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.
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:
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.
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].
chalon joy collingwood 