Sunday 26 June 2011

Master of Illustration

I completed my MA in Illustration and Design in September last year, carrying straight on after 3 years of doing the degree course. I was talking recently with a couple of friends who are currently slogging away at their various MA courses about the trials and tribulations of it all, and whether ultimately it was worth all the stress, heartbreak and being financially crippled. In my opinion it was worth every moment (although if you had told me a year ago I would say that I would probably have laughed/cried/screamed in your face/hit you) but then again I think I had a good experience overall, lots of support from family and friends and good guidance from my tutors. In terms of career? Well I don't know about that personally, though I assume it always looks good to have an extra qualification on your CV. But in terms of the confidence in my own work it gave me, completing the course was invaluable. The only real issue I had was the loneliness of not having the group of people who I did the degree with around - I made some of the best friends I've ever had on that course and met some truly talented individuals, and I missed their input, support and just general banter every single day. So to my friends and anyone else who is battling their MA - although it is emotionally and physically exhausting, it will all be worth it in the end. You will be glad you did it. 


I still am... 




















In no particular order, a selection of images from my MA project - an illustrated version of Angela Carter's short story 'The Company of Wolves'. I worked by making various stencils and cutouts and flicking ink or acrylic at them with a toothbrush (so high-tech!) then used ink and fineliners for the details, and finally cobbled everything together using photoshop.

Saturday 25 June 2011

This is me...

Well here I am, finally got round to creating a blog, technology-neanderthal that I am! No doubt something will go horribly wrong...


Anyway here is my first post, purely because this is the most recent thing I have done and I know where the files are for the images so I don't have to trawl around looking for them! I did this image for the Cheltenham Illustration competition this year, the theme of which was "Tree Time Tales" (make of that what you will). I photographed the drawing in stages as a sort of progress diary, mainly to see how long it would take me to produce the final image... about 9 or 10 hours in total as it turned out, I lost track a little bit! So here is the complete process from start to finish, the image was drawn using Rotring fineliners with an ink image from an older project thrown in to add a bit of colour.



















So there is the final image. Does it suit the theme? Who knows - it's all pretty subjective anyway I reckon.. more later xxx