ROBYN ILLUSTRATIONS

Manchester based Illustration Student

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Hopes, Fears & Opportunities

At the start of third year I wrote a blog about my Hopes, Fears and Opportunities for the future. Now that I am coming to the end of my three-year university course I will reflect on this and see what has changed and what new hopes, fears and opportunities I have developed.

Hopes

My hopes for this year included graduating with a grade I am proud of; I feel that I have put my all into this year, especially this last semester in order to achieve a grade I am pleased with. I want to be able to finish the year and feel like I can say I did everything I could, and then I will be happy with my grade. The rest of my hopes so far are still the same and will require me to work hard after I leave uni. I want to be able to find work or an internship that focuses on what I love doing and puts my degree to use. I mentioned a saying I heard on the course in first year and I feel it has stuck with me throughout my three years here “If you love your job, you’ll never work another day in your life.” This is something I truly believe in and wish to achieve. A hope that will never die of mine is to live in New York some day, even if it’s just for a week. All these ambitious hopes aside, my dream would be to find an intern or placement after uni which allows me to shadow and work with someone that I hope to be like in a few years time, whether this be at a magazine company or an online clothing brand, as long as I can learn and contribute I feel this could help me to begin my career.  

Fears

I had quite a lot of fears at the start of third year that involved never finding work and being stuck in the job I’m in now, which has nothing to do with my degree. I think and I hope that I have gained too much motivation over this year to not get stuck in my job, I want more and I know what I enjoy doing. My biggest fear now is fear of the unknown. I’ve been in education for 18 years and I feel it’s all I’ve ever known. University has been my safety blanket for the past three years and to think that I won’t have that anymore and I have to go out into the ‘real world’ by myself scares me. I hope I don’t leave uni and feel I’m to scared to apply for jobs or go to interview, I want to keep this motivation I have at the moment.

Opportunities

I have had so many opportunities in third year which the teachers have helped set up massively. At Uni the tutors set up residential trips, guest lectures, talks and workshops with people in the industry, this gives us as students chance to speak to and interact with the people that are already working in and are successful in the industry that we want to enter. Tutors set up meetings with artists and exhibitions especially on residential trips, which are amazing opportunities as we’ve been to New York and Prague in recent years so it’s great to see how people in different countries contribute to the industry. Unfortunately I didn’t get chance to go on this years residential trip to Paris which would have been an amazing opportunity to try and meet some fashion illustrators. After Christmas was when I began my contact with professional practitioners, this started with some meetings that the tutors set up which gave us the chance to hear from the practitioners on what they do, their client lists and how they can help us. This was followed by group or individual portfolio reviews, which was a great experience to practise interviews and showing our work to potential clients. I also received great feedback and constructive criticism, which really helps with building my portfolio. I attended an event held at Manchester Metropolitan Business School also which allowed us to hear from professionals in the industry and also get our portfolio’s reviewed by art critics and directors! Having these opportunities and pushing myself to go to events such as this has helped to build my confidence in showing my work but also prepared me for interview scenarios.

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I have also created a mock up cosmetics range including facial care, mascara, eye shadow and cream packaging that could be used for my pattern

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Hair Care products After reviewing my drawings and searching for other final outcomes the obvious thing to do was a hair campaign. A lot of my drawings are based around the detail in the hair so I feel these would be perfect a long with my line drawings of girls faces for make up or beauty. I have made mock ups with live surfaces to show how my drawings would look as a campaign.

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CANDY Magazine

As part of another final outcome I have designed and made my own magazine. I have called this Candy after one of the girls I have drawn throughout this project and thought it was a fun name for a magazine. Initially I wanted to just create a front cover to give an idea of how I could present my work editorially but then I thought it would be nice way to show my work as a kind of portfolio.

So I have created this 20 page magazine full of my work with little editorial quirks such as an inside contents page and title pages with double spreads.

I am really pleased with the outcome and feel that this could be something different to show my work for my degree show!

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Here are my two dissertation books for my research project. Both have been written, designed and edited by me, published by epubli.com.

I have kept one copy simple as to how it was published but the other I decided to show a different effect of how my book could be presented. I screen printed my cover onto a cloth like material and wrapped the book myself.

I feel the after result doesn’t work quite as well as I had earlier envisioned but I am happy I have experimented and tried a different process instead of having two books the same.

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Here come the boys!

I overcame my fear of drawing men and drew 4! Granted they have no faces and some have long hair but their men! I feel these work well with my previous drawings of women’s hairstyles.

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My dissertation arrived today!

Written, edited and designed by me. Published by epubli.com, based in Germany. I am so happy with the result, it reflects the subject I have written about perfectly! “Feminism & Gender Inequality: Why have women taken feminism to the extremes that they have and how does this manifest itself in today’s society?”

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One outcome from yesterdays screen printing session.

Here I have tried to recreate my drawing of girls hairstyles into an ombre hair colour effect as this is in trend at the moment. I feel the colours haven’t worked as well as I’d liked but it is quite hard to mix a brunette and blonde colour out of inks! I will scan this piece in and edit it further to get the colour exactly right but I feel this could be framed as a final piece I would be happy with.

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Portfolio Review 6

Gina Cross

Today I got my portfolio reviewed by Gina Cross after hearing from her about her career and advice on life after university.

Review:

- Look at branding agencies (Research ones in Manchester) - Lord Whitney Apprenticeships - Really likes the line drawings, simple and elegant - Work seems to be ‘very now’ with ‘lovely lines’ - Think about what magazines would commission me - Send off postcards with my work on twice every 2 months - Don’t worry if you don’t hear a response - keep trying - Really liked the first image, make a set of these with the same pattern for example on a bag or trousers in the next sets - this will show how work can be commissioned and used for a campaign - Try the screen print technique done on the cocktails with the hair drawings - Look at Waitrose, Tesco, Sainsburys magazines - In flight / travel magazine commission illustrators a lot these days - Use instagram as much as possible - follow people, tag correctly

This advice was really helpful and it was nice to not only get good feedback on my work but also to be given ideas on how I could progress with some of my work to make it look more commission able. 

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Practitioner Visit 7

Gina Cross

Gina Cross came to visit today and gave a talk on how she has progressed through her career before giving me feedback on my own portfolio of work.

She has broad experience in lots of different fields including being commissioned, being an art director, owning her own gallery and giving lectures in education. Three main points that Gina Cross mentioned were:

1. Know who your market is before you begin and you need to know and learn how to access that. How can you reach your target audience to make sure that your work is seen by the right people.

2. Transfer skills to other areas - now is a good time to expand because the industry is so vast that if you have more than one skill you’re more likely to get the job instead of them having to hire 5 different people when one person could do it.

3. Gina Cross herself tends to work with people who have done their skill for a long time because they know where they’re going and what they want to do, they have finished exploring and now have a niche. Be experienced and get out there and try different things until you find what you want to stick at - this way you seem more reliable to the client. 

She recommends selling work online, in galleries, working in collaborations and partnerships to share commissions, anything that can enable you to be seen around the world and get your work out there. Do a lot of art fairs and pop up shops, this way you can actually reach out to your client base and be seen by the public more. Think about after uni and whether we could collaborate as a group to get started, not just with people from my uni but others and also in different professions so that there is a range and we have our own kind of agency.

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Screen Printing

Spending the day in the print room testing out different techniques of printing. Some outcomes were better than others!

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Fabric Pattern

The pattern I created for the end papers for my dissertation have received quite a lot of feedback from practitioner visits so I decided to play around with the pattern and see what else it could work on. I had the idea of printing onto a soft drape like material like chiffon or voile to creates drapes. I have mocked this up on a live surface and have actually had material printed. Here I have presented the fabric in front of a window with various objects to show how the pattern would look hung as a drape on chiffon material. Also it could be used as a scarf or accessory so I have paired it with some sunglasses and a bag to create a feel for the design.

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Nikki Pilkington

I love the use of colour in Nikki Pilkington’s work. Sometimes it is so minimal and hardly needed and other times it is the main focus of the image. Her balance of fine drawing with pattern and colour is something I am trying to perfect through my own interpretation and style.

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Inspiration on Instagram for my drape curtains. Beautiful pattern on a chiffon material, similar to colours that i’d like to create.

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I Want Candy

The second photoshoot taken of my friend by me involved more hand poses. This pose caught my attention the most and I immediately played around with the symmetry. I really like the effect of the pink background against the denim dungarees and shaded drawings to give it an urban style but still with an elegant touch.

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A day of drawing in the garden

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Eye See You

Pattern print reflecting the print of ‘girls’ using a similar style and colour. Could be used for make up (eye shadow/mascara) packaging or make up bags.