Gemma Aylward BA Illustration Y2
BA2a Project Summary This unit has been adventurous for me, with the amount of different experimentive mediums I’ve used to create and display my work. I’ve become more decisive on how I like to create my work and who to make it for as a target audience. The reports have also given me a better understand about reflection on both my own and people/places relating to the Illustration industry. I’ve definitely had to doubt myself and learn what truly makes a piece of work or a person an illustration/illustrator. I think this unit has been the one where I’ve used a wider range of resources for research for my work, and this developed over the time period of the unit. The start of the unit, my research for the Fiction projects were relied heavily on the internet as a resource, with the one exemption of visiting Eaton Park for primary research. This changed drastically for the Fact project as I used a variety of research sources such as books, the internet, archives, surveys, museums and primary meeting people. The idea of meeting people for fact was a little nerve-wracking for me to do, but I’m glad I eventually did it because it was great to meet an actual bike enthusiast and to have his opinion on things. Working from a broader variety of research definitely gave me an insight onto different ways I could work which made it a little difficult on making decisions however I found it better to have loads to work from rather than nothing. I’ve always had difficulty myself when incorporating text with image in the most efficient way. I found this was highlighted further in the Narrative Illustration task to create a book cover with the authors name and title. My original designs lacked of the text and image complimenting each other. I was forcing the text to work with my cover image but the way I was doing it wasn’t working at all. I wasn’t very experimentive at all as I was only using digital text and very limited typefaces. After a while of not working on them, when I went back, I decided to do a bit more research for appropriate cover designs and played around with traditional typefaces to inspire how it should look. I’m pleased with my end result, I eventually kept it digital but I felt that I had made a design that had text and image that were compatible with each other for the first time since my final outcome for BA3 in first year. Another element of the year that was new to me was the collaborative group project. I hadn’t done a collaborative project like that before for that length of time. It was a big insight that to ensure to reach the deadline of the exhibition that we had regular meet-ups and speak about our ideas for the project efficiently. This was definitely one of my favourite projects because I was working with a variety of people who I hadn’t worked with before, and we all had our different individual styles which was great because it brought a range of influences for our ideas. It’s something that’d be happy to do again, as long as I get similar, component people to work with again who would be just as committed. The exhibition wasn’t my first, but it was my first official exhibit with the course. It was great learning about co-ordinating spaces between our own work with others and the venue itself. We had to move our installation piece around a few times before we were pleased with it harmonised with the space around it. We were quite lucky with how transportable our installation piece was but if we were to create a more stationary piece of work, I think we’d have to spend more time than we did at the venue to specify exactly how it would all work after seeing how much other groups had struggles. What I did like about our group work was that we made it relevant to a current world problem, the refugee crisis. We worked on developing a Zine which allowed people to take the ‘exhibition’ away with them and donate towards the cause, raising £18. Creating a Zoetrope proved to be the hardest piece of work I made as it had to ensure it functioned correctly. I felt like this was a major fail for me because I hadn’t created it up to my expectations based on what I saw from the Museum of Childhood. I realised whilst making it that card wasn’t going to because it was too flimsy and caused friction, slowing its speed. Looking back at the Zoetrope’s in the museum, they were made of metal which was smooth meaning that it was strong and smooth enough to reach the speed’s that they did. If I knew about a way to source the material I needed at the time, I would had rather made it out of metal as I think that would had improved my Zoetrope to look both more professional and effective as a method to watch moving image. What I am pleased about the Zoetrope is that it broke my boundary of creating a graphical book which is what I most likely would had ended up making if I didn’t have such a varied resource of research. Overall, I’ve enjoyed how this unit has broadened my horizons as to what Illustration can be and why that is. I’ve become more experimentive and learnt about new resources to use when researching for projects and how valuable that can be when coming to a close to creating the final outcome. I also feel that I’m learning more about the compatibility between text and image but I still think that is once criteria that requires more work on my behalf to improve. Conceptually, I think I have grown, and realised that final outcomes don’t have to essentially be something of a graphic and 2D sense. I consider my main priority as an illustrator is to have a target audience of children. I find children’s innocence and creativity to be a major influence on how I go about my work as I’d love for it to be able to actively support their imaginations further. I consider illustration important for children because of their curiosity of the world as they develop their personality, I believe that illustration is an essential way to communicate, and educate, for all children about different lifestyles in a friendly manner. I find that the choice of colours and simplicity of the design of characters is a way of exploiting children’s curiosity to capture their attention, in order to communicate to them. By exhibiting illustrations aimed for children in a gallery space, it puts it into a different context. I feel that it’s a reminder to people that these illustrations are pieces of work that communicate in their own right and not just an image to support a piece of text in order to help children understand and read. It’s also a great way for illustrators to advertise themselves to the public for possible future commissions and to get their style and name recognised as a whole. That is why I’m looking into House of Illustration as a gallery space. House of Illustration is a charity that promotes new illustration talent and offers an illustration-led education programme. House of Illustration became a gallery space only in 2014, after being founded in 2002, and it is the first public gallery to do so for all forms of illustration in the UK. ‘… it is the place to see, learn about and enjoy illustration in all its forms; from advertisements to animation, picture books to political cartoons and scientific drawings to fashion design.’ House of Illustration (2014) This means that House of Illustration doesn’t concentrate solely on illustration for children, but it does contribute exhibiting children illustrations, considering it was founded by Sir Quentin Blake most famously known for his illustrations for children. I think that it’s wise for House of Illustration to openly accept all forms of illustration, and to be the first in the UK to do so, because it welcomes and celebrates all of the illustration community which helps every illustrator receive influence from others and to get their own work noticed. Speaking with House of Illustration’s Administrator Miss French, she tells me more about what House of Illustration contributes to the illustration community. ‘We do hold talks and masterclasses that bring in professional artists to share their knowledge with audiences. I suppose it's more about promoting the art of illustration here and its accessibility, in all its different forms (some people cannot think past children's books!). From this I get the impression that House of Illustration is about educating others that are interested in Illustration and what they can learn from other illustrators that work in a wide variety of mediums for different audiences. I visited House of Illustration whilst they had two exhibitions happening. Both of the illustrators of the exhibitions have created illustrations for a children audience. The first was Lauren Childs, well known for her work on Charlie & Lola, and the second was Ernest Shepard who’s known for his work on A.A Milne’s Winnie-The-Pooh and Kenneth Graham’s The Wind in the Willows. My original thought was that House of Illustration were exhibiting two well-known illustrators which I felt contradicted their aims of promoting new illustration talent, however the exhibitions themselves were pleasantly different. Lauren Child’s Dolls House exhibition gave a new outlook to her approach to her illustrations. Seeing these diorama-type structures reminded me that showing a narrative isn’t always a 2D approach, but can be later converted to 2D, with 3D visual elements, when used for print. By putting her work into a gallery context in House of Illustration, we see further into the imagery as not just 2D illustrations on a page but as piece of artwork on its own. The EH Shepard: An Illustrator’s War exhibition was also a different take to what we usually see from his children illustrations. The images he produced had many different purposes whilst he was at war on the front lines. At this time Shepard was still a cartoonist for Punch magazine but as I went on through the exhibition, I could see his style develop from a cartoonist into a more illustrative style. He also producing personal works as well, such as illustrations of his wife that he sent to her through the post. Seeing this exhibition was a different outlook from the work I usually seen produced by Shepard. It taught me how he developed from his cartoon style to an illustrative one. I think that is what makes gallery exhibitions important for illustrations. As an exhibited collection, the gallery informs us on the behind-the-scenes that go into their illustrations, such as how the illustrators lives having an impact on their style and their ideas, just like what House of Illustration did with this certain exhibition. It makes us stop and analyse the details of the work in their own right. House of Illustration were also the first gallery space to exhibit this collection from Shepard also. I believe in a sense that it is still showing new illustration talent because it was a side of Shepard that hadn’t been explicitly exhibited before to the public. Although the time I visited House of Illustration it involved two known children illustrators, future events consist of illustrators and illustrations of a wide variety such as graphic novelists, life drawing classes, letterpress printing and more. I think by learning about these different sides to illustration from one gallery space, it helps other illustrators, such as myself, become influenced and motivated to combine their styles with something new and innovative which I think is what helps illustrators develop further into their practice. From the information that I have gathered about House of Illustration is that as a gallery space it promotes all forms of illustration, including children illustrations, but with a different outlook. I feel that this approach is what makes House of Illustration a perfect gallery space to learn about different styles and different illustrators, especially for newcomers into the illustration environment such as a student as myself. I believe that House of Illustration is important to educate everyone about how broad illustration can be, that it’s not as simple as an image in a book for a child to help learn to read, but much more than that. It is definitely somewhere I’d visit again and again to learn more about different illustrators in the industry, in order to develop my style and practice to become more suitable for the right target audience, and for me that is an audience of children.
I really enjoyed my visit to House of Illustration. It was the first time I visited there and thought that the two corresponding exhibitions taking place at that time were both so very different yet both were illustration. Lauren Child's exhibit consisted of 3D and collage methods to narrate her stories and EH Shepard: An Illustrators war exhibited his watercolour and pure line drawings. Both are completely different methods, time periods and narrative motives but are both considered Illustration which shows how broad illustration can be.
Working as a group, the decision to think that the Naomi V Jelish piece of work by Jamie Shovlin was illustration or not based on our research concluded yes. Only the commercial side of placing the artwork in an art space created this illusion of a factious piece of documentation when in reality it's similar to storyboarding a fictional character's life. Either side to it, it's still narrating a character's life and narrative motive was what depicted this piece of work as illustration for us.
I'm pleased with my design for my Editorial report and choice of paper for my hard copy. I feel that the choice of paper compliments the images and text. I think the layout of my report is easy to read and reflects the designs I looked at beforehand for influence.
Petra has a captivating story of its history and how it came to be re-discovered from the West in 1812 by Swiss explorer, Johannes Burckhardt, and become one of the 7 wonders in our world on 7/7/2007. It’s gained its title for its mysterious location, and has yet to been fully excavated by archaeologists, leaving many secrets still to be uncovered. It was also announced as a designated World Heritage Site on 6/12/1985. It’s located in the country, Jordan, between the Red Sea and the Dead Sea, surrounded by mountains. What initially amazes people when visiting the ancient city, is its architectural beauty. It’s clear to see why Petra is so renowned for its architecture due to the nature of it being carved into a mountain perfectly, which is quite a spectacular view. The name Petra itself is a Greek word for “The Rock” as Diodorus calls it. Petra is also named the Red Rose city for the colour of the rock the city is carved from. The lost city is popular for not only its world heritage or 7th wonder titles, but also its archaeology site which is one of the richest and largest archaeological sites on red sandstone land. What is it about Petra’s history that we are so enthralled upon to discover about our ancestors?
The Nabataens were the name of the civilisation that settled upon the land and formed the city Petra and others like it nearby. First documentation of them was noted from the 6th century BC. Up to the 4th century BC they weren’t originally as prosperous. Initially they were nomads, refugees of a nomadic tribe, and lived in tents that weren’t permanent. Their choice of land to settle on created a reference point for traders and others who were constantly travelling, and because of this, it’s how the Nabataens began to prosper. The scattered nomads grouped into an organised society and their lifestyle became dependant on the incense trade that travelled through, however as they became permanently settled in this region, they began to establish an agriculture lifestyle. To make their prosperous capital city, Petra, to survive in a dry environment, the Nabataens had developed an intricate water system that collected water off the surfaces of rocks into channels that led to open-air reservoirs or closed cisterns for hoarding. The amount they collected was enough to deliver 40 million litres of water a day to the 20,000 inhabitants at the height of its status. Petra became an essential part of the trading industry 2000 years ago. It was an important junction to allow trading across the world, such as silk and spices from China and India towards Southern Arabia, the Mediterranean and Europe. By the end of the 4th Century AD, Petra had received the title ‘Metropolis’ which displays how highly respected the city became. One of Petra’s famous features is its architecture. The architecture itself helps archaeologists to understand the history of Petra and how it became the prosperous city it became. Looking at a world map today, we can see that Jordan is near enough the centre of the world which makes it a perfect spot for world trading across all cultures, and this is clear to see through the architectural style of Petra. By analysing the architecture, it’s possible to tell that many different cultured people would has passed through here and deliver an influence alongside. The architecture is a fusion of Eastern design with western Hellenistic and Byzantine flair, which shows how Petra was a central point between these two different stylized cultures that came together here, bringing their influence with them. In 106 AD, Petra became annexed by the Romans which caused a lot of Roman influence upon the buildings that would be built upon there, such as the Colonnaded Street and the circular Theatre. When Burckhardt ‘re-discovered’ Petra in 1812, only few of the locals knew of its location. Petra had become deserted and forgotten by the world for hundreds of years and it’s not entirely explained as to why, however there are many theories as to how this may have been caused. It’s estimated that this could have happened during the 8th Century AD, over a millennium before Burckhardt had found Petra himself. It’s theorised that the main cause was because of earthquakes that Petra had received multiple times. Highlighting the 747AD earthquake, which happened when the inhabitants were thought to have been progressively abandoning Petra. Although, it is also known that there was a period of time where trade routes began to shift away from Petra and change. With the development of technology for seaborne trade, this mean trade would bypass Petra. This would had caused a major drop in the income proceeds for Petra as it did rely heavily upon travellers and its trading status. BBC’s Human Planet also depicted Petra as a ‘Boom-and-Bust’ civilisation where the water would had run out. It’s a possibility, which as Petra was a wealthy city with water, it may have somehow lost its water supply (maybe caused by the earthquakes as mentioned before) causing people to leave the city in search of a place with a substantial water supply in order to survive. These theories show me that the reasoning’s for the inhabitants to leave the city is not because they didn’t like it, but because they had to go elsewhere to survive and protect themselves, which shows me how popular this city must had been amongst our ancestors at the time. Petra has a detailed history of being a highly respected, lively city that became lost throughout the centuries, to becoming a wonder of the world. Archaeologists are still searching through the city to uncover its hidden secrets of our past within its mountainous walls. There is much about Petra that can tell us about our ancestors and I think that is what has intrigued me the most about this wonderful city. As some westerners have described it; it’s an exotic place. It can teach everyone that visits something new about the sort of people our ancestors were, and how they operated 2000 years ago. It’s also given an insight as to how our society today was formed on the concrete our ancestors had laid upon for us in the terms of multi-cultural trading. Petra deserves to be wonder and preserved forever for historical and educational purposes. I started looking at digital designs for influence how I could design my report. I found the brochure designs on this webpage fun, bright and creative. It's a good insight to see how creative I could get with the design. I thought that the first link showed a wide variety of different designs for different causes, so I thought looking at museum type brochures would influence me with more relevant designs for my report topic. Compared to the first set, these designs have a more clean and precise aesthetic to them which I feel are more appropriate for my historic and monumental topic.
Visit Petra website was a great resource as it covered all the different types of information about Petra itself and the current archaeology/tourist side to it as well. However it didn't cover great depth about it unlike the books I borrowed. The same can be said about the Visit Jordan website however I did feel that these were a great resource to collect images from for my report for educational purposes, as they were easily accessible on-line. The two books held a lot of historical information about how Petra came to be, what it provided and who for, and possibilities as to how it became forgotten. The Petra Rediscovered book was vastly helpful in understanding the Nabataen people that built, carved, lived and traded within Petra. Reading all this information, I started to think how am I going to fit this all in 1000 words. I thought that by finding information that was relevant to explaining why Petra should be a preserved monument would be a good way for looking for selective information to back up my point. New photographs of a pair of cave lion cubs found frozen in Siberia give an unprecedented look at a species that has been extinct for about 10,000 years. Russian researchers revealed new details about the cubs in a press conference on Tuesday, including how they were found, and how they died. (See "Frozen Cave Lion Cubs from the Ice Age Found in Siberia.") Collectors unearthed the cave lions while looking for mammoth tusks in Yakutia, Siberia, and at first were not sure what they had found. They placed the cubs in a glacier to keep them frozen, and then sent them to scientists in Yakutsk for analysis. Nicknamed Uyan and Dina for the Uyandina River where they were found, the kittens will provide scientists with more details about the lions that roamed Eurasia and North America during the most recent Ice Age. They are the first prehistoric cats to be found in such an exceptional state. The cubs were only two to three weeks old when they perished, says Sakha Republic Academy of Science paleontologist Albert Protopopov. They were so young that their baby teeth had not yet started to poke out from their gums. Most likely, Protopopov says, the cubs died when the soil of their den collapsed. While tragic, the way Uyan and Dina died played an important role in their preservation, keeping them frozen for over 12,000 years until flooding this past summer exposed them. Scientists estimate that the cubs were only a few weeks old when they died, possibly more than 12,000 years ago. Here, researcher Gennady Boeskorov of the Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Sakha examines a cub. But the real research has only just begun. Until now, the cave lion—a subspecies of Panthera leo related to today’s lions—was known only from bones and tracks. Uyan and Dina will provide the first look at the soft tissues of these cats, from the characteristics of their thick coats to the anatomy of their internal organs. Protopopov also says that genetic analyses are in the offing. “We will be able to know the degree of kinship between cave lions and African lions,” he says. The scientists also hope to use radiocarbon analysis to determine how long ago the cats died, thought to be at least 12,000 years, and additional studies will likely provide new insights into what they ate and how they adapted to the frigid conditions of the chilly steppe habitats they one prowled. Switek, B. (2015) Meet Uyan and Dina, frozen cave lion cubs from the ice age. Available at: <http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2015/11/151119-frozen-cave-lion-cub-siberia-uyan-dina-archaeology/> [Accessed: 23 November 2015]. I really didn't enjoy this zine session. I find collaging a major downfall for me, especially in short time periods, as I feel that I end up making a design horror. I couldn't deal with all the glueing and sticking of fiddly bits of paper. This session highlighted this for me greatly and I definitely do not want to create my editorial design handcrafted and traditionally, I'll be using InDesign as I find it more efficient for myself to create neat and clean designs.
![]() Looking back at my work from first year, I think a pivotal moment was the end of the second unit. This was the unit I struggled with most, however I believe the end of unit feedback I received was helpful for the next unit as I can see an improvement in my work from the next unit and also the improved provisional mark I achieved afterwards. Unit two was focused on design and I believe what I had most trouble with was using typography and composition together effectively. This unit highlighted this struggle for me through the various workshops such as Text, Chaos, Design and Designing Space. These were heavily concentrated on developing skills of treating text and image harmonious with each other. For Text, Chaos, Design, I found it a difficult task to come up with various, different designs in a short amount of time and I had made most of them on impulse, by using the same materials and not putting much thought into them. A lot of my typography was just my handwriting, I was thinking about how different styles of typefaces could work for different themes. At the time, I knew my work was lacking successful connection between text and image and even redid some of the designs which I found were aesthetically weak but I hadn't put much thought into the composition or the typefaces when I revisited the few, only the aesthetics. For Designing Space at the end of the unit, I resulted in working in only digital format. This task was the first thing I had created as a final outcome in the unit that was purely made digitally. I think a reason I took this approach was because of a recent InDesign induction influencing me. My target audience was children, and so I had ideas that surrounded heavily on colour and what these shapes could make together that resemble children’s interests. Looking back at these now, I find comparisons within these and the Text, Chaos, Design outcomes because of how I had limited the materials for myself to use and the lack of thought into the compositions. I concentrated too much on the content instead of developing the actual layouts further. Looking at my work in the studio and seeing what others had produced by the end of the tasks, I could tell that my work didn’t have the same connection as what others were able to make with their text and image. I didn’t feel like mine were as successful as what my peers were able to produce, especially with Designing Space. I think during the Text, Chaos, Design, everyone had a varied use of typefaces that worked well with the themes they were going with and corresponded with their imagery. Also during Designing Space, everyone worked mainly in traditional materials, and when I saw what others had made, I kind of wished I had used traditional elements with my outcomes too. The others had a more experimental flare to theirs compared to my flat, 2D, digital outcome. When speaking to the tutor at the end of unit feedback, he told me also that I had lost my experimentive play when comparing my Designing Space outcomes to the Text, Chaos, Design outcomes, although I find these weren’t very typographically experimentive, the imagery was. These two tasks have haunted me since, as it was where I realised my weak point, which I am thankful for. I think what I’ve discovered is that when I was doing the first task under a tight time gap to create so many various creations, I let myself be driven on impulse and concentrated on what I believe to be my comfort area, which is imagery, rather than the typography. Even when I revisited a few, I had only amended the typography slightly. I think what I should had done was stood back and inspect each one individually and understand why that particular typography wasn’t working. Looking back I was thinking the typeface isn’t working with the image, not the image isn’t working with the typeface. I was treating the text as a second thought, a separate entity to the imagery and not together as one harmonious composition, and I believe that’s a flaw I still have today after being picked up upon during the Narrative Illustration task when designing the book cover. I created the image first and then expected the typeface to work afterwards on top with no real thought process of how these two will correspond with each other. I also believe this flaw flags up again during the Designing Space task, I was thinking about the shapes and the way I was going to compose them first and once I felt happy, I tried to force the text to fit somewhere around it, which looking back now is no way to consider a layout. Reflecting back on these two tasks has helped me understand how important treating text and image as one for composition is, and I need to start thinking more productively with how I’m going to use text and image together. If I could redo these tasks, I would spend more time on the Text, Chaos, Design pieces and stop leaving the typeface and text as an afterthought and start developing them at the same time, alongside the imagery. I’d probably do a bit more in-depth research into what typefaces work with which themes. Also for Designing Space, I would want to experiment more traditionally and again make sure that I don’t leave the text to a last minute thought into the design. I think by working traditionally as well, it’d be easier for me to play around with cut-outs and quickly experiment with different layouts of how these images and text can be placed together and see what aspects are working and what aren't. |