New things: Uni, Work, People, Places, et al.

So I'm finally back at Uni :) It was a long summer, but it's great to be back where I belong. My fresher's week lasted all of 15 nights (hardcore) and now it's time for some work. This term I have 2 projects to focus on, as well as my dissertation (eep), so it should be fairly manic and stressful. Just the way I like it. One of my projects is a 30 credit one, which means double the work, double the grade, but should be nice to have something so huge and involved to focus on.

So for that one I'm going to be doing a Portrait project... haven't ironed out the creases yet, but it's going to be all about the relationship between image and text, using lyrics to distort the perception of the people you are viewing, or to reveal something about them that they are trying to hide. That kind of thing. Quite fine-art-esque isn't it. How horrifying. But it should be ace, and very moving, and really push me forward in my development.

As a little experiment I decided to start the whole thing of with a Self Portrait. Now, no self portraits will actually exist in my project, this is just a "I think this is how it might look" type thing. And here I am, existing, drunk, and hiding from you:


How vain. It does look like me, honestly.


The other, smaller project I am undertaking is an Editorial one... but not in the standard way. I think I'm going to redesign the Art School's magazine. Right now it's horrible and dull... you can see it here. It's not exactly the kind of publication that should come out of an art school. So I'm going to make it all about the students and get loads of people involved and make it fun and creative and something that you want to have in your hands. I'm kind of taking on an art director role but that could be fun. And also a lot of work. Semi scared.

I'm going to be prolific this year. Just watch me.

Do we all think like this?

I'm having a bit of a freak out recently. That's the wrong word, because it's not. It's more of a gnawing, consistent worry. I am worried about my career. And this is particularly worrying because I haven't even started it yet. I'm not entirely sure why I'm blogging this, but I'm pretty sure it has something to do with hoping that I'm not alone in it. There has to be other Illustration students out there, right now, that are sharing in this vague sort of unease.

First, let me point out that I love Illustration, I love my career choice. But in the past few months or so I've become increasingly aware of how difficult this is all going to be. I didn't ever expect it to be easy, in fact I love a challenge, but the prospect of me graduating and then finding a job straight away, or getting enough commissions to sustain me, seems like an impossible pipe dream at this moment.

But then, having a job you love and getting paid well for it is the Holy Grail, right?

Let me throw some statistics at you. These are from the AOI'S Illustrator's Survey 2008, which can be found here. It's a pretty fascinating read, but here are things that stand out to me:

• 34% of the people surveyed generated the majority of their income from Editorial Illustration. This doesn't surprise me and is quite nice to know actually, being that I enjoy doing Editorial (albeit fake and uncommissioned at the moment) Illustration. Lovely.
  
• Only 23.5% think that "being an illustrator is very satisfying and I can earn enough money to make a decent living." This is slightly worrying; although what exactly does a 'decent living' mean? Bread and butter or Prada shoes? Somewhere in between?
  
• 77% of us work at home. This emits a huge 'OMGZ' from me because that's my idea of hell. I. need. to be. around. people. More on this later.
• 22.4% (The highest percentage of all the choices) earn between £0 - £1,000 a year from Illustration. Eek. That's not a lot. But wait...
• Just 7.2% earn between £30k - £40k. 9.8% Earn over 40k. That's not a massive percentage. Well done to those who do earn over 40k though, that's quite...immense.
• However, 30.3% earn LESS than a quarter of their annual income through Illustration. Which means they've all got other jobs. Which is something I have accepted I will have to do maybe for the first year or so but not as a long-term thing. I don't want to be an Illustrator/Waitress. Hi, what do you do? I'm an Illustrator-slash-receptionist. You?

However, I have deducted that, the same amount of people (roughly), who disagreed that "being an illustrator is very satisfying and I can earn enough money to make a decent living," are the same people who earn between £0 - £1000 a year from it, and so are the same people who earn less than a quarter of their annual income through Illustration. Right? So what about the rest?

I guess what I'm preoccupied about is that I want to be good. I make no apologies for the fact that I expect highly of myself, push myself, and want to succeed. So I want to be in that top 8% (ish), earning £30k or more. Of course I do. But 8% of all the thousands of us who will Graduate this time next year is not a lot. To get there I have to work damn hard. And that's fine, that's not what scares me. I suppose what I get scared about are my own limitations. I'll look at some amazing Illustration/Design/whatnot and think the same old, 'Wow, I am never going to be that good. I'm graduating into the actual real world where actual real people get actual real jobs in one year and I am not that good. I'm going to be a receptionist,' school of thought. Which isn't productive, but what if I'm just not that good. There's a thought. Failure. What if I want the £40k and the 18 hour days to finish the commission and the sleepless nights and the recognition and the amazing studio with my imaginary Collective and the Prada shoes and.... I'm just not quite good enough. Do we all think like this, us aspiring Student Illustrators?

I suppose there's never an answer to this unless I push myself the hardest and give it my all and be original and be clever and be pro-active, and a little bit lucky, and go out there and find the jobs, and then I'll either be on the ladder on the way or I... won't be. But I know that there's nothing I can imagine myself doing except this. There is no Plan B, because Plan A is what I want to be. So I have to get this right. That's possibly the scariest part of all.

Like everyone, I have short term and long term goals. I need to Graduate. That would help. But first I'd quite like to get a commission. I think that would perhaps calm the little nagging feelings if I know that someone somewhere likes my work and wants to pay me for it. That's what it's about after all, isn't it. But of course to get the coveted first commission people have to actually know I exist. Self promotion first then, eh. But I also think of all these long term things that I want to do, with my imaginary perfect studio and dreams of personal projects and collaborations and all sorts. Maybe I just want the world.

As a side note, and following on from Bullet Point number 3, I read a quote, and it completely slips my memory who said it, but it was something like, "if you want to be an artist, you better like your own company." This really struck me. As an illustrator, I probably should like being on my own if I'm going to do this. That whole image of the lone illustrator working out of the back bedroom. So there is this side of my personality that doesn't quite sit right with my career choice. This adds to this vague worry that is the theme of this post.

Of course, I'd quite like to have a shared studio or even eventually start a Collective. If if maybe.


So I suppose this is just my reach into the dark, with the question, Do we all think like this? 'We' being aspiring Illustrators. And 'this' being the Vague Worry.


Or is it just me?

My Online Portfolio on Creativematch.co.uk

So I've now got a Student portfolio on creativematch.co.uk, which is rather nice. Exposure and all that jazz.

You can check it out here.

It's all on this blog anyway but slightly easier to manoevre around. Clap clap for me.

Apart from that, no new work to post yet. Might do IF this week though, we'll see.

Semester 2: Children's Book Project

This was my least favourite module. I don't know what it is about Children's Book illustration with me; I love it when other people do it, when I do it I just...can't. Maybe I'm just weakest at sequential imagery. Maybe it's the way I've been taught to approach it. I don't know. I probably shouldn't give up on it yet though because it's a really worthwhile area to get into. I suppose I just need to find my niche. Anyway,
The Careless Boy:

This was all about featuring disabilities more in illustration. It's from this website, Children In the Picture, created by Scope, that the idea for the module came from. So we all had to choose a story where one of the characters had some kind of disability, and get it nto the book in a way that didn't make it an issue, yet still showed it in a subtle way. Which is a lot harder than it sounds. The character in my story, The Careless Boy, has EBD (Emotional Behavioral Difficulties), and throughout the story he begins to be more considerate and caring due to having a new friend.

I won't put up all 10 pages, here's a few good ones.

Page 1.

Page 3.

Page 7.

Page 9.

There was a front/back cover too but it's basically a coloured version of page 3 without the text.

Oh and yes, the brief was it had to be a rough, black and white version. I wasn't just being lazy.

All images copyright to me.

That's it for Semester 2. Except the mammoth doorstop which was my dissertation research. More on that in probably October time.

Semester 2: Image & Text Project

This project was tough but I loved it. It was based around the Penguin Design Award competition; it wasn't compulsory to enter to pass the module but of course I did. As well as producing the book cover for our chosen book, we had to also illustrate a Single and Double page spread from an extract of our choosing from the book. The book I chose was On The Road. What a classic.

I was quite proud of my entry; I didn't win though. Or get anywhere close. But then looking at the standard of the shortlist and winners on the website, it's easy to see why. I think the drawing in this could be improved. Actually it was a monoprint, but I think I would have done a much more detailed pencil drawing if I was going to do this again. Oh well. This killed me to get it finished in time, but that's always fun :)

This is my Double page spread, from an extract in the book where there's a great description of a jazz bar, all heat and noise. Hence, this illustration.

This was my single page spread. I'm not keen on this one actually. It was rushed to meet deadlines and just not as good as it should have been. It was based on a scene in the book where Dean crashes their borrowed Cadillac into a ditch, a farmer has to pull it out in the rain (which I forgot to add in, haha) while his mysterious daughters look on. Meh. That doesn't really come across.

One more project to go: Next year I'll be able to submit work here much sooner after it's creation, thankfully.

Semester 2: (Negotiated) Recipe Project

I'm very aware that I finished Semester 2 about 3 months ago. However I haven't had access to Photoshop to convert these files into blog-friendly formats, until I finally cracked and downloaded a 30 day trial. Which is a pain to install and uninstall but I won't get access to it until September aka start of third year madness. So there we go.

Student Recipe Book:

I loved doing this project, Negotiated projects are always the best because you can do what you want :) So I decided to design and illustrate the front and back cover, and 2 double page spreads, for a fully illustrated recipe books for students. Illustration and cooking; pretty much my 2 favourite things haha.

The front and back cover with spine.

Double page spread with recipe for a lovely Risotto :)

Same type of spread for a chocolate mousse recipe. Thanks to Gordon Ramsey for that one! Yum yum yum.

If I'd had time I would have loved to do the entire book, with about 20 or so recipes. Maybe one day.

As usual, all images are copyrighted to me and myself only.

Illustration Friday: Detach

I had lots of fun with this one. Collage was definately the best way to go. I took the theme of 'detach' and made this crazy, out-of-touch, manic world. This is what my life feels like sometimes ^.^ Mmmm, multi-coloured buttons and pills.....

Enjoy!