New 3M Buckley Innovation Blog

As we have been told to create a new blog for the 3M Buckley Innovation Centre Commission, I will focus on putting my development on the new blog and keep this blog for artist inspirations, tutorials and anything else I don't find directly beneficial for Liz Towns-Andrews who is the primary commissioner for the brief.

Here is my new blog address so you can keep up to date with my commission work for the 3M Buckley Innovation Centre:

http://3mbiccarlataylorillustration.blogspot.co.uk/

Or click image to go to new blog:

Initial trip to 3M Buckley Innovation Centre

As part of the brief, I was told that I would have to make a commissioned art piece for the 3M Buckley Innovation Centre at the University of Huddersfield. Therefore, my initial reaction was to go to the building itself to gain a better perspective of the style and layout which will help me when making appropriate design decisions.

As a general observation, I found that the building had a modern interior and exterior, but also felt quite corporate and simple. There are a lot of geometric shapes and limited colours, seemingly only grey, green and red tones. As the building suggests, it has a very professional look, though lacks any vibrancy in colour to fit into the sleek, modern finish. 

In the corridors, light projects text onto the walls and much shadow. I will need to be careful when placing my work so the reflection doesn't disadvantage my artwork and think about how it could affect the overall look of the piece. The artwork will need to be appropriate for the setting, keeping a modern feel whilst interesting professionals and creatives who work in the same building.

I immediately took initiative and asked the receptionist to forward my email to those who work in the building so I could interview them about their companies and what they would like to see in the building. So far I haven't received any emails.

Even though I have already looked at the building, the 2 week research period is strictly focused on the themes of 'innovation' and 'creativity' rather than the innovation centre itself. I will go back to researching more on the building at a later date.

New Term, New Brief! Innovation and Creativity

For the second term of University, I was set an entirely new brief where I was given a 2 week period to complete research and ideas on the topics of innovation and creativity.

Through my initial research, I found that innovation was 'the ability to generate new ideas or to restructure and redeploy old ones'. Also, a lot of innovation has been centred around new technologies created by man. This led me to think of how I could innovate my own practice and perhaps look into personal past projects to see how I could re-invent them in new, innovative ways. Themes that immediately sprung to mind were modern day political issues, experimentation, superstitions, and editorial design for magazines. However, even with these initial thoughts, nothing seemed to really grab my attention for a starting point for the project.

Group Tutorial with Ian Massey: 23rd January 2014

In the group tutorial, we were asked to present our initial ideas about the theme of innovation. However, as I was not clear about which direction to take with the project, I listened to others to try and gain some inspiration. 

After hearing others responses to the brief, I decided that as one starting point I could look into the link between nature and innovation. This interested me in the sense that on the surface, natural forms do not seem to have a part in this kind of modern innovation and are unable to innovate themselves. This led me to think about adaptation and evolution. 

Another idea that came to mind was the link between innovation and the subconscious and so I asked myself, can innovation be accidental? This triggered me to think about how I have experimented with media, made 'happy accidents' due to mistakes, and how I often find myself thinking up new ideas at random intervals where I am not consciously making a decision i.e. the shower! These subconscious thoughts have often directed my projects or at least given me starting points! 

Therefore, I found the group tutorial with Ian Massey a major help as now I have at least a couple of ideas to start off my research into the new brief!

Inspiration Project Brief

Last week I was set a short project brief based on inspirations. After expressing what inspires me on a personal level on my previous blog post 'My Personal Inspirations' and sharing my thoughts with the rest of my peers at University, we were set a challenge in randomised pairs to create an illustration based on the other persons own inspirations.

I was paired up with Katie Mcternan who's personal work can be found on her blog at: http://katiemcternanillustration.tumblr.com/

Katie's Inspirations:

Nature- Andy Goldsworthy, man made vs nature (destruction of nature)- Julian Schnabel, patterns - Yellena James and Beatriz Milhazes, texture, butterflies - colour and pattern - Damien Hirst, Fiona Rae, visiting galleries, collect objects and images of things I like to make mood/inspiration boards, taking photos of things I see and like, time- decay- watching things age, experimentation with materials, life drawing, drawing.

Interestingly, I found many similarities with my own personal inspirations. Therefore, I naturally focused on these things and decided that to create my illustrative interpretation I would use the themes of nature and decaying over time. I also looked at the artists which were given and actually really loved the work of Yellena James who uses plenty of colour and pattern in her illustrations in a subtle and delicate way.

After researching and thinking about potential ideas for my illustration, I came up with an initial sketch:

The idea behind this was to illustrate how trees lose their leaves throughout the seasons. I visualised this as a form of decay and thought it linked quite well with Katie's inspirations. Furthermore, the bird signifies the beauty of nature and I thought that a bird would be a perfect icon for representation to reflect this. 

I then went on to develop this further with watercolour as my choice of media to reflect on the subtle beauty of nature.

Original watercolour illustration

Digitalised version of original illustration. Applied manipulation of brightness/ contrast, hue and saturation.

Final version of digital illustration

I believe that the final illustration I created was successful in the sense it portrays a sense of time and decay in a simple manner. The dark space gives the composition a sense of space, but also reflects the negativity of the theme of decay. The birds are almost 'dancing' in the air which gives a sense of juxtaposition and calm when the surroundings and themselves appear to be deteriorating.

Once digitalised, I feel it has enhanced my original illustration and made it stronger. It is not giving too much away and allows the viewer to interpret the illustration in their own way.

Cropping the image right makes the birds iconic without needing the rest of the image to understand the theme of decay within nature.


Reflection on Project

Overall I have found this project has given me a sense of relief from the main 'The Black Mirror' project. Forcing me to work at a fast pace has actually been a huge benefit to my approach to creating illustration, allowing me to illustrate my ideas visually without over-thinking or questioning them. As a matter of fact I believe through the creation of this illustration I can move forward with my main project and produce more visuals for my final outcomes.


Katie's Illustration based on my own Inspirations

As I was paired up with Katie for this brief, she also created an illustration based on my own personal inspirations (which can be seen on a previous post 'My Personal Inspirations').

After seeing Katie's illustration it immediately struck me how similar our compositions appeared to be, and how we both picked out the nature elements of our inspirations. We both also used watercolour as our choice of media which was interesting and demonstrated how similar our inspirations actually are. I think Katie has done a great job of depicting my personal inspirations, and how she chose to illustrate my childhood within quite a maturely painted and subtle background.

Mid-Project Brief Thoughts

As you are aware, I have been attempting to conquer a new project brief 'The Black Mirror'. This led to basing my project around the symbolism of numbers and playing cards, which has given me a desire to create my own pack of cards.

I will admit, this has taken me in several, unconnected and often frustrating directions. Many of my ideas seem to fall flat and lead to no-where. Regardless, these have given me many platforms for the basis of ideas which could inevitably lead to successful outcomes. For now, I am trying to get as many of these ideas out of my head and onto paper (or Photoshop), which is sometimes difficult. As an illustrator, it is extremely important to me that my work is original, unique and appealing to the eye.

Therefore, I must apologise in advance if my work appears somewhat disconnected, as I am struggling to decide on which idea to take forward and develop into finished pieces of work.

My personal aims: to get past the 'artist's block stage and create successful visuals through experimenting and trial and error! More work will appear soon for sure!

Thanks for reading :)

Personal Brief

As an extension of The Black Mirror project brief, I was set to create a new, more focused brief based on my personal project and the outcomes. This is a flexible brief and may change due to changes in development and ideas, though judging by what I have done so far here is my 'new' brief:

'Look into the main themes and concepts in the film 'Drowning by Numbers' and create a finished body of work which can be appropriately placed within the illustration industry. This could take any form of your choice and any media may be used, but it must achieve a high level of standard so that the work will be client-ready and finished/ presented in the correct context. 

The complete works should not have literal connotations to the film, though it must be evident which theme has been undertaken. Document all research, processes and ideas in appropriate formats.'