare my development over the course of the two years by showing the first completed illustration from my first year against the final illustration for my last project of my second year. I feel this will help me clearly identify the areas I have grown in as well as any areas I still need to continue to develop.

The first illustration I ever completed was a coloured version of the Risograph design I created. For this project I was tasked with creating an illustration which I felt represented me at the time. Starting 6 weeks late on the course I’m still pleased I was able to complete a design ready for hand in. However given my knowledge of illustration now there are a multitude of factors I would re-work within this design. For instance the variation between line strokes causes this design to appear thrown together. Perhaps if I had re-drawn all of the elements in a particular style using a medium such as brush pen before jumping to the digital rendition I could improve this further.

I do still like the overall concept I had for this design and personally would be heavily interested in trying to re-work the design using my current skillset so I could evaluate my progression even further, this could be a challenge for me in the future! Another element I would work on further would be the colour palette for this design as I feel there are a lot of contrasting elements which I could merge to become more complimentary if I were to redo this design.

Whereas in comparison to my current module where I have managed to complete a panel of 8 completed illustrations with consistent style and structure throughout I think it is clear to identify how my understanding of different styles and mediums has grown. Both designs hold different aesthetics, my first illustration based around my own personal interests and likes whereas my recent illustration focuses on being able to successfully illustrate towards a different target audience range. I am so happy looking back over my work to see just how much I have grown as an individual so far and I can’t wait to continue this adventure!

Overall I am very proud of the amount of progress I have managed to achieve during such a short time period, and having my blog has allowed me to delve into the development of these techniques a lot further. It would be fun to consider starting a personal blog for upcoming work in the future to see whether I could use this social media platform to engage with a new audience and boost popularity and recognisability within the art industry. The targets I am going to set myself over the summer to help continue this growth and development are:

1.     Complete my children’s illustrated story of ‘Gobby the Guardian’

2.     Attend 2 online courses surrounding the development of basic traditional art skills and the development of branding

3.     Begin the process of developing short poems with supporting spot illustrations in a sketchbook or journal to influence the development of my own illustrated poetry book

I feel these targets will keep me busy over the summer whilst helping me to continue my growth as a professional artist. I have chosen to focus on 2 personal projects which I am heavily passionate about as I feel this will help maintain my progression and keep me up to date with current illustration practices during my time away from studies.