At the beginning of this project we were told about how much we ‘need to learn’ as visual communicators. There was also this whole emphasis on our own communication technology and to be honest, I didn’t really get it. This is mainly because our Comm Tech module last year was very much about technology that perhaps wasn’t specific to us as practitioners. I, for example made my website about the history and future of 3D, which was not entirely relevant to my illustrations. So, like many others on the course I did not find the idea of a follow up very exciting.

As with most of the Vis Com briefs, it took me a while to realise what the brief was actually asking me to do. When it eventually clicked, I became quite enthusiastic, as it would allow me to fulfill my personal aims set out in my Statement of Intent. Being put into specialist groups really helped me, as to be honest I wasn’t too sure who the other illustrators were. I also found it useful when we discussed collectively what we needed to learn. I was surprised to discover that the majority of people were in the same boat as me where Photoshop and Illustrator were concerned. I initially thought that I was the only one slightly ‘behind the times’ and it was reassuring to know that I was not the only one.

When we were given a mini brief from Matt, I was very excited. I have always been better at drawing people than anything else so I thought it would be perfect for me. After picking Elvis Presley as my icon of choice, I went straight to my sketchbook. Although I was fairly happy with the work I had produced, I felt myself slipping into old habits and going back to my comfort zone. I remembered the feedback for my final major project had stated that I needed to be more ambitious and get out of my comfort zone. Remembering this made me feel inclined to stop working on the Elvis project entirely as I would be tempted to employ the same working methods as before and fail to learn anything new.

I felt that one of my main problems was that I was far too precious with my work and had the view that if it wasn’t perfect to me, then no one else would like it. Being told in the past that I am good at making my drawings resemble their subject, I stupidly became paranoid that people would think I was ‘rubbish’ if the standards slipped even slightly. This is mainly why I found myself not enjoying my work in the first year, as I was so very stuck in my ways and couldn’t see a way out. In an attempt to rectify this problem, I decided to choose a topic that would free me from the restrictions of reference material. The topic that I chose was ‘Dinosaurs’; because I knew that it would be a topic I would enjoy and has many possibilities. At first, I had to tell myself not to worry about how the drawings turned out and reminded myself that I could always discard them if they were utter rubbish. After rationalising my pathetic fear of drawing without reference, I put pen to paper and went for it. I found myself enjoying drawing for the first time in years. I really liked the freedom that came with drawing from the imagination and found myself becoming less stressed about specific details.

After tackling this major hurdle, I was a lot more inclined to get started on the ‘technology’ side of the brief, primarily being Photoshop and Illustrator. Despite briefly touching upon them in Foundation, I found myself falling at the first hurdle and failing to learn barely anything at all. In the past, I had scanned my work and had never been happy with the way the image transferred to the screen. My main problem appeared to be that the line work lost its quality once scanned in. There were also mysterious marks appearing on the scanned image that were not even visible in the original. Once taught how to adjust the levels, I was pretty much kicking myself, as it was so quick and easy to do. I found that this was the case with adding colour to my images as well, starting with a slow struggle and ending with a rewarding ‘Eureka!’ moment. I felt that Illustrator was a similar process, although it took me a lot longer to get to grips with the Pen tool. Using tutorials on the CD Rom really helped as they started with the basics. I ended up having to do each exercise more than once, but after a while it gradually became easier and easier to do.

Learning these new skills, although basic opened up more opportunities to explore other aspects of communication technology that I would never have been able to use before. I realised that these skills could be used as platforms to experiment with screen printing and the laser cutter, two processes that I was previously too scared to even consider. Knowing that I could potentially experiment with these processes lead me to contemplate the idea of creating something more than ‘just illustrations’. Going to craft fairs and hand-made stalls further inspired me to slightly change the direction of my work. This time last year, or even six months ago I wouldn’t have dared to go to the print room or try out the laser cutter. On reflection, I felt that I shouldn’t let something so ridiculous hinder my work and progression. With that in mind, I went for an induction on the laser cutter and a refresher in the print room and began to plan projects related to the processes.

On the laser cutter, I decided that I wanted to make my own dinosaur jewellery, which seemed like a simple enough task. Unfortunately, there were a lot of problems that I hadn’t anticipated. Firstly, being new to the workshop area, I had no idea where to buy materials, which took up a large proportion of my time. With only a one hour slot between two of us, time was extremely precious and we found that it slipped away far too rapidly. After that experience, we both learnt that we would need an hour slot each to allow time for technical difficulties, which unfortunately were inevitable. 

Time became an issue when screen-printing was concerned too. As I had never fully stripped and exposed my own screen before, I had no real idea how long the entire process would take and certainly hadn’t considered the amount of waiting around that was involved. I worked out that I would need to set aside half a day at least to fully prepare a screen. There were also issues with the amount of space available in the print room. On my first day of printing, someone was printing an entire double duvet, which took up the majority of the space. I felt extremely limited and ended up ruining my first set of prints because there wasn’t enough space for me to put my ink and squeegee at a safe distance. I found that with print making, like every other process I have encountered, making mistakes was a vital part of the learning procedure. I realised that the more mistakes I made, the better the final outcome would be in the end. Another thing that I have learnt through these more physical processes is the importance of time. I found myself wasting a great deal of it on simply setting up and cleaning away apparatus. In order to manage my time more efficiently, I found it useful to write down a schedule, which effectively helped me to get more work done in the long run.

These projects have also helped me learn more about myself in terms of my ability to self motivate and manage a brief independently. Contrary to my former belief that I work better at home and late into the night, I have realised that getting up early and making the most of college resources benefits me a lot more. I have also found myself forming closer friendships with others on the course and becoming a lot more comfortable in the studio, which wasn’t the case last year. Although this brief has pushed me further than any other, it has also highlighted the areas that I would like to work on in the future. As technology is so fast paced, I am now aware that I was constantly be learning new things and that it is not physically possible to ‘know enough’ about something. After experimenting with screen-printing, I am now keen to try more physical printing processes such as; lino cut, woodblock and etching. I would also like to try animation, something that I unfortunately did not get time to do on this brief. I am particularly interested in stop frame animation and rotoscoping as communication techniques.

In conclusion, although this project has helped me to push myself as an illustrator, I don’t feel that I have found my identity yet. I’ve certainly got a little more searching to do until the ‘penny drops’ finally, but as long as I keep trying, I’m sure it’ll happen sooner than I think.

As I wasn’t happy with my first set of prints, I chose to expose my screen again with a different image, this time one single image that wouldn’t require taping up.

I feel that although the last session was a disaster, I really learned from my mistakes as I approached the process completely differently. For example, I ensured that I kept my squeegee well away from my printing area, as the excess ink stained my previous prints. I also made sure to wipe the screen after every print to remove any excess that might smudge onto the rest of the print.

I also made sure to remember to put the weights on the screen every time, as that was a problem I kept having previously.

Here are the final prints…

I had a laser cutter induction today, as I decided that I wanted to make my illustrations into physical objects, primarily necklaces and key rings. As I had a session booked immediately after, I produced some images on Illustrator to be cut. The images have to be saved in CS3 format as the technology on their computer is not quite up to date.

I bought some purple 3mm acrylic to cut the dinosaurs out of and set up the machine. Firstly, you have to put the cutter online. Then press the button below to confirm that there is material loaded to be cut. Then the cutting area has to be mapped out by using the arrow and enter buttons. The lines that need to be cut out then have to be selected as ‘Cut-through’ lines and the material settings must be confirmed before cutting. Then it can be sent to the cutter and the rest of the work is done for you.

I did a quick test on paper first, to ensure that they would come out the right size…

Here they are in acrylic…

I really wanted to make some wooden dinosaurs, but unfortunately had many technical difficulties when it came down to it. Despite the fact that the cutter can definitely cut through 4mm ply with ease, it seemed to be impenetrable. I tried changing the settings but nothing worked.

I later tried to engrave the acrylic with one of my illustrations to see how it would come out..

I went to the print room today to set up a screen. It was a very long winded process, starting with the stripping of the screen. After putting on a lot of protective gear I covered both sides of the screen with a substance called B-Strip, rinsed it with the shower and then blasted it with the power hose. Next I soaked both sides in B-Solve and left it for ten minutes before going through the same rinsing processes as before.

I then degreased the screen by washing it with washing up liquid and water and left it in the drying room for about half an hour. When the screen and frame are bone dry, the emulsion can go on. I put two coats on as my screen was for fabrics, but only one coat is needed if you have a paper screen. The coated screen is then left in a drying cupboard for an hour. While I was waiting for it to be dry, I prepared and printed the images for my screen.

To do this I have used the outlines of drawings done on Illustrator and used Photoshop to fill and arrange the images as shown below.

I then printed these images onto two sheets of A3 acetate by selecting ‘Manual Feed’ on the Paper Feed printing options and manually put the acetate into the printer when it said it was ready.

The images are then exposed and the screens have to be rinsed thoroughly and dried for a further half an hour before printing can begin.

My first attempt of printing with this screen went horribly wrong. I used masking tape to cover the dinosaurs I wasn’t using, which all became damp and peeled off. The ink smudged everywhere and I couldn’t see through the screen to layer up the images.

My second attempt with this screen was slightly better as I used parcel tape instead of masking tape. I also only taped up a few dinosaurs at a time in order to make the pattern appear more consistent. 

It was an improvement on the first, but mistakes were still made. For example, I managed to tape over a bit of the small long-neck’s feet, and the ink still smudged everywhere.

I had never tried out live trace on illustrator before so I thought I’d give it a go. It definitely gave a different quality to my work, the lines appeared more loose than the pen tool which I quite liked. I sort of felt like I was cheating by doing it though as it’s so easy.

I decided to try drawing with coloured paper, seeing how it would work when it was scanned in. 

Here is the original image:

I removed the negative space, so that just the dinosaur filled with paper was visible. I adjusted the levels very slightly and it looked like this..

I really liked the subtle textures visible in the paper and the quality of the colour so I decided to adjust the levels further.

As I was really interested in the textures the scanned paper added to the images, I tried scanning in some crumpled paper to use as a fill for the dinosaurs.

I also scanned in some patterns on my clothes to use as fills.

I then went back to the idea of creating patterns with the dinosaurs, an idea from earlier on in the project. I felt that the pattern I had initially created was not particularly strong, this could have been because the images themselves were not as strong. As I am happy with the quality of my pterodactyl drawings, I chose to use them for basis of my pattern.

I began by opening the Illustrator files and removing the line work so that only the silhouettes remained. 

For the image below, I saved the illustrator silhouette as a .PDF file and opened it in Photoshop. I then used the Paintbrush tool to fill the image and removed the original layer to leave just the filled in silhouette.

I then made a smaller pterodactyl in a different colour by flipping the one I had already and then adjusting the size and colour.

I then resized this image on Photoshop and copied it, created a new large file and pasted the image repetitively to form the pattern.

I then used the same process, but with outlines rather than block colour pterodactyls..

I later designed more patterns but this time using Illustrator to arrange each individual image. I made this with the intention of screen printing which is why the image is in black and white. I wanted to see how the images would look layered up, providing a contrast in line thickness.

I then inverted the colours using Photoshop to create a black background and white line.

I experimented a bit with watercolour, and was interested to see how it would turn out when scanned in and adjusted on Photoshop.

Here is the original scanned image.

I then adjusted the levels on Photoshop and it turned out like this, 

I liked how vibrant the colour was however, I didn’t like the way that it emphasised the inconsistency of the wash by making the tones more defined.

I looked back on my previous work and decided that I wanted to improve my pterodactyl drawings, there was something I didn’t quite like about them before. I looked at a few more images briefly for a bit of reference and I think that it has definitely helped to improve them. It made me realise that I had made them far too angular.

I then drew them again on Illustrator with the Pen tool.

I decided to try out my brown paper sketchbook and see if the drawings have better qualities than those on the white paper. I was interested to see how the brown paper would translate once scanned in and to investigate how adjusting the levels will affect the image.

When trying to use the brown paper as a fill for one of the dinosaurs, I accidentally ended up losing the original line work. I now know that it happened because I deleted the wrong layer. Despite it being a bit of an accident, I actually liked the way it turned out as it looks like a stencil image.