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Week 14 - What do clients want?

This week we wrote a introductory email including three images that will be sent out on a large emailer campaign. We wrote a secondary email that was a response to the interest of a client who has asked to see more work in relation to a possible commission. 

Email 1. 

Email 2:

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Week 13 - Self Promotion piece Review

This week I finished my self promotion piece and posted it ready to be seen by Phil Cleaver. The piece i created was a Ikea style Cv Manual about myself. It includes small assembly like images to explain aspects of my personality. I included a cover letter and some information about myself. The entire piece is pink, down to the postal tube that i sent it in. I also included a print inside of a toy vending machine, the entire thing is Riso printed. I believe it reflects me and my work. 

Here are examples of my promotion piece: 

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Week 12 - MA Talk

I didn’t attend this session, because i have already researched into the topic of Ma’s and other routes after university and I have decided that I’m going to look into graduate schemes. I don’t want to do an MA because I feel like I have achieved and learnt all that i want in education and i want to stop learning and start doing. Wether that includes getting a standard job and doing Illustration on the side, or joining a creative team. 

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Week 11 - Alex Foster, Life after Middlesex

I wasn’t in for this weeks session, so I had to conduct my own research as to who Alex Foster is and his work. 

Alex Foster does a lot of map based work, he has created some excellent pieces such as a map of the lands of Roald Dahl, indy craft beer map and totally thames. 

Since he’s left Middlesex University Alex Foster has had a steady job flow, and has worked with major companies such as Penguin Random House, Air Canada and Evening standard. All since he graduated in 2013. 

Here are some examples of his work:

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Week 10 - Self Promotion

This week we learnt about the importance of self promotion, wether that’s by posting on instagram, Sending out millions of emails of even by sending things in the post. Self promotion has a massive impact on your career, it can dictate the people that hire you, the jobs you get and the free lance work that comes your way. It is a lot of grafting but is worth it in the end. 

What is a does a good Self promotion piece include?

- Your contact information maybe a business card. 

-  maybe a print that is reflective of your current work

- eye catching

- memorable

- stand out

What not to include in a self promotion piece:

- Your GCSE results, you’re a creative now, no one cares.

- To much text ( leave them wanting more).

- bad art work ( if you don’t like it they won’t either).

Here are some examples of promotion pieces i think work well.

Maeve Makielski

Tea and crayons, illustration collective.

Here are some promotion pieces that i think don’t work well:

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Week nine - The film

This week we watched a film, personally, I didn’t see any relevance in this lesson and found the film to be not relevant to the lectures, but that’s just my own observation.

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Week seven - collectives

This week our GA Alex came in a taught us the incentive and joy behind collectives such as hers Drawn Choruses.

I sadly wasn’t in the session, so I researched collectives and they benefit artists. By being involved in a creative team, you have people to celebrate your work, bounce ideas off of and even collaborate with, I guess it’s also nice because you have to chance to help other designers find jobs and vice versa. If i was to create my own collective, i’d want to fill it with designers that have different skills, so that we could all benefit from each person being in the collective. I think my strength would be ideas, and humour because i feel like whenever i start a project, the first thing i do is try to think of other ways and concepts, and how to fit them all together, a lot of the time when i do this it includes humour. 

Below i have listed some links to collectives i have found during my research: 

  https://drawnchoruscollective.co.uk/

https://www.thetunnel.london/artists

https://bedroomartistscollective.wordpress.com/

Here are some images of their works. 

Bedroom artists.

The Tunnel London

Drawn Choruses

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Week Six - Pastiche, Plagiarism, Parody

This Week we learned about plagiarism, and what rights we have to our own work. I found this particularly interesting as we talked about watermarking our work so people can’t use it without our permission and also the process of how to go about getting people to take down our work if they ware using it without our permission.

Copyright to me is still a little hazy because some art processes and movements have been celebrated and popularised off the back of copyright. 

The class kind of erupted into a big talk on fan art and whether or not it was classed as copyright? but I don’t think that was really that relevant to the topic.

my biggest takeaway was that I should take my own reference images, but also always get permission before using someone in my work. 

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Week Five - The Future of Illustration.

This week we discussed how Illustration has evolved from pen and ink portfolio’s to modern digital art, even up to 3d printing. 

We weighed the pro’s and con’s of a variety of methods and discussed how they’d still be relevant in different situations. 

Louise told us about how back at the beginning of her career the importance of the physical portfolio was high, but obviously, now, people can make judgments of your work based on your Instagram and website, and the need for a physical portfolio is really limited. 

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Week Four - Vlogs, Blogs and set up your tumblr blogs.

This week we talked about how vlogs and blogs can help you get more of a following in the industry, We looked at a graduate from our course Holly Exely, who has a youtube vlog about being an illustrator and all the traps and pitfalls you shouldn’t fall into. she also talks about things like taxing and agents. 

Creating a blog is a great way to put down your ideas and share your creative process. You can update it daily and it also is a really good place for the self-reflection of your work. 

Vlogs are another good way to document your work, and they also provide a way for you to gain a following. But to do that it seems you have to put on a very false persona to become likable. 

here is a link to holly’s channel. 

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQRpKldwdkyBW3qgCVZNrMA

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Week Three - Agents, Good and Bad Practise.

I learned about the difference between having an agent and going freelance, 

the takeaway I got from freelance, was that it’s much harder to reach a wider audience, and get commissions. I don’t personally agree with this as I believe with social media apps, it’s now easier than ever to adopt the self-promotional mentality and you can reach people in all parts of the world, even if you don’t have the connections that an agency will have, it’s still a more accessible market now. 

Although by having an agent it creates a sort of safety net, you’re hooked into a network of people that you could work with and also you have someone actively finding you work. But beware of the fees that can occur with having an agent as they will take a fair chunk of your pay, so between paying tax and paying your agent, you could end up losing a lot of money.

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Week Two - Tax, Invoicing, Money

This week I learned about the money side of being an illustrator, my biggest takeaway from this lesson was finding out that if you have two jobs, you get taxed 20% on the second one. 

I learned about how to create an invoice, and also that the price should be agreed upon in detail before creating the piece. I learned that I can claim tax back for materials and how having an accountant can be an easier way to do all of it myself.

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Week one

For our professional practice lesson, Louise Weir, gave us a talk on her own practice, showing us examples of her work. She talked us through her process of digital collage, and how she then painted what she created. I found it helpful to see examples of commissions and also website layout. Below is an Example of her work.

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King Cobra discusses the porn industry, it showcases one of the most popular body types, and that is the  “Twink” a skinny younger guy, with a  campy quality. A twink isn’t hyper-femme but is seen as innocent and sometimes referred to as a pup for possessing the same quality. King cobra centers around a porn star Brent Corrigan, Brent is typical in the gay porn community, He could be compared to gay porn stars such as Jake Bass, Will Braun, and Johnny Rapid. The film plays with the idea that older gay men over sexualize younger gay “twinks”, which is a common occurrence and then that leads on into fetishes and fantasies, but the films main theme is that of underage pornography and how easy it was for guys to not show id as long as they looked a certain way. Older guys falling for younger guys for a sense of companionship, because they didn’t have the same chance to experience a relationship with a guy when they were that age. I personally found this really interesting especially because it made me think that even now the porn industry is completely sizeist and still holds on the same aesthetic value it had in 2007. over 10 years later and still no evolution, Still categories for black men, older men, twinks, bears. separating race and size and pushing them aside for the same aesthetic. I don't agree with it and believe this is something I will reflect further upon as I go ahead.

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I watched this film to see if it had any relevance to my subject. In some respects it does but on a whole, I find it doesn’t, it does discuss how hypermasculine the sports world is and how it suppresses gay men out of fear. It does show the pressure that athletes go through to stay in shape and the pressure they face, but presses more on coming out and the psychological effect it has on athletes. 

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This is instagram activist Scotteeisfat, he is a performance artist that fights the media’s portrail that there is ‘one body type for gays’.

He creates perfomance pieces that challenges his viewers to see a usually hidden part of the gay community. The media hides away body types and inadvertently shames the larger and non conforming part of the gay community, this is why scotty is so important as he is challenging this and bringing plus size to the social norms of today.