With my own practice I’m starting to see where I want to go
and where I need development in my work. I have recognised that I need to use
my interest in helping me develop my practice as this feeds into my passion and
therefore my motivation to create art. Take for example my love for music and
the areas of the genre’s I love, using this I have started to look at band and
gig posters and merchandise and seen that with more development in the printing
and distribution I will hopefully be able to produce a brand that I can aim at
this market. This I can then use as a platform to promote my name and my brand
to the wider industry, producing artwork that becomes known for complimenting their
music. At the moment I’m drawing and studying the metal industry’s art and considering
what is being produced and how it is being used. Examples include designs for
album covers and clothing merchandise.
In the short/medium term I want to develop a body of work
showing my designs for my brand Livrid. Building up a website with a web store
where I can sell my garments and art. This will also be a place I can have my
online portfolio and a body of work to promote my skills to others and have the
necessary details added to get people in contact with myself about a design or
idea they have. I have also used the designs from my OUIL503 work by contacting
the bands I produced them for in order to get some constructive feedback. In
return I was offered very positive feedback, including a potential sale on one
of the designs to be used on a single launch.
To get the brand going I first need to get some logo
designs, illustrations for t-shirts, business cards, and a brand logo,
basically get the branding finished up and feeling like it works well along
side my designs and where I am want to take the brand. I’m currently in the process of converting
one of my sheds into a studio space where I can get my screen-printing
equipment back into use and have a space I can develop an idea from sketchbook to
final printed t-shirt as quick as I can to see if it works. With getting my
printing equipment out and using the knowledge I have picked up in the print
studios I feel I now also have the confidence to start printing onto paper and
produce screen-prints of my work to sell. By doing all of this myself I know
I’m going to cut out the cost of a third party company printing it for me. The
cost to get set back up with cleaning chemicals, inks, adhesives, some new and
retrenched screens, and some wholesale t-shirts and papers will be the biggest
cost for the foreseeable future but this cost is a long term investment which
will soon be covered. In order to build these funds I will be doing smaller
commissioned designs.
I’m happy with the progress and skills I have picked up this
year, one of the main ones is being able to try enjoy each piece of work I am
working on, if its not fun and becoming a chore then I’m doing something wrong.
This year I have had a battle with my illustration work and found myself not
enjoying the processes or the end product and ultimately this is not what I
have come to university to do, it’s the opposite. I found I was being far too clinical at every
stage of my work, which was often stunting my creativity and fluidness to
produce something unique. I have
discovered that I should not do this and instead save it until after the
development stage so I can be more free and spontaneous in what I produce. This
will then lead to a better image and a change in the subject in drawing and a
varity to choose from. I have started to pay a significant amount of my
attention to the marks I can make with my pens, and by building up an array of
skills using one tool such as my drawing pens I can learn and use multiple
effects to build up an image. Using dots to build up an image has been the
biggest surprise to me as I found it’s a process that works for me and seems to
best translate what I’m trying to draw.
There are a few areas I feel I could do with improving the
main one is the final stages of my work. I spend a long time producing work in time-consuming
techniques.
I have been working on skull designs for the past few months
and whilst development has been tough I am starting to get to stage I’m happy
with the design I have developed. Though consistent development and just
drawing similar images repeatedly I have found comfort now in where I am taking
these designs and can see them been printed on products such as t-shirts, I
have started to see how development though drawing can improve and evolve a
design to a stage I’m happy with. For myself there is an element of building my
confidence up in my own work in order to help me progress further at present
this sometimes presents a weakness in my work and my ability to complete
designs to time schedules. The repetitiveness and building on designs however
can act as a positive as it gives unanticipated results some times and a chance
to play and tweak the design in any way I want. I know skulls have been often
been overused throughout history and heavily in the alternative music scene but
it’s where my development is taking me and to progress to produce skulls to a
standard that will make them stand out from the rest. At the stage I am at in the development I am
now happy to start to add my designs to products and show them off. At the
moment I am adding one of my sketchbook drawings in much larger format onto a
surf board, this is teaching me a great deal in how to recreate a image on to a
larger surface and how the techniques I am using respond to this bigger format.
At present I need to continue researching into how to become
more involved in music industry design and establish if this is a financially
viable way forward. Continuing to look at different markets to see if my style
can fit into different genres and types of illustration. Alongside this also
researching smaller independent design companies’ history and progression to
see how I can direct my own brand down a similar route. This may include
widening my networking.
Finally researching further into the cost and implications
of printing own work and studying how I can strengthen these skills in order to
create products that are going to stand out in the market. I am also interested
in looking into how to make products that are more eco friendly; this
particular area has become more popular over the past few years with a focus on
handmade products that are environmentally friendly and fits with my own moral
stance. For example researching into how to make produced from recycled
materials.
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