Tag: cheltenham illustration awards

evaluation, portfolio, SWOT/Target Setting

Cheltenham Awards Final Piece Production

Chalon Joy

It’s been a busy week indeed!

In between running around like a headless chicken and trying to maintain a ‘healthy’ work/job/life balance, I’ve finally finished up my final project of the year ♥

It was quite an arduous process, but I think I actually really benefited from the super short time frame I’d been left with- not only was I working towards my deadline, I was also racing to get my art book submitted for publishing in time! I wanted this piece to be included, so that was another self imposed time limitation.

I created the piece on Procreate, using a variety of my own photos from my 2018 China trip to inform the architecture and layout. I clocked in just over 30 hours across 4 days according to the app, so here’s a wee time lapse video of my process to make a very long story short! (This is the 30 second quick cut- the longer time lapse video is about 12 mins long, and unfortunately I couldn’t quite get it to load up on Vimeo!)

 

So it was quite a linear, reassured workflow, but also had some new techniques being used since Procreate is a completely new tool to me since my last Cheltenham project in 2017. I’m really pleased with how far I’ve come, as my line art, layers and detailing/texture management has come leaps and bounds. While I still appreciate the flat, pastel-y appeal of my old Cheltenham piece, this newer one boasts a lot more depth, as well as a more experimental colour palette that really is quite ‘far out’ for me as an artist- up until now I really have been stuck in my ways with pastels and monotone, but the subject matter fully supported a warm, deep toned palette and I think it ties in quite well.

Here’s the finished piece- there’s loads wrong with it of course, but I’m content for now ♥

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Modernisation (Collingwood, 2019)

 

Although I feel I’ve had a lot of success with this project, there were still some weak areas here and there- artwork wise, I think there’s still something amiss with the anatomy… but I have the time to fix this before final show, where I’ll hopefully be exhibiting this art as a centrepiece. If I’d have an ample amount of time prior to hand in this could have been fixed, but my workflow left me with a bit of a difficult situation- the way in which I’d blended the layers and applied tone and shading meant the line art and skin tones were across multiple layers, so it won’t be an easy task to correct this.

Working on this Cheltenham project has opened up lots more opportunities for me- I’m considering making a series of similar pieces based on my travels around the world. Also, when I submit this piece to the Awards I could potentially be featured in a catalogue showcasing selected entries from the year. Very exciting~

 

And with that, this wraps up my project work for Semester 2! Left to do is to finish off this blog, as well as some promo type stuff, like business cards, a creative CV and other artist-specific things like potential merchandise for final show. So, targets for the following week include tying up all the loose ends and making sure everything is ready and prepped for hand in, and also starting to think about final show- what I want to exhibit, sources for merchandise, and technicalities like layouts, exhibit space organisation, and marketing.

References

Collingwood, C. (2019). Modernisation [digital].

Collingwood, C. (2019). Modernisation Time Lapse .

portfolio, research, SWOT/Target Setting

Cheltenham Illustration Awards Progress

Chalon Joy

Its been a little while, but I’ve made some good progress since last checking in!

This week, I’ve been working constantly on concepts for my Cheltenham Awards piece- I want this to be culmination of my progression throughout my degree, so I want to make sure it’s suited to the brief, artistically and technically sound, and also something I’m proud of and can connect with.

When mapping out ideas for ‘Unity’ (the theme of the Awards this year), I thought back to my trip to China last year. The contrast between old and new Shanghai architecture, as well as the exceedingly blurred divide was reflected in the community around the city. It was a wild and dizzying blend of temples and traditional teahouses that were hundreds of years old, stood literally metres away from futuristic skyscrapers and the latest architectural marvels. It was so stunning, and unlike anything I’d ever seen! This really felt like the perfect thing to base my ideas on, so I set out making some concepts:

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‘Modernisation’ Concept 1 (Collingwood, 2019)
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‘Modernisation’ Concept 2 (Collingwood, 2019)
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‘Modernisation’ Concept 3 (Collingwood, 2019)

 

I’ve experimented with different background layouts, figural poses and blends of traditional and modern imagery. I chose the Pudong skyline as the background (very recognisable and iconic), with a selection of traditional architectural motifs based on the places I visited for the foreground surrounding the figure~

The idea fell into place quite quickly, as I was able to envision a rough layout after looking into my initial artist research, particularly the work of Sarah Joncas, as well as taking inspiration from my own past work:

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Left: Night Life (Joncas, n.d.). Right Haru ‘Springtime’ (Collingwood, 2017)

The combination of figural elements and landscapes is something I’m already familiar with, and I was eager to work on something that is both beautiful and detailed, with architectural elements that were new territory to me.

I think I’ll be able to realise this piece fairly ‘easily’ compared to my other projects, where half of the battle was technique and workflow. I’m confident in my ability to produce this piece on Procreate, even thought that in itself will be a slight learning curve. However, that just means this is a good opportunity to fully immerse myself in the software- I plan to do final tidy up and processing on Photoshop, but Procreate boasts most of the same functions, so I want to make sure I’m widening my skills as much as possible.

I’ll have to keep a close eye on my time restraints and other projects (e.g. this blog!), as not keeping up with any one of these will negatively impact my progress. This has been a major weakness throughout my degree, and it’s never been so critically important to keep this in check!

Targets for the next few days include working on this piece (probably constantly), while also finding time to start collating my portfolio work and prepping for hand-in~

 

References

Collingwood, C. (2019). Haru ‘Springtime’ [mixed media].

Collingwood, C. (2019). Modernisation Concept 1 [digital].

Collingwood, C. (2019). Modernisation Concept 2 [digital].

Collingwood, C. (2019). Modernisation Concept 3 [digital].

Joncas, S. (n.d.) Night Life [oil, acrylic].

research, SWOT/Target Setting

Semester 2 – Cheltenham Illustration Awards 2019

Chalon Joy

While I’m still working on finalising my risograph prints for Commercial Project 2 (hoping to have these printed in the next week or so), I’m going to start looking into the brief for the Cheltenham Illustration Awards (CIA) which was recently announced at the beginning of the month.

CIa 2019 Poster v2 900 web banner 2
Cheltenham Illustration Awards: Call for Entries 2019 (University of Gloucestershire, Sanfellipo, 2019)

 

In previous years the theme has been ‘Tangled Tales’ and ‘Tales Through Other’s Eyes’, so this year’s theme of ‘All Together Now: Tales of Unity’ is quite different. My first thoughts are that this theme is a bit less varied and not open to interpretation as much as the previous themes of 2017 and 2018. I worked on a piece for the competition in 2017 and was admittedly able to shoehorn it into the theme (‘Tales Through Other’s Eyes’) without too much bother; my design was only loosely based on the given brief.

This year, I plan to work much more closely with the given theme to produce something that is tailored to this concept, rather than trying to twist an existing idea into meeting the needs of the brief. Based on a mind map by my entire class that I photographed (Collingwood, 2019), I’ve taken some of the most appealing ideas and made my own mind map that expands upon these concepts:

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Cheltenham Illustration Awards Mind Map: ‘Unity’ (BA Hons Illustration) (Collingwood, 2019)

 

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Cheltenham Illustration Awards Mind Map: ‘Unity’ (Collingwood, 2019)

 

My piece from 2017 was done digitally, and I daresay this is the best way of creating artwork intended for online entry/print- I will most likely adapt a similar workflow of digitally collaging both traditional and digital motifs/imagery to create a piece that successfully showcases my skillset.

The competition is open to student, emerging and established illustrators, with a deadline of 1st June 2019 (a bit over two months away at the time of writing this post), so I’ll have right up until our degree deadline of the 13th May to create something really special.

 

On another note, there’s been another recently announced competition that is new for this year and based in the North East. Northern School of Art (formerly CCAD) is running The Northern Illustration Prize in association with AOI, with this year’s theme being Monkey, based on the bizarre legend of the Hartlepool Monkey.

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Northern Illustration Prize 2019 Banner (Northern School of Art, 2019)

 

I can’t say that theme has massively grabbed my attention, but with it being a new competition based in the North East it would be nice to enter. Since our degree course is brand new for this year, as a class we’re hoping to pull together some really good entries to put us on the map.

Like the Cheltenham Illustration Awards, it’s open to both emerging and established illustrators, with the prize being a fully funded studio in Hartlepool for one year. The prize is to mark the start of the Northern Festival of Illustration, a biennial event held in Hartlepool.

 

During these coming months I’ll have to be aware of my SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) more than ever, since I don’t want to let my grades slip at this crucial time. These are more of the same according to past projects- I’m good at realisation and research, but poor at timekeeping. This is both a weakness and a threat, but as this is the last project I’ll have to be acutely aware of how long is left before hand in- there’s no room for error here! Opportunity wise, I’m looking forward to be able to realise something and have full control over the outcome- most of my other projects have had a certain element of serendipity to them, where I’ve had to battle other elements in order to produce something I’m happy with.

 

My main target for the coming weeks will be to finish off the bulk of the work for the riso project- Once I get the images printed I can embellish the resulting prints at my leisure… or more likely, as an escape from what is most likely going to be hardcore planning and execution of this CIA 2019 project for the next few weeks!

References

Association of Illustrators (2019). The Northern Illustration Prize 2019 [online]. Available at: https://theaoi.com/northern-illustration-prize-2019/?fbclid=IwAR0SpwQXMjmh9nyb018JgubtDWu4bPB4FTi_RsSzLtgr2-e24vFmcGEoEz4   [Accessed 18 Mar 2019].

Collingwood, C. (2019). Cheltenham Illustration Awards Mind Map: ‘Unity’ [photograph].

Collingwood, C. (2019). Cheltenham Illustration Awards Mind Map: ‘Unity’ (BA Hons Illustration) [photograph].

Northern School of Art (2019). Northern Illustration Prize 2019 Terms [online]. Available at: https://theaoi.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/northern-illustration-prize-t-and-cs.pdf  [Accessed 18 Mar 2019].

Sanfellipo, A. (2019). Cheltenham Illustration Awards 2019 – Call For Entries: All Together Now! Tales of Unity [online]. Available at:  http://www.cheltenham-illustration-awards.com/p/about.html [Accessed 8 Mar 2019]

Smith, R. (2019). ‘The Northern School of Art launches major international art prize ‘The Northern Illustration Prize’ [online]. NorthernArt.ac.uk. Available at:  https://northernart.ac.uk/the-northern-school-of-art-launches-major-international-art-prize-the-northern-illustration-prize/ [Accessed 18 Mar 2019].