About Me

    I am a Southampton based Illustration student, completing my final year at Southampton Solent University. I work predominantly with ink painting, collage and Photoshop.

My personal interests are reading, music and of course, illustration. I find that illustration is a big part of my life, whether I am location drawing or taking photographs of subjects I find interesting, I am constantly looking out for everyday objects or scenarios that can become a story of their own. My most recent projects have all taken inspiration from events that have happened to myself or people I know. I enjoy working in a representational manner, I like people to think about what they are seeing.

Love and Death cover by Claudia Whiting, Papercut, Collage and Photoshop.

I tend to immerse myself entirely in whatever project I am working on. I am careful to choose an appropriate playlist, or 'soundtrack' in order to obtain the perfect atmosphere. A lot of my early sketches are incredibly direct (as you will see in later posts), and are often a direct response to whatever music I am listening to. I feel connecting to the work in this way is important, especially as I try to illustrate atmosphere within my work.

Project Launch

Today my Final Major project was launched, giving me about 16 weeks to investigate a brief of my own creation. I will also be working on some self promotional material and producing a professional portfolio. This blog will document my progress throughout this project and will have reflections on sketches, paintings and ideas I have. I am hoping that by keeping this blog as a reflective diary it will enable me to think clearly on the work I have produced and push my development further. I will soon be writing a proposal for my brief, however at this stage I am fairly convinced I will be producing a book of some sort.

About this Blog

I have created a blog in order to document my progression through Illustration my Final Major Project at Southampton Solent University.

I have chosen the format of a Blog because I will be able to add multiple pictures, links and videos. I feel it is important for me to add videos as they are usually a major source of inspiration, whether it be a music track, or part of a movie that I find particularly inspiring.

The look of the blog itself is important as well. I want to be able to set my images within a context. By creating a skin for the blog it will mean that all of my images will be set within the desired atmosphere, in this case, a post industrial collapse of society. How I am going to portray that through a blog skin will be a challenge, but an interesting exercise all the same.

My project is set to be a narrative at the moment. I will write a proposal for it detailing some of my plans to work though during the next weeks.

My theme is Nature and Man. I want to attempt to create a world were either machine and nature co-exist ( a science fiction style evolution of the natural and man made), or man has destroyed the natural completely.

I feel they are in some ways complex themes to tackle, but I am excited about the concepts and look forward to creating some work!

Contents

Part One
About Me
About the Project and Blog
Project Proposal
Reflections on my previous project
Self Promotion Launch

Part Two- Brief weekly summaries
Week 1 Summary
Week 2 Summary
Week 3 Summary
Week 4 Summary
Week 5 Summary
Week 6 Summary
Week 7 Summary
Week 8 Summary
Easter Break Summary
Week 9 Summary
Week 10 Summary
Week 11 Summary
Week 12 Summary
Week 13 Summary

Part Three
Conclusion 
Current CV 
Appendix