OUIL402 Personal and Professional Practice evaluation

Leeds College of Art BA (Hons) ILLUSTRATION	Level	04
OUIL402 Personal & Professional Practice 1	Credits	20
End of Module Self Evaluation

NAME	Molly Halson

1.  What learning have you inherited through this module and how has it impacted on your own understanding of professional practice? Consider yourself as a student at University as much as an illustrator
·         I've learnt a lot about different processes like digital and screen print and developed my own practice in how I make images, considering new approaches like shape and texture instead of sticking to black line. ·         I struggled with depression over part of the course, and that definitely affected my work, going from a first to a third over the first two marked modules. This has made me consider how to take care of myself and manage my time and motivation so that I can still complete my work and enjoy it! ·         I've learned that keeping visible visual aids of time-keeping like a wall calendar and post-it notes helps me to see what I need to do and when, instead of just a diary/notebook.
2. What approaches/types of research have you found most valuable over this module? Why did they have such an impact?
·         I've enjoyed keeping a Pinterest account and Instagram as well, learning what other artists are doing and being inspired by how they makes pictures. ·         I've been to a few exhibitions, like Jamie Hewlett and Comix Creatrix, which have shown me new approaches to making images, like drawing very big and how different comic artists work - that it's okay to cut and paste different sections of an image ready to scan instead of drawing it all on one sheet!
3. In what way has PPP informed the way your work in other modules and your illustration practice as a whole?
·         PPP has helped me question why I'm making images and why I make them the way I do. ·         I've started to think more about what process and visual signature is appropriate for each brief, especially informed by other artists' work that I see on Pinterest and Instagram, as well as presentations shown by tutors, and even my peers' work.
4. What weaknesses can you identify in your PPP submission and how will you address this in the future?
·         The screen-printed Illustrated Self poster isn't perfect - I struggled with using Adobe Illustrator for only the second time, so I was a bit rushed to the end, and my screen broke halfway through, the Friday before submission, so I had to persevere! The registration is slightly off and the colours aren't exactly right. I'd definitely allow myself more time next time, in case things go wrong! ·         I left a few of the study tasks until the end because they were at the height of my depression, so I should have done them earlier, but I think I have mostly kept up to speed with my blog. 5. What communities of practice and professional contexts do you intend to investigate further as you approach level 5? Why do they appeal to you?
·         I definitely want to continue going to exhibitions, and maybe go to more because they can be really interestn=ing to see what other artists are making and how and why they make pictures. ·         I'll continue to use Pinterest and Instagram among other media platforms to research not only finished work but the process of how artists' make their work - some artists I follow on Instagram upload process videos and sketchbook images which can be really useful. ·         I may start reading more art magazines like Juxtapoz for example, as these can show the behind the scenes parts of illustration.
6.How would you grade yourself on the following areas: (please indicate using an ‘x’)  5= excellent, 4 = very good, 3 = good, 2 = average, 1 = poor
	1	2	3	4	5
Attendance					x
Punctuality					x
Motivation			x
Commitment					x
Quantity of work produced					x
Quality of work produced				x
Contribution to the group				x
The evaluation of your work is an important part of the assessment criteria and represents a percentage of the overall grade. It is essential that you give yourself enough time to complete your written evaluation fully and with appropriate depth and level of self-reflection. If you have any questions relating to the self-evaluation process speak to a member of staff as soon as possible.

Presentation

Illustrated Self done!

I FINALLY finished my posters!

I had multiple problems during this brief:

• The graphics tablet I borrowed from uni wasn't calibrated to my laptop (spent multiple hours attempting to delete my Wacom Bamboo driver so the Intuos driver would work, and eventually had to manually scour for and delete ALL Wacom files after multiple restarts to no success)
• I'm not great at using Adobe Illustrator (I've only ever used it once for the Vector brief), so particularly in the print out positives and digital files you can see that things don't line up properly where I've not used the pen tool etc etc (I just need more practice)
• I missed my print slot by about 10 hours because I didn't anticipate how long it would take me to draw to whole poster! I had to print at Vernon street where they (thankfully) don't need you to book a slot.
• The font I picked which I thought was standard (I've downloaded A LOT of fonts and can't remember which ones are standard or not) was not, so when I opened the Illustrator file at uni ready to print, the font had changed and I had to spend a while adjusting it which meant that the registration for the pink and yellow screen positives changed a bit because I was a bit lazy/rushing to be able to print in time and changed them individually on the different files for each screen (turns out I was right to adjust it because I was in the print room until closing on both Thursday and Friday and finished in the nick of time!)
• THE SCREEN SPLIT! DISASTER! Thankfully, I had already printed all the yellow, but it split just after I'd done the registration for the pink on kodatrace and was flooding the screen for the first print. So all of the pink is slightly off registration, despite re-doing the kodatrace, as the screen didn't stay tight even after taping it back together.
• The colours didn't come out as I anticipated. The parts that I hoped would be darker where the pink and yellow overlapped were not clear. I tried to amend this by adding white to the pink, but didn't realise the white is even more opaque!
• I didn't manage my time that well - I only started planning the final design on the Tuesday before the deadline because of CoP hand in, and then the sunny weekend, so didn't start final drawing until Wednesday night, which meant I was rushed, especially considering my inexperience with Illustrator, the graphics tablet calibration, and that it was the first time I'd ever screen printed properly on my own (so I'd never washed or coated a screen, which took time to learn)

This is what I hoped it would look like:

(Despite the off-registration text)

Things I've learned:

• I need to practice using Illustrator and Photoshop more, and graphics tablets!
• Next time I screen print I know not to have the design so close to the edge of the screen, as the pressure of the squeegee can split it!
• White screen print ink makes things lighter, not more transparent!
• I CAN do things! I've been scared to try screen-printing outside of briefs where we've had to (even though I really wanted to) because I'm quite shy and nervy to ask for help, but once I get going it's fine!

What I'll do differently next time:

• Plan ahead!
• Start earlier!
• Place my design(s) on a bigger screen (or two screens) with more space around the edges

Despite multiple things going wrong and being fairly ambitious for the project, I think it did still turn out fairly well! It's a perfect illustration for my first year of uni - not only the drawn content, but also the evidence of the process: that I want to get better at using digital software, I want to screen print more and sometimes I make mistakes and take risks that don't work out! But that shouldn't stop me from trying!

Poster progress

I shouldn't have used Illustrator! Whyyyyyyy

It's haaaaaaard. I'm not used to using it. I've only used it once. I figured it would give me cleaner lines by using vectors, compared to Photoshop on a graphics tablet where my hand shakes. I know there are ways to clean up lines on Adobe programs but I don't know what they are and don't have TIME!!! My print slot is 4PM Thursday - gotta finish!!!

I also don't really like the line quality in Illustrator. it's too uniform and I realised that I prefer having different weights of line that look hand drawn - like a brush changes weights as you move it across the paper. Should have drawn it in Photoshop or even just by hand! The problem I foresaw drawing it by hand though is that I can't change it if it goes wrong like I can using digital - I'd have had to do a lot more planning and roughing on A2 sheets I think to get it right, and I didn't see myself having time. But who am I kidding, may not even finish it on Illustrator!!

It took my a fucking age to calibrate the graphics tablet to my laptop - multiple reboots and deleting Wacom files and re-installing. I'm so TIRED.

Poster's coming along okay, hopefully I'll finish before 4.

I'm not sure what colours to go for. I'm using two, and hoping they'll cross over to make a third darker colour. I thought I'd use pink and yellow like so:

(Ben Rider)

These colours are pretty happy, and I want the image to be fairly playful despite some of the self-deprecating jokes in the picture. These colours would symbolise my growth and fairly happy condition at the moment, having enjoyed and grown during first year!

However, I then started thinking purple and green:

(Maya Hayuk)

These colours work so well together (and would make a great dark colour for the linework) and I love lilac and mint green as colours. But they're both cool colours and I think that would make the image too sad?

Poster roughing

I took lots of photos of my room from different angles to get the best composition for my poster (note: I've actually away a lot of stuff/taken things off the wall for moving out and my room's a bit of a mess):

Initially I foresaw it directly looking into my room with the window in the middle, and furniture either side. I thought this was pretty boring though.

I tried from standing in my ensuite, but you couldn't see my desk (a pretty important part):

I tried birds-eye but I really wanted the glow in the dark stars on my ceiling to be visible because they're important to me:

I tried from looking up from my perspective lying on the floor:

I knew I wanted to put myself in the image lying on the floor (lol) - I lie on the floor quite a lot, either when I'm sad, to work, or just because it's weirdly calming to lie and look at the ceiling from down low (don't ask me why).

I also tried fish-eye! Thought it might be more interesting looking straight on in the middle if it was fish eye. Didn't like it though:

BUT I'm gonna do it from behind the wardrobe:

There's way more stuff on the side of my room with the desk that I want to include/is important to me, and anything that's actually on the other side behind the wardrobe (like the alarm clock) I can move into view for the purposes of ART.

Now to start drawing! Digital - AHHHH!

Ideas for poster + crit

Ideas:

1 I was lying in bed trying to sleep, looking up at the glow in the dark stars on my ceiling with the curtain open (in theory the light wakes me up in the morning) with music playing quietly and rain sounds on the sleep app of my phone. It was very calming and I  like the idea of doing a very dark navy blue poster with light blue or green lines (similar to my written diagram), but I wasn't sure how to add text or other signifiers of ME, especially professionally. I thought I could make the stars into constellations of words, but in the end this idea seemed better in my head and not suited to the brief. The dark blue is a bit dark and depressing, which only reflects PART of my year! 

2 My room! An anatomy of my room with funny annotations, some slightly self-deprecating, but which reflect my thought processes and evaluation of myself and my practice. This idea I thought was the strongest, as it includes, humour, character and bold, warm colours - reflecting my state of mind at the time of finishing the year. I've learned a lot and grown a lot as a person and illustrator.

Everyone else agreed in the crit that this was the strongest idea, especially relating to me personally, as it shows the various aspects of my personality and what's important to me in my practice!

3 Another A-Z typology poster.

4 Some kind of funny infographic about my year - stats and figures tailored to me that are also funny, like how many hours of sleep missed out on, cups of coffee drunk etc. But I figured that would be more graphic design-y and type-baed rather than completely illustrated? Not very compositional.

Illustrated Self written diagram

OUIL401 Context of Practice evaluation

Leeds College of Art BA (Hons) ILLUSTRATION	Level	04
OUIL401 Context of Practice	Credits	20
End of Module Self Evaluation

NAME	Molly Halson

1.  What skills have you developed through this module and how effectively do you think you have applied them?
·         I developed my research skills and essay-writing skills, and I think this is evident in my essay and my bibliography. ·         I've thought about the visual aesthetic of the work I produced, in order to explore the themes and ideas relevant to my topic. Thinking about what media and methods of drawing were appropriate to the body of work for its purpose. ·         I've improved my critical thinking skills and analysis skills of academic texts, and I think I have applied these skills well.
2. What approaches to/methods of research have you developed and how have they informed your practical outcomes?
·         I used first-hand research of drawing real people out and about to inform my visual response to the subject of my essay. Looking at real people, I was able to test and challenge my own hypotheses about what I would find, and make work that was informed by real life experiences. ·         I've look at a lot of adverts in various sources; books, the internet and real-life among others, and compared all of these adverts to assess trends alongside my academic research, which has helped me to hypothesise themes that would be present in my visual work.
3. What strengths can you identify in your work and how have/will you capitalise on these?
·         I've always enjoyed and been good at writing essays throughout school years, and I think I have good research and analysis skills when it comes to reading and understanding academic texts. ·         I've addressed a breadth of research for the essay from sources such as the libraries (the university, my own and my parents') and the internet, and next year in CoP I will continue to seek a wider variety of sources, such as documentaries and other video sources.
4. What weaknesses can you identify in your work and how will you address these in the future?
·         My visual research and practical outcomes - these were not exhaustive as I could have achieved, and I struggled to develop my ideas, particularly at the start of the visual brief. ·         I didn't really identify any artists' work that informed my own for this module. Obviously over the whole year, I have looked at many artists, but none really in relation to this brief. Next year I will seek out more examples. ·         My visual journal is only A5, which I got at the beginning of the year before exploring the Visual Language module and realised that perhaps a bigger sketchbook would have been more appropriate. ·         There's no final piece, which was not necessary but perhaps would have helped to tie the module together.
5. Identify five things that you feel will benefit you during next years Context of Practice module?
·         Going to every CoP session, even if I feel I haven't got enough work or haven't 'done it right'. ·         Starting work on the visual stage earlier and being more exhaustive. ·         Conducting more primary research, particularly for the visual part of the module. ·         Look at more artists that influence my work, specifically related to CoP. ·         Using a bigger sketchbook.
6.How would you grade yourself on the following areas: (please indicate using an ‘x’)  5= excellent, 4 = very good, 3 = good, 2 = average, 1 = poor
	1	2	3	4	5
Attendance			x
Punctuality				x
Motivation			x
Commitment			x
Quantity of work produced			x
Quality of work produced				x
Contribution to the group				x
The evaluation of your work is an important part of the assessment criteria and represents a percentage of the overall grade. It is essential that you give yourself enough time to complete your written evaluation fully and with appropriate depth and level of self-reflection. If you have any questions relating to the self-evaluation process speak to a member of staff as soon as possible.