website cleanup

I'm not so happy with my portfolio because of the work in it BUT  I've been cleaning up the actual layout to make it a nicer experience and easy to fit new work into. I put all of the galleries into a work tab, and made a page for my sketchbook work, because for me it's an essential part of how I work, and honestly I think some of it's the most interesting stuff I have been making...

[here is the website] (I need to sort a domain)

home page with splash image (could be changed, but I like this. Bold)

sketchbook/ small personal work images

saying no

I thought I had an interesting project come up- and indeed it was interesting but offered very little as a payment point (less than half that I usually work for), which seemed a little off as they seemed to be the biggest venue to have offered me work. I turned it down, or rather told them how much I usually work for (and they not so much declined as didn't respond- maybe they are in the process of sorting it out and maybe one day they will get back to me).

Talking to a friend who works for the AOI she said that what I already work for on average is still on the cheap side, though it is ok to consider that whilst different places can offer different prices there should always be a minimum amount.

Pricing work is horrifying  hard and it's quite understandable that people take on cheap / free jobs (but it's bad!!). If a place is big enough to be good enough for exposure then they're also big enough to pay you.

PPP SUMMARY ? / STRATEGY?

The points from the slideshow ....

A summary of your personal and professional aims as an illustrator, practitioner or ……you tell us.
Evidence of research into professional practice and progression opportunities undertaken over the summer
A summary of further professional research activities to be undertaken as part of Level 6 (including timescales)
A proposal of what you intend to produce as self promotion material.

• I am looking to work as a freelance illustrator, with a main eye for working on editorial, publishing and children's books.
• As part of my practice I may also be looking towards self-initiated projects, such as prints, publications and maybe even looking to galleries.
• Over the summer I took on a few poster commissions and entered the AOI Prize for Illustration, as well as regularly updating my creative social media
• I vaguely began to question post graduate education, but do not think I can really consider it without talking to people who are doing it / have done it, and whether it is worth it (at this point of my career)
• My thoughts at this moment are to promote myself with the traditional materials: a portfolio website, a physical portfolio, creative CV, a business card or two. Social media: instagram and tumblr, and maybe a twitter of professional usage but I'm not so sure on that one.

You will also need to produce an outline strategy plan including specific studios, practitioners, agencies and events that will form the basis of your research. This will form the basis of your first group workshop/tutorial.

¿STRATEGY?

• Working on a self-initiated editorial project throughout the length of the year to fill my portfolio with those types of projects.
• Doing publishing competitions like Folio Society, Penguin and The Macmillan Prize to get book type projects into my portfolio, with the added bonus of the possibility of winning and getting the work out there! (I believe these have deadlines largely in 2017)
• Doing a self-published zine/ publication for Thoughtbubble (November 2016)
• Figure out the benefits, the whys the whens the hows about masters degrees and artists residencies... both things I really don't understand and will only figure out through talking to people who have done them! I'm sharing a spot on Wai Wai Pang's table so I'll use some of that time to bother her about her work with MK Arts Centre, on her residency and how she got to teach there. (Autumn 2016)
• Think about New Blood/ other graduate shows and whether that would be a good thing to do (summer 2017)
• Make work that is portfolio worthy! And start to figure out how to contact people, and how to do it appropriately!! Polish it off. Online portfolios can be changed regularly, but physical portfolios less easily so, so I think the physical portfolio will be made towards the end of the year.

Overall keep my head up and realise that drawing is something I would be doing anyway, in a **professional** context or not :-)

priorities

I think I struggled prioritising projects over the summer, and as a result didn't do as much self-initiated work as hoped (at least, more than sketchbooks and basic things). I had foolishly planned to do a few this week, around with my COP research (also not prioritised) BUT have possibly been offered my biggest job yet, so that's definitely going to be prioritised over self-initiated projects (but with COP needled in too)!!

Overall my plans this summer haven't been great and am looking forward to the structure that studio time will give me.

Fuzzy in print

I saw these photos that Fuzzy Logic had been putting on their instagram and it's pretty cool to see the works printed (I've somehow managed to not stumble upon it myself yet). The caption "COME GET ONE OF OUR SNAZZY NEW FLYERS FOR £2 ENTRY AND A COOL EDITION TO YOUR BEDROOM WALL " was pretty nice, and part of the idea we always have with Fuzzy is that we want it to be something nice enough for students to stick somewhere, and I have been told by a few people that that is really the case!

   

 

I don't have anything to do with the social media for Fuzzy but it's cool (and makes sense) that a lot of my work is posted to there. I also feel reassured seeing it in print, I think somehow it all looks much better! Which is good, because that is really what it is designed for.

Girls That Gig Networking Event

 

We saw this event advertised on Facebook as :

And figured it was worth a go at going, not really knowing what to expect. We met a lot of people looking for band members, and a lot of other artists and art students. It wasn't the sort of place to really find potential work, though maybe a collaboration or two, but if anything was a good place to just meet other creatives in different areas and build up that community and at first I hadn't really been thinking about it in that way! But connections as support are still very valuable, and you don't know what might come up in the future. I'm still... not great at talking about myself or what I do. A big point is how I can talk about my work without visually showing people (even though I can with say, a phone). When at an exhibition or something you can talk quite easily about your own work because it's there on the wall but, here people would I ask what kind of stuff I do and I'd be like! Ah!

House of Illustration visit notes

I went to see the Soviet Picture Books exhibition!

Artists I noted down: Vladimir Lebedev, Eduard Krimmer, Yevgeny Charushin

• Lots of beautiful image making! A focus on movement and experimenting and texture vs simplicity. I see some things that are often tried to be replicated today but they're missing something. I'm not anti-digital work but I think it's harder to get something that feels free with Photoshop than  a brush. 
• Sometimes too experimental? Vladimir's Lebedev story about the elephant left a little girl confused as to why the animals had "exploded". It's a reminder that the audience is the priority, though it isn't impossible by any means to make something complex and designed in an interesting way that can be enjoyed by children also.
• It's all very nice to look at when you can't read russian- with context a lot of them become more sinisterly propaganda-y
• Simple layouts and spot illustrations, no interest in over-complication

Tate Modern visit notes

• Hito Steyerl, How To Not Be Seen: A Fucking Didactic Educational
• Funny, bizarre, surreal, left me feeling like I had understood it and then I realised there was nothing to be understood. Maybe. Felt like art that isn't so much pushing you to think about something so much as it just telling you about something they had been thinking about. A conversation to be started if you wanted, but mostly something to listen to and nod your head. Complicated but accessible, an amazing way of using tone of voice to attract people.

• Start Here Gallery
• A gallery space obviously designed to attract those not used to art, with encouragement and simplifications and an ease of "you can think whatever you like to about art". 
• I wasn't entirely sure if it was directed more for children or possibly adults too but it wasn't overly patronising in tone.
• This would have been a good thing to talk about in last year's COP essay!
• Karel Appel + Cobra movement
• there was a really good quote about painting / making work like children that would have been very useful / interesting but I am yet to find it again. However these are a cool bunch to look at in regards to intuitive image making / childlike creation / limitations of the figurative etc

National Portrait Gallery + Serpentine visit notes

National Portrait Gallery

• There weren't so many particular pieces that stood out to me but it was that point in the day when you think you're having intelligent discussions (maybe so) but really they're just loose points. Regardless, being in the gallery environment always seems to spark conversations like that and these were a few topics that came up for us:
• Can art ever be a non-selfish pursuit? It's hard to analyse when you're not coming from a non-art/design stand point. I'm always surprised that anyone can look through my work and tell me that they enjoyed it (and I have received messages like that). Do artists ever really create with the intention of others? Or rather, is there always a certain element of selfishness, of the pursuit of creating. 
• Placement and context of images online: I've seen drawings that looked not dissimilar to what I had seen in this gallery posted by people on twitter, drawn with Photoshop. In honesty it's hard to not attribute more to a physical piece. There are also questions in regards to the equalising of images on the net: a tumblr feed of a gif of a cat, an inspirational person, some TV show fan art and a Henry Matisse throws all of these images together and gives them the same weights. Is it always bad?
• When did we start thinking realism was a good idea??? And when did we stop
• I need to paint on canvas / something solid

@ The Serpentine (quick visit)

• Alex Katz's style is illustrative (if that can really be a quality) but was not that interesting as an exhibition
• simply, Etel Adnal had a beautiful use of colour and shape that would be good to refer back to.

I'm still not quite understanding how you acquire commissions, but looking on a  creatively lead job site is a way to initiate that connection yourself I suppose. I'm not saying that I'm at a point to start doing that, but it's something to keep in mind. Maybe soon? https://jobs.creativereview.co.uk

And who knew that you could be paid to make a powerpoint? I hope they enjoy funky slide transitions and sound effects