Tuesday, 12 May 2015

The Blog Post that Saved My Soul & Reflecting (ft Lizzy Stewart)

(the one that saved my soul)

Yesterday night I sat down at my laptop and wrote 700+ words on a blog post because I felt utterly lost and defeated with my tone of voice, what my illustration meant, where it was going, basically all of the things I felt that PPP was asking of me that I didn't know the answer to.

AND IT WAS THE MOST HELPFUL AND TRANSFORMATIVE BLOGPOST I HAVE EVER WRITTEN.

For someone else to read it may not seem like I'm saying a lot; or that what a lot of what I was saying made sense, but for me, personally, it was so incredibly helpful for so many reasons. It's hard to put it into words but what I felt I was doing during the writing of this blogpost was actually sitting down and really, truly reflecting on myself and my practice. What illustration is TO ME.

Recently I've felt very torn between these two styles of drawing that I primarily use, that of a predetermined nature and that which I'm beginning to discover. And given that PPP is very self reflective, I was worrying myself because I didn't know which of these 'styles' of illustration I liked most or wanted to pursue further. The above mentioned blogpost however, really helped me to solve this. To solve a lot of questions that I didn't know the answers to, but I think that was largely in part to me not really asking the right questions or reflecting in the right way. 

What I relish in my image making, my sketchbooks and my personal work, is that idea of recording something authentic and honest and true. Recording feelings and emotions and experiences, THAT is what illustration is TO ME and that's when it makes me excited or emotional or invested. And maybe my Person's of Note project didn't work because I was trying to force a style that wasn't mine, and maybe I prefer my sketchbook pages because they're immediate and expressive and it doesn't matter if they go wrong because they're experimenting and challenging and they're trying to do or say something. And so in respects to my 'tone of voice' crisis maybe the answer lies in not seeing it as trying to replicate any particular style but just DRAWING IN A WAY THAT I LIKE. In a way that is MINE and PERSONAL and EXPRESSIVE. And though I understand the importance of how I've drawn in the past and how that's shaped my craft I'm really excited to let go of that tightness and really explore looseness and my own way of working. I think that out of these 'two tone of voice styles' I'm struggling with, the one I should be pushing and pursuing is MY OWN. 

In regards to the SB2 brief I'm really excited to try something looser and more immediate. I think that due to past experiences, I've maybe felt that 'loose work can't be final work' and it's that struggle between my authentic sketches and final pieces that makes them lose what I love about them in the first place. However loose work can be final work!! As long as it is well crafted and presented and has something to say; and looking at the way artists such as Lizzy Stewart, Amelia Flechais, Laura Carlin ect produce work that could be consider looser and rougher and rawer but still beautifully crafted and finalised has made me realise that. And it's taken a long time to get to this point where I'm actually starting to make sense of what ties all these illustrations that I love together and I think it's primarily this notion of expressing something, and of being loose and not afraid to make mistakes and try new things. I'm aware that this SB2 project is on a very short timescale and therefore the work I make for it won't be able to experiment and try a lot of the things I'm excited about, but I feel like I've actually got an idea of what I want to try and where I want to push my illustrations further in the future, and that's a very good feeling.

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