Exercise: Your own work and review

This exercise asked us to review our work so far looking at our sketchbooks etc to identify images which have elements that you enjoy. In doing so we are asked to make our selection purely on how pleasing the image is aesthetically rather than if its suits the original intention.

With that in mind I went through my work and identified the images below.

I think some of the food style images above could work well in a mini self published recipe type book.

Something like this could work as a surface pattern for something like a plate or piece of ceramics. It might also work as a scarf or wrapping paper design.

I can see this wee dog character being a character in its own book. 

I like the black and white contrast

Fish image could work as a print / repeat or as a ceramic tile.

Think this would work as a good book cover or perhaps even as a print or surface decoration. It might also work as a wallpaper or kids design mural (obviously content would have to be better laid out for pattern design - repeat pattern effect etc.

Something like this might work as an artists print/artwork - could be mounted and surrounded by a frame

I can see the abstract piece above working as a silk scarf or perhaps as a surface pattern on something like a  piece of ceramics. I played about with the image and you could make multiple colour variations based on the same print. 

This exercise has really got me thinking about what sort of illustrations I'd like to create and the skills I'd like to develop. It was useful to look over my work so far and whilst I can see real improvement since the start of the course there are many areas and illustration styles/ subjects I'd like to experiment with. 

In particular I came across the work of Oliver Kugler. Oliver won the V&A Illustration Award a few years ago and I really like his reportage style of illustration. Some of the illustrations are like an illustration visual diary with handwritten text supporting the illustrations. There's a real humour and honesty about his work although obviously as with any style of illustration the accuracy is very much at the illustrators disposal! 

Online Images Oliver Kugler Accessed via http://www.olivierkugler.com/travel/5.html 8th February 2013

I've also been looking at the work of people like Matthew Cook, Lucinda Rogers and Marion Deuchars

Lucinda Rogers

Lucinda Rogers

Online Image Accessed via  http://www.heartagency.com/artist/LucindaRogers/gallery/1/image/819, 8th February 2013

Marion Deuchars

Online Image Accessed via  http://www.heartagency.com/artist/MarionDeuchars/gallery/1/image/2525

I've been a keen viewer of the Urban Sketchers and stumbled across Studio 1482 a group who push towards reportage style images. Looking ahead to the next assignments I hope to try some of these more travel and location based styles although it is a little daunting but I find some of these styles really exciting and energetic.