End of Module Self Evaluation Visual Language

Practical skills that I feel I have developed within this module are most importantly how to really compose an image. Particularly working within a frame is not something that I am good at, but now the idea that an image must exist within a frame for a hope of it even beginning to be regarded as good has been drilled into me, and slowly I think that I may beginning to succeed at achieving this, it is beginning to have a positive influence over my work. Using photoshop is a further methodology that has become so important to my image making, and has allowed me to combat my fear and inhibitions about creating 'final' pieces. It is a tool that allows my work to take huge leaps forward where it can now begin to have more of a polished and professional feel.(well progressing steps forward at least.) I can now use photoshop to render an image, which is quite amazing as this way allows me to make many more changes as I work on it, and gives me far greater control, even if I do find it a little more challenging than using more conventional forms of media to me. New techniques, or approaches to mark making that I have gained and gathered during this module I can put into photoshop and combine and edit further, to even better my image making and my practice. Being able to finish off my work on photoshop surprisingly I found suits me so well, as it means that I can keep my messy, expressive, expansive approach to image making, but I don't need to worry about mistakes as I can edit it all through photoshop.

I feel in general that my line work and general mark making has improved at least a little, especially doing things like life drawing is always a great help with this. I have done a lot of drawings with ink particularly with some of the earlier tasks, this is another area that I have improved and developed a lot in. Its fun to not always stick to using conventional drawing tools, the more I worked with ink, the more I found other ways of applying it, such as with twigs and mixing it with different media.

Frame is very valuable principle to image making, Illustration particularly really needs to exist within a frame, this can give it some context and allows composition and everything else, such as line of sight etc to occur!

A separate lesson that I have learnt this module is that it can be very hard to limit yourself solely to one approach, or rather for me anyway. I have actually found this to be a really good challenge for pushing my image and mark making.

Potential strengths that I can identify in my visual language submission are perhaps my inventiveness with media and maybe even general image making. To capitalise on this I think that really one of the best things is to draw a lot more! The more I will draw the better I will get, and it will also provide me with established approaches to certain things to draw and ways of going about that, which for an illustrator, who generally need to be able to work quickly and keep time on their sides is a very good thing. Also it would be good practice to add constraints to work under, such as working with limited colour pallets or maybe only a few types of media, so that I can become less reliant on using such a breadth, and these limits will challenge and push myself so that hopefully I will find different and interesting ways to work, and get lots more great practice.

Some of the areas for development within my visual language submission are making my work successfully exist within a frame. This is something that I have battled with all year, I seem to find it impossible to naturally work this way, and so much of the time it has been a rather forced thing for me, I think that I had managed to get it into my brain that it is a much more difficult thing than it needs to be. After everything I have learnt it has become clear to me that using frames is one of the most important things I can do, and it can even prove the difference in greatly improving my ability to produce successful illustration.

Another area that would be good to develop on is working in monotone. Its something that with this submission I have not done well at all. I think a lot of the time this is because really my approach to using it has been wrong. To combat this I need to forget about trying to colour and create tone whilst limited to monotone and focus more on creating a line drawing, or at least think more about the content and composition of my image than the media. When I succeed at this I think that I can even then come back and look at other ways of making the aesthetics of it interesting with a much more careful approach when using black and white.

Also quantity, I am rather disappointed with the quantity that I produced for some of the tasks, in the future I definitely need to spend some more time, probably much sooner after it has been set, just relaxing and enjoying drawing for what it is. Sometimes I have been a bit het up in trying to produce a specific quantity of drawings, which can instantly be a limiting thing. Next time it will also be important for me to remember that Visual Language is the great place where I don't have to over concentrate on the concepts to artwork, I can just focus solely on drawing, I haven't thoroughly done that with this submission though.

It would be good for me to practice more at some of the different approaches to image making that I was introduced to this year, such as screen printing, and etching particularly that I enjoyed.

I have used quite a few sketchbooks in this module, and if there is one thing that I have really noticed it is that the size a type of sketchbook can have quite a big impact on the way that I draw. For example my drawings tend to be at their best when I am drawing in an A3 one, as I do not feel inhibited or limited, the large amount of paper sizes makes me feel quite comfortable whereas when I was working in that A5 portrait sketchbook I found either my drawings would become awkwardly little, or even just quite inhibited, loosing and nice expressive qualities too them. In the future it is important for me to much more carefully consider this, and how I might want it to influence my work.

Ways in which the module has informed how I deconstruct and analyse work, are my ability to look more in depth  at the components and elements that make up illustration. Particularly the in the second semester of this module I found helped to develop quite a thorough understanding of this when we looked at the things such as line of sight and how to really look at the compositional elements etc that can be identified within an image. The more we studied them the more I find that these things just jump out at me when I look at artwork now. Evaluating other peoples work, like we often used to do at the beginning of a session, has really helped me to realise what things a tend to make a piece of illustration successful and not, this has really helped me to get more assured in my analysing decisions and opinions in general, even to the extent where I feel that I am even beginning to be able to apply this when it comes to creating my own work.

Attendance = 5
Punctuality = 4
Motivation = 3
Commitment = 2.5
Quantity of Work Produced = 2
Quality of work produced = 2/1
Contribution to the group = 3