Crown Brand Corn Beef

For this one we had to do a magazine advert for crown brand corn beef. I really wanted to get some good drawing in this one and I tried very hard to change things when they needed to be fixed but I'm still a bit unsure about it, particularly the bottom strip. This had to be assessed on Friday so I'll know how good it is when we get our results.

Audience

For this one I got the prompt "The audience at the last night of the proms." I played to my strengths this time and made the brief an excuse to draw lots of interesting people being expressive. The composition tends to work out well when I cram it full of stuff, but the tutors keep stressing the importance of minimal compositions as well. I'm working on it though.

Editorial 2, well more like a cover illustration but it was part of the same module. Really happy with this one. The tutors were also less critical than usual!

Time to post some Year 3 stuff! This is my response to one of the editorial briefs I was set.

Monkeys

Everyone gets really excited about these monkeys when I show my portfolio to people. My tutors are pushing me to do more pen and ink like this and they're probably right. I do have a tendency of half killing myself chasing these impossible dreams.
This was a response to a brief I got last year for a short story about a man with a glass nose who could smell what people were really thinking, and it was often ugly.

My response to a brief for a smoking poster aimed at encouraging teenage boys to stop smoking. I did try really hard to research how to get through to teenage boys but all the articles I found kept repeating 'sex and violence'. I hope my response isn't too lame.

The Musicians of Bremen Children's Book

I was trying really hard to incorporate more organic patterns into a more complex composition than the baby book. I think I was successful. Every time I show people my portfolio I get really excited by these one but they tend to be greeted with indifference. I think its probably the overly controlled quality of it all, it doesn't quite jam with the organic forms. I'm trying to be less controlling in the picture book I'm currently working, getting lots of inspiration from Dave Mckean's pen and ink style.

The Musicians of Bremen Baby Book

We started this brief after the dogs brief and I really wanted to develop the things I was doing with the patterned dog linocut. I do want to challenge myself more in incorporating patterns into less stylized images so I'm not hiding away my drawing ability. Still they are quite charming, they were suppose to be fairly simple in composition because they're intended for a baby book.

And the final dog that I'm going to submit here. I left the best till last. I worked really hard on getting the composition right here and I know now that you've got to make a habit of that obsessive re-drawing to make it as a pro.
I did this one when I saw a post on tumblr about this campaign and thought doing a poster for it might be similar to a brief I'd get in professional practice.

Another dog, though its hard to tell. I guess the technique needs developing.

Something a little bit more traditional. I wanted to do a children's book illustration style thing but for some reason I couldn't do it without a story behind it so I made one up in which a girl pesters her parents all the time about letting her take her dog to school. When she finally sneaks her dog to school her dog steals all her friends, aces all her tests and basically does a better job at school than she does.
I did this one in oil pastels and I think looking back its certainly a medium I should re-visit. I might have to fork out for some good ones though, it looks pretty washed out in the background. Still not a bad considering I hadn't made any prior colour studies.

'D' is for Dog

This linocut was one of the first things I worked on in second year. I think I was sort of caught up in the idea that I had to squeeze as many symbols into a picture as I could. Hence the letter D, the paw print and the floating tennis balls.
But positives came out of this one. I'm still very pleased with how seamlessly I incorporated the pattern into the dog design. The whole patterning thing kinda shaped the rest of 2nd years work but I'm struggling a bit on how to incorporate it again into this years stuff without leaning towards stylization like I did in 2nd.

Concertina

 

Just a little concertina book I did in 2nd year. I put together the cover at the last minute on photoshop, but the interior was a laborious process of compositing blown-up, tiny pen and ink drawings. We were told in this brief to design some characters then depict a family made up of those characters going to either the beach, the theatre or the zoo. And of course because I'm an intolerable show off I picked all three. The price I paid was a fairly incomprehensible story...

Pigeons

A Illustration I did for the Macmillan prize last year. It was the last page of a story about a knitting pigeon I made up. The composition could be better and its a bit stiff overall, I should have redrawn this one a lot more before rendering. That being said I'm happy with the render and colour choices. I'll improve on my mistakes next time.

Poppies

Here are some poppies from when I helped out with Lincoln Mural Project the summer before last. I hope they are still intact, I know someone tagged all over the whole mural it a while ago. I've not had a chance to revisit since. I'm still really proud of them.