Sara Fanelli- The Figure

Sara Fanelli has always been an illustrator that Iv looked up to though out my studies, for this particular project I looked at Sarah use of figures, colours, and textures in her work. 

Holden & Son's

Peter Holden & Jack Macguire (Stockport College Motion Design alumnus) of Holden & Sons will be speaking. 
http://www.holdenandsons.com

"The story of Holden & Sons began in the sixties with a fresh faced art director called Peter Holden hitch hiking his way from Northwich to Manchester to start his first job in an advertising agency. Forty years on, welcome to Holden & Sons.

As Creative Director, Peter now works with his two sons Ted and Olly, and the rest of the team in our Northern Quarter studio. Working with big brand names (and smaller, up and coming ones) is second nature to Peter, but thereʼs something special about doing what you love within a family business. So what can we do for you? As an agile, integrated marketing communications agency we can connect and engage audiences with your product or service across all media. We can help build and strengthen your brand, realising your business objectives with strategic marketing and solid creative thinking. And we can create and implement everything from a fully integrated campaign to a one-off special project on time and on budget to help make your life easier – and your bottom line healthier.

Coming to these lectures are always very exciting because it is so important that this stage of my year to connect with as many different areas of art & design that I might one day want to work with in the future. I instantly recognized the Holden & Son's logo before in advertisment but couldn't remember where from, this tells me they are very popular and well known in the advertisement industry. What I took from the lecture was how important the family connection he was trying to give across, working with his son's and understanding the importance of teaching them the skills he has learnt which I found very refreshing in a industry which you don't see anymore.

Manchester University Visit

 Manchester Museum Visit:
Starting every knew project it is always important for me to develop a sense of place sketchbook, it allows me to research different elements of where I could place my story, where the location might be? the environment that person or creature might live in?
By travelling to Manchester Museum it allowed me to focus my attention on place, the figure and research into the environment my characters lives in. Also it allowed me to go back to my drawing skills and understanding the importance of drawing from the figure and real life and how it adds a more realistic effect which I constantly links with my work.

Kate Slater ( Children's Book Development)

Kate Slater ( Children Book Illustrator)
I started to look at her work for inspiration and insight into how she produce's her sets.

PDF Portfolio Feedback (Irina Kaygorodova)

It's always important to get as much feedback as possible about my portfolio, and how I can change and develop it for future clients? So receiving an email from Irina Kaygorodova in response to my PDF portfolio was a very uplifting moment. Irina was a great influence on me when I traveled to Prague last year. Reading her email was very interesting to find out what else I can do to improve my skills and how I can translate this into my children book process. 


Hi Kate,

first of all sorry for my late reply, last period here was extremely busy. And thank you very much for your words about workshop, i'm happy to hear you liked watercolor and you started to use it after visiting my studio. 

Your artworks look very interesting and I think you can also improve your technique using watercolor, for example for backgrounds, drawing sky or whatever. Also if talk about your book cover I'd suggest you to pay more attention now for typography. The Name of the book should be more visible and also you can try to do writing by your hands (even with watercolor using different size of brush), it always looks unique and cute especially for children's books. And I would do a bit more transparent background or not so good visible on every part of cover, trying to concentrate on the main personage and Header and also I would do wall as one "picture" without border in the middle of spread. Characters look so cute, so you need just to find a way how to put them together with background.

I like your portfolio logo! Will you do some typography as well? You could continue it like a ribbons on the hat.

I really would love to see your works with watercolor :) so feel free to send me just apologize in advance if I will reply slowly.

Also I wanted to ask if you don't mind I will take your words as a testimonial for my workshop video on my website? If you don't mind please send me your picture I will post it together with text.

Looking forward to hear from you,

Best regards,

Irina 

Andrew Wyth

Michael Palin in Wyeth's World (BBC Documentary)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZ1NDuvskpY

Watching this documentary gave me great insight into Wyeth's methods of working, and why he produced this painting in this location. Wyth's came from a Swedish German family of famous painters, her father was a picture book illustrator who produced a book called Treasure Island.
He lived in a small rural town where he produced over 300 painting of the surrounding of Christian country house. He made two of the rooms his studios and waited for 2 months for the winds to change and produce his painting for example The Wind from the sea 1977 and it was also were he first noticed Christian pulling herself on the floor like a crab on the New England sure. In the painting of Christian he expressed a feeling of her being trapped or is she trying to get back home. In 1968 she passed away and changed his life and the way he produced and found work. The media he worked  with was Egg Tempera which is a more rural mix media and creates more classical colour pallets.

Assessment Tutorial Feedback

It is always very nervous waiting for your Assessment, you over think things that you could of done better? How it could effect your mark? Or weather the tutor's like your ideas for FMP?

Self Assessment is an important part of assessing our work and placing a percentage of were you think you are on the marking sheet. Anyone who is stupid enough to forget their assessment sheet is just digging themselves a massive hole (specially when its on Moodle)

Like Gary says 'You get what mark you deserve at the end of the day'

Anyways I didn't need to worry I got a mark that I am extremely proud of and I felt it reflected how hard I worked? and what I learn and accomplished from that project and how I can take it into my FMP?

We decided not to continue with the Macmillan Competition Children's Brief because with a short period to produce the rest of the book I think it would of taken too much time over my FMP to produce anything else. Talking to my tutor's I decided to find a similar piece of Folk-law stories to create a re-creation of an old classical story using similar method I created my Macmillan book but taking into a knew level of investigation by taking into set design and photography like my Scary Stories final outcome was created in, producing the narratives, printing them onto cardboard and setting them up, creating depth of field and creating elements of shadow and then photographing them into a children book format. 

That's the plan anyways

Continue to follow my work, for updates and development of my project