Tutor Reports

TUTOR REPORTS




Asssignment 1:

Open College of the Arts Tutor report     Student name  Marie-Pierre Governale Student number  506230  Course/Module  Illustration Assignment number  One   

The first part of the module is all about getting started by looking at contemporary and historic illustrators and understanding the importance of identifying what to communicate through the ‘getting the gist’ exercise. 




Overall Comments


 The first exercise asked you to research Edward Bawden / Kathleen Hale / Eric Ravilious / Edward Ardizzone / John Minton / E H Shephard / find a contemporary illustrator whose work you like and to identify and explore the differences between them. It was good to see that you looked at each of the illustrators before deciding to compare the work of Kathleen Hale and Quentin Blake. Succinct and thoughtful analysis across the both and I thought making comparisons between their family commitments was interesting, and it highlight some of the issues that face many illustrators – how they juggle the time they have to be creative and their practice. Your Teenage Rock Hero referenced Orlando very well and while the piece doesn’t overtly feel like Kathleen Hale’s style I do think it you’ve referenced some of her approaches to line and colour. Your Quentin Blake drawings feel more obviously his. Perhaps this is down to the attention you have given the materials and tools he works with. I thought the drawings worked well and I like the fact that you extended the exercise into using his approach to illustration to draw from life. You managed to capture a real sense of movement, energy, and humour in your drawings, especially with the seagulls piece. Extending this project into looking at Axel Scheffler was good and I thought your drawing of the hamsters had a great sense of character about it. The school structure was perhaps a little too busy and drew focus away from the inhabitants, maybe simplifying the background would have shifted the emphasis? 

The second ‘getting the gist’ exercise asked you to condense some chosen text into keywords and then have a go at illustrating them. It’s great to see the amount of referencing you’re doing here in terms of seeing how other illustrators have dealt with similar ideas. Some of the frustrations you’ve encountered are really about getting all the tools you need in place, don’t forget Quentin Blake has had a lifetime to hone how he works. The illustration itself works reasonably well – you’ve certainly managed to sum up the ideas of the article into a stand alone image – my only reservation is in the artwork itself and this based purely on seeing your subsequent polar bear drawings that I thought had a bit more character about them. Nevertheless a very good start. 




Feedback on assignment

 Your first assignment asked you to create a greetings card that introduced yourself and your work. I really liked your final greetings card which had a playful cheekiness about it – partly down to the self portrait that was very self effacing, the hidden references to your interest in cartoons and having some impish looking witches with their familiar. The approach to the drawing was very good and I liked the almost textural tactic of creating tones through coloured dashed and cross-hatching. The earlier drawings maintain this energy but feel much quicker in their execution. Using your frustrations as a driving force certainly seems to work. I thought the black and white pre-drawing of your final piece was great and in many ways this could have been the final piece – perhaps just taking this very direct form of drawing and adding colour to it afterwards. If you enjoyed this way of working you might want to try drawing directly with colour via either felt tip pens or coloured pencils. 
Your painting worked well, and it was good to see how you work in a more observational way, and your humour still comes through. I would be interested to know how this approach to creating images (loosely drawing with paint) relates to your drawings – do you have a preferred way of working, do you see these approaches as fundamentally different or is it a similar approach to you, but simply different materials?  



Learning Logs/Critical essays

  Keeping sketchbooks and a learning log is an integral part of this and every other OCA course, not only because they constitute 20% of your marks if you choose to have your work formally assessed but they are also an excellent way to see how you are developing.  
Sketchbooks and learning logs perform different functions; Sketchbooks can play a variety of different roles: they can be visual diaries, reference points, used for drawing the world around you, or be used for imaginative drawing and doodles, or all of the above. For illustrators the sketchbook is a vital tool in capturing and developing your creative ideas and should be used as much as you can. Your learning log is the tool you use to help you reflect on your learning and help your tutor see how you have learned.  
If you prefer to amalgamate sketchbook and learning reflections into one notebook that’s fine, as long as you do both elements of work required. You might also want to consider developing either as a web-based blog, a summative document or any combination that suits your working process the best. If youʼre new to OCA courses, read your Keeping sketchbooks and learning logs study guide for further information.  
You’ve clearly thought about the benefits of moving your learning log from paper to the web. Your approach to reflection is honest and to the point, you’re using it to summarise your thinking and list key areas to develop, all of which is great. 
Getting to grips with all the technology can feel like a bit of an uphill struggle at the beginning, but try not to let this get in the way too much. It’ll all come together as you progress through the module. 


Suggested reading/viewing

 You might want to have a look at the archive of my blog http://christianlloyd.tumblr.com/archive where you’ll find lots of naïve, playful and crude drawings. In particular have a look at two illustrators who make a living working in this way.  
Jay Cover http://www.jaycover.co.uk/ 
Benoit Jacques http://www.benoitjacques.com/ 
Obviously this is an area of interest for me (in fact one of the examples is an ex- student) so if you don’t want to go down this route then don’t be swayed by my interests! 

If you haven’t already done so you might want to look at the We Are OCA blog to get a flavour of the sort of thing that staff at the college are thinking about, see other students work and post your own comments.  http://www.weareoca.com/ 
You might also want to browse through other students work on the OCA Student Site http://oca-student.com/, post your own work for others to see or join in on some of the forum debates which often contain links to other reading and viewing. 


Formal Assessment

You may want to get credit for your hard work and achievements with the OCA by formally submitting your work for assessment at the end of the module. Please read the section on assessment in your Student Handbook. Your Assessment and how to get Qualified study guide gives more detailed information about assessment and accreditation. More and more people are taking the idea of lifelong learning seriously by submitting their work for assessment but it is entirely up to you. We are just as keen to support you whether you study for pleasure or to gain qualifications. http://oca-student.com/key-resources 
Please consider whether you want to put your work forward for assessment and let me know your decision when you submit assignment two. I can then give you feedback on how well your work meets the assessment requirements.  


Pointers for the next assignment

 The next assignment focuses on developing your ideas from a brief to your finished illustration through writing a brief; generating ideas, creative thinking and problem solving; using reference material and choosing content for your work; exploring mark making and drawing; and developing an understanding of visual metaphor and meaning in your imagery.  
This is an opportunity for you to develop your how you approach the problem solving aspect of illustration. Try not to loose the immediacy of your drawing when trying to respond to a brief.   

Tutor name:  Christian Lloyd Date  13 October 2011 Next assignment due 13 December 2011 




Asssignment 2:

Open College of the Arts Tutor report     Student name  Marie-Pierre Governale Student number  506230  Course/Module  Illustration Assignment number  Two   

Part two of this module has focused on developing your ideas from a brief to your finished illustration. It has covered writing a brief; generating ideas through lateral thinking and spider diagrams; turning your written ideas into imagery; developing mood boards and using reference material; exploring mark making through drawing and painting; creative thinking and problem solving; objective and subjective drawing; exploring the creative limitations of only using black and white in your artwork; choosing appropriate content for your work and developing an understanding of visual metaphor and meaning in your imagery.
  

Overall Comments 
 
There was quite a lot to cover in this part of the module and you have successfully completed everything. 

The Brief Your first exercise focused on trying to write a brief for a chosen illustration. It was clear from your response that you understood the need for an overview and how the illustration was going to be used. It was all there but you might want to think about breaking this information down into terms you can refer back to, such as tone of voice, usage, and context (overview). 

Generating ideas Ideas generation is a skill vital to illustrators to compliment overtly visual skills. You were asked to generated ideas through a spider diagram for the words sea side / childhood / angry / festival and reflect on your strategies and which you found most difficult. A good working process, especially when you included your daughter in the process, as brainstorming within a conversation can be particularly effective. The results covered the basics but you might want to think about developing ways of generating ideas that can move you beyond the clichéd or immediate. You obviously felt comfortable working from your own experiences, but your experience of Festivals was limited. You might want to brainstorm from the perspective of someone else – what do teenagers, pensioners, or performers think of festivals? 

Words to pictures You were asked to draw everything that comes to mind from either the words childhood / exotic / destruction / kitchen / wild / fashion / or travel. Using the same list again you were also asked to make a moodboard. Your use of google suggests the need for visual research material to work from rather than a tool for mind mapping. You might want to think about your relationship with reference material, do you feel you need to have visual material to refer to in order to create illustrations? In which case does this mean you need to develop your own library of photos, sketches, and other visual information or will google do the job for you? 

Your moodboard for ‘childhood’ worked very well, not only as a way of bringing your visual reference material together but also as an image in it’s own right. The drawing /doodling around the images helped to bring them together but also suggested much more of a children’s art class activity. 
Using reference  Illustrators need to have a mine of visual resources that they can refer to when creating images. You were asked to collect as much reference material as you could find for the 1950s period from a range of categories, from which you then made an illustration to give a young person of today an idea of the era.  

Mark making The exercise encouraged you to experiment with new materials and mark making tools. You were asked to developing a sketchbook in which you explored different papers, drawing tools and techniques such as cross-hatching, stippling, splattering, smudging and dry brushwork as well as investigating the properties of mixed media.  
Your range of apple drawings worked well in terms of range and application of approaches, but as you’ve pointed out, perhaps given more enthusiasm you could have been more adventurous. Having said that, your stitched collage was great, I liked the mixed media approach, the stitching as line and the use of polka dots on the
apple. It seems this was the one piece that enjoyed and got more out of, so perhaps you should use this sense of ‘am I enjoying it / getting something out of it?’ as a test of direction – if you’re labouring at a piece of work the chances are it will look laboured. If you find yourself ploughing through a piece of work because you have to do, maybe you should pause, reassess what would engage you and change direction? 

Creative thinking and problem solving Taking a shoe / umbrella / pair of trousers / pair of glasses / hat you were asked to do an objective drawing of the object using either a pencil or fine liner, being as observant and analytical as you could. The subjective drawing exercise asked you to interpret your chosen object, develop a mood board and work through a more elaborate process to create a subjective drawing. Your objective drawings worked well especially the colour pieces (bowler hat, Canadian hat). Your pencil work is quite fuzzy which perhaps doesn’t scan very well but tends to make your drawings a bit grey. Your charity bobble hat uses a much sharper line. 

Black and white Understanding and using a black and white palette can help to focus on the true structure of a picture. Staring with the words sea / extraordinary / building / journey you were asked to produce a line drawing, invert it, cut it out and reconstruct into a simplified more graphic image. I agree that it probably wasn’t the best image to use, but the main learning point is that you’ve started to use the software and recognised what you might need to develop for future projects. 

Choosing content Working with the given text you were asked to define, research, develop ideas and visualise the main character with in the setting suggested. Two of the issues I’ve flagged up collided here – how you use reference material and what happens when you’re not enthused by a project (see mark making comments). What I thought worked very well was how you stuck with the exercise, resolved the issues and created some decent illustration work. What I particularly liked was your approach of simplification – all you needed was a man and a window to make this illustration work – so instead of packing the image full of references to the 1950s, you used a few simple indicators such as the style of his style suit and those of the windows and concentrated on the mood of the whole piece. The noir-ish qualities are evident and I don’t think they were too ridiculous – sometimes you need a bit of exaggeration. The heavy pencil & charcoal worked really well here and I loved the swirling shadows both in the final piece and the earlier ‘man in the doorway’ piece (which also had a great dynamic tension to it). So it’s worth remembering to keep it simple, keep enjoying what you’re doing and allow room for experimentation and development. 

Meanings in imagery After collecting as many examples of visual metaphor as you can find you were asked to create a drawn visual list of object and subjects that could symbolise reaching retirement / dreams of romance / broken relationship / censorship of the press / high achievement / economic catastrophe. Once completed it was suggested that you let someone else critique your work – did your drawings communicate as you intended? I disagreed with some of your comments on your skeleton card, I thought it worked really well and tackled ‘the elephant in the room’ of aging with a dry sense of humour – it’s a question of tone of voice, not all cards have to be polite. Similarly I thought your subsequent ideas continued with a cheeky sense of humour. When you’ve got a clear idea in mind your style of drawing is very direct – you might want to explore this further.  


Feedback on assignment 
 
Assignment two asked you to respond to a point of sale display brief in which you were asked to illustrate fruit or vegetables associated with summer and autumn. 
Your preliminary paintings and drawings worked very well. You use colour and paint very effectively as a drawing tool, which might explain why you found the grapes harder; you use of line in this piece is less integrated, so the drawing and the colouring are seen as two separate activities. The tomatoes are so successful because the drawing and the colouring are one and the same activity, creating a greater sense of visual unity. It’s the same with Andy with Tomato eyes – your drawing is integrated through using coloured lines that cross between the painted and the drawn. I thought this image worked better without the coloured background and is priorities the event of Andy with the tomatoes much more – it was starker and more direct. The same goes for the cherry ear-rings. In this case it’s to do with the realism of the drawing, the joke is based on the reality of the situation – it wouldn’t have worked if this was in a more cartoon style. 
Leo with the pumpkin worked well as an image but is the odd one out in terms of the
series of people doing odd things with fruit and veg. Perhaps Leo with the pumkin on his head would have keep the ideas more unified? 


Learning Logs/Critical essays 

 Keeping sketchbooks and a learning log is an integral part of this and every other OCA course, not only because they constitute 20% of your marks if you choose to have your work formally assessed but they are also an excellent way to see how you are developing.  
You are definitely getting to grips with blogging which is great news. A very honest and open learning log in which youʼre thinking about your learning as a journey. It was interesting to note your reflections on how you feel about your identity as an artist, given your familyʼs background. The notion of the middle class artist focuses very much on the fine art, you might want to do some thinking about commercial artists which have quite a different sense of identity historically. 
Equally your frustrations with the course and your support was evident. Despite my initial mistake of marking the wrong assignment I hope youʼre now feeling more supported and connected. I can understand the frustrations with the illustration forums but weʼre a new course and we donʼt have the well established ʻdoorsʼ that the other courses do, but that is changing quickly as more and more active illustration learners get together and start discussing things and supporting each other. Donʼt be put off and try and join in.  
Suggested reading/viewing Have a look at Matthew Hollings, for his use of colour and drawing: http://www.aoiportfolios.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id =190&Itemid=93 


 Assessment potential  

If you plan to submit your work for assessment at the end of this course, from the work you have shown in this assignment, and providing you commit yourself to the course, I suggest that you are very likely to be successful in the assessment. 
Pointers for the next assignment 
The next part of this module focuses on the process of transforming your ideas into a form that best communicates them. This is an opportunity to develop your creative thinking, how you use reference material and perhaps consider how the different strands of your illustration practice can respond to the same briefs – when do you employ your realistic drawing/painting or cartoonish drawings? 

Tutor name:  Christian Lloyd Date  4 November 2011 Next assignment due 1 February 2011




Asssignment 3:

Open College of the Arts Tutor report     Student name  Marie-Pierre Governale Student number  506230  Course/Module  Illustration Assignment number  Three  

Part three of this module has focused on the complex processes of transforming your ideas into a form that best communicates them. It has explored composition, viewpoints and scale; visual space within an image; reading images and how you can use hierarchy to structure your illustration; the use of abstract elements to convey meaning; diagrams and how illustrations can give instructions; and how to create client visuals and mock-ups. 


Overall Comments 

Overall improvement in the quality of your visual work, they’re feeling a lot more finished in terms of your artwork, though you may need to spend more time thinking about the role of the illustrator, in other words deciding what you need to communicate. 

Illustration visual space Your first assignment explored composition and viewpoint in illustrative visual space by using a tree, a walking child and a building to create a series of images. A strong sense of narrative throughout your variations, and you’ve used the multiple trees almost as a way of building up the elements into a pattern. It would have been good to see more extreme variations of scale, with a very large boy, small house, etc. as they tend to follow similar approaches throughout.   
Reading an Image You were asked to carefully look at an image and identify its message, narrative and visual hierarchy. A very good sense of analysis in identifying the meaning, relationship and narrative of the image. 

Image Development This exercise encouraged you to identify ‘space within an image’ by cropping an
existing image; choosing a word for each image that relates in some way to the content; and using one of the images as a basis for a poster and your word for the typography. I liked the sense of humour at play in your set of reframed images, with Childline, hangover and escape as possible meanings, all of which showed a very good appreciation of meaning and content. Visually the poster worked well but as you’ve pointed out, perhaps shout is the wrong message, perhaps fun or simply play would have sufficed? 

Abstract Illustration Your brief was to listen to a piece of instrumental music by a musician such as George Gershwin / The Gypsy Kings / Beethoven / Miles Davis and visually respond to it. Your illustration was perhaps more doodle than abstraction, but it still achieved the result of trying to create something that was more of a lateral response to the music. It reminded me a little of some of the work of Jean Micheal Basquiat (see image below). The simplified drawing and underwater colouring moved the image away from the doodles, but I actually quite liked the layering and slightly more chaotic approach of the original doodles, it felt a bit more like Miles Davies, crossings out and all.   

Giving instructions This exercise focused on diagrammatic illustration in which you were asked to illustrate making a cup of tea / getting to your house / playing a musical instrument. It was good that you were mindful of the process when making this work, and having taken a more critical and reflective approach I think the work is better as a result. The mother character works well and I like the way you’ve weaved the instructions into a comic narrative. The simplified version is great, really simple and straightforward but drawn with feeling so they’re appealing, for example the hand dropping the tea bag into the cup has a bit of character about it. 

Visuals This series of exercises focused on presenting your ideas to a potential client. Firstly you were asked to use a digital camera to capture objects representing festival / the morning after / summertime / workshop and to rationalise which viewpoint worked best. You were also asked to prepare client visuals based on two previous illustrations and make a mock up for a book cover. I thought this exercise worked particularly well in terms of the compositions, angles and overall approach to visualising your ideas. Simple drawings, well executed and with a sense of energy and excitement about them – I wonder whether it was the subject matter or the fact that you could work from life easily that helped the project?  

Your Hemmingway lino / wood cut was a new way of working and I particularly liked the crude, folk art approach you took, which seemed very appropriate to the nature of the story. It was good to see the integration of typography with the piece and the development of your software skills. 


Feedback on assignment

Assignment three asked you to put into practice many of the exercises and projects explored in so far in this module by designing a poster for an Early Music concert, a Jazz evening or for a pop group. Your Jazz illustration worked well in terms of colour, composition and visualisation of your ideas. The typography is a little too quiet to make the poster really effective, and you might want to think about how you leave spaces in your work for typography or how you integrate it more solidly within the illustration.  
I assume the concept was a reference to cherubs and dead jazz musicians, but I could be wrong? It was playful are irreverent but perhaps more overt links to the visual references that jazz fans might read into the poster. For example, the bowler hat and white sun glasses might be referring to the identity of specific jazz musicians and therefore to particular strands of jazz?  
Overall I thought the poster worked and you should be proud of the results; this is the most finished piece of work so far and shows that you can translate ideas into visual form using both illustration and typography. Perhaps a little more thought about what you actually want to communicate would help sharpen the whole piece up as well as a bit of tweaking of your typography, but overall there’s a sense of visual dynamic and unity to the piece.  


 Learning Logs/Critical essays


 Keeping sketchbooks and a learning log is an integral part of this and every other OCA course, not only because they constitute 20% of your marks if you choose to have your work formally assessed but they are also an excellent way to see how you are developing. So far your blog provides a very good chronology of your working process, design thinking and a reflection on your learning experiences. Itʼs good to see you bring in more references to other illustrators and artists. 
Suggested reading/viewing Have a look at the woodcuts of Billy Childish to see how the typography and illustrations might be integrated into the same designs, which he’s borrowed from earlier expressionist artist/illustrators. http://www.billychildish.com/woodcuts_1.html 

 Pointers for the next assignment The next part of module focuses on developing your own style and producing work that directly responds to a brief. Use this as an opportunity to bring together your strong visual work with your less developed sense of visual problem solving – in other words it’s about applying your art skills but at the same time being an illustrator, if that makes sense?  

Tutor name:  Christian Lloyd Date  27 February 2012 Next assignment due 1 May 2012




Asssignment 4:


Open College of the Arts Tutor report     Student name  Marie-Pierre Governale  Student number  506230  Course/Module  Illustration Assignment number  Four   

Part four of this module has focused on developing your own style by identifying the tools and materials used by illustrators; focusing on working for an audience by developing your responses to a number of different illustration areas; exploring visual distortion and character development; and producing work that directly responds to a brief. 


Overall Comments

There’s a growing confidence in your approach to illustration, partly driven by your use of the computer as an editing and compiling tool, partly through a more experimental risk taking approach. Good use of colour, and composition throughout and its great to see you experiment with a range of different mark making approaches. You seem to work best when there are elements of caricature, humour or strong visual dynamics at play. Continue this development by exploring variations within what you do, experimenting more with colour, and continue to draw from life. 

Tools and materials You were asked to identify a range of illustrators who use a particular medium, analyse how they used this and write about one piece in particular; how is the image composed; how are colour, tone, and texture used to evoke mood or convey an idea? You were then asked to go back to earlier pieces of work and render them with the same tools and materials as your chosen artist. Good research into a range of illustrators who use acrylic paint in very different ways. I thought your hamster piece worked well, the characters were well defined, and your use of acrylic created flat coloured spaces (hands on books) as well as more rounded forms. Not so sure about the typography though, it would have been good to find a way of saying school visually, rather than being so direct, perhaps simply adding in school badges on the blazers or giving the hamsters caps. I liked the second piece, especially the cat running in from the right hand side, though I take Dave McAllister’s point about too many elements. However it’s a much more defined and confident illustration that your previous versions. 

Audiences Arguably one of the main distinctions between fine art image-making and illustration is not a technical or conceptual one, but in focusing on working with an audience in mind. This exercise asked you to produce illustrations to be used as part of a series of poster to publicise a museum to children aged 5-9, teenager and a general adult audience. Very good analysis of how your audience connects to Brent Museum, your site visit sounds odd but very entertaining, and your creative thinking is further developed through very simple but very effective thumbnail drawings. Great to see such a range of ideas being developed, from collages to simple cartoons. 

Areas of illustration This project broadly outlined the areas in which illustrators work. You were asked to generate ideas and produce a children’s book cover entitled ‘Animals from Around the World’; produce a menu card for a quality fish restaurant; and design a tattoo based on the word Mum, for a friend. The ironic Mum tattoo works really well with the sour looking mum. It’s a very simple but effective joke, and your earlier development drawings show a real confidence in presenting this idea. The pearl necklace links well with the 1940s style of tattooing, and given there’s a renaissance in this style of tattooing, the joke is reinforced. Developing the idea of a Happy Mothers Day card is great and I think the mechanics of the fold, adds another angular dimension to Mum. 
As your research shows most students seem to answer the ‘Animals from Around the World’ cover in more or less the same way, by showing a range of animals and a globe. You weren’t far off this approach, but I’m pleased to say you’ve gotten away with it successfully. Your combination of well observed, loosely painted and colourful animals within the circles worked wonderfully. The yellow background and simple hand rendered typography helped to set everything off. Overall a great sense of colour and you’ve not over done the illustrations, the focus is on the animals themselves. Working on the computer seems to have added in a new level of editing and finishing, which is working very well. 
A diverse range of visual inspiration to draw from, and it was good to see you experiment with a range of different approaches with this exercise. The simple swimming silhouettes works very well. Some of the creatures are more recognisable than others but overall it works. It reminds me a little of classical Greek pot decorations. 

Visual Distortion This exercise was designed to push you through a deliberate process of stylisation, by drawing and then collaging an image of a cat or dog. Very good observational drawing in which you’ve caught simply and directly some of the energy of the cats, the subsequent distortions have kept this energy through your choice of pose and materials. The redrawing of the collage added in a new level of energy and dynamic and your use of the computer accentuated this so your final piece almost looked like an etching. Simple lines and plenty of background noise through the greys, browns and whites continued to give this piece a strong visual dynamic.   

Character Development You were asked to develop a series characters, producing drawings from different angles and expressing different emotions and expressions. I thought your unlikely gardener worked very well as a painting. I loved the colours and the half finished boots. There was a slight awkwardness about the pose which made the character believable. Your subsequent drawings worked well but perhaps you were simply trying to put the gardener into different poses? What made the gardener was her expression, so perhaps character development for you is more about subtle shifts in expression? 



Feedback on assignment

This assignment gave you the opportunity to show off your developing style and use of tools and materials by responding to a magazine illustration brief in which you focused on the theme of lost / disaster / discovery / or guilty secret. Your mouse rescue team and the teddy illustration shows a continuing confidence in your ability to conceive, construct and develop your illustrations. There’s a real sense of development from your earlier drawings to this final piece, I really liked the earlier small pencil drawings that seemed to prioritise the physical hiding of the teddy, while the later pieces added in more dynamic with the mice. Overall the piece works in terms of narrative, colour and composition, though I do think the structure of the boxes could have been exploited a bit more, by hiding the teddy but also by creating platforms on which the mouse activity could be framed. A bit like a game of snakes and ladders, so that the ladders and mice go up one block and a time, and you can
orchestrate our reading of the rescue more by following the ladders and ropes from one scenario to another. Perhaps repositioning your viewpoint so we’re looking up at the teddy from the mouse’s perspective could have reinforced this sense of climbing and rescue.  



Learning Logs/Critical essays 

 Clear, thoughtful and honest reflections on your blog. Your work is well presented through your blog, though as you develop more digital work you might want to think about outputting ideas as various stages, so you save different jpgs as you go. 
Suggested reading/viewing You seem to be well connected to a wide range of appropriate illustrators work. You might want to extend this by picking up on some of the themes and emerging debates surrounding illustration. I suggest you have a look at Vrooom magazine, which is put out by the association of illustrators. 


Assessment potential (after Assignments 1 and 4) 

You may want to get credit for your hard work and achievements with the OCA by formally submitting your work for assessment at the end of the module. Please read the section on assessment in your Student Handbook. Your Assessment and how to get Qualified study guide gives more detailed information about assessment and accreditation. More and more people are taking the idea of lifelong learning seriously by submitting their work for assessment but it is entirely up to you. We are just as keen to support you whether you study for pleasure or to gain qualifications. http://oca-student.com/key-resources 
Please consider whether you want to put your work forward for assessment and let me know your decision when you submit assignment two. I can then give you feedback on how well your work meets the assessment requirements.  
I understand your aim is to go for the Visual Communications Degree and that you plan to submit your work for assessment at the end of this course. From the work you have shown in this assignment, and providing you commit yourself to the course, I suggest that you are very likely to be successful in the assessment. 



Pointers for the next assignment

The next part of the module focuses on the relationship between text and image and an appreciation of authorial practice through generating your own content. This final
part of the module is an opportunity to bring together all that you have learnt throughout the module into a range of illustration briefs. One of your weaker areas has been your use of typography within your work, so you might want to explore this in a bit more depth.

Tutor name:  Christian Lloyd Date  20 December 2012 Next assignment due 1 March 2013




Asssignment 5:


Open College of the Arts Tutor report    Student name  Marie-Pierre Governale  Student number  506230 Course/Module  Illustration 1 Assignment number  Five  


Overall Comments

  Part five of this course explored the relationship between words and pictures.  It required a synthesis of your illustrations and self-directed ideas and you have done a good job of bringing together your strengths as an illustrator to bear on most of the exercises. Time was against you on most of this, and while I’m glad you managed to make the deadline, the submission did feel more rushed than previous ones. 

Project: Authorial practice Most of the work you’ve created so far has been in response to clearly outcomes, however, every drawing, every mark, every image you produce has potential beyond just satisfying a brief. You were asked to review your work and create a ‘gallery’ of illustrations that you have enjoyed, reflecting on how these might be used in response to a chosen area and audience. Yes, your lost bear was a very enjoyable piece of work that works very well within the context of editorial illustration. Perhaps it’s worth extending this project to focus on developing the mice-brigade as a separate narrative / series of illustrations?  

The ideas behind your ‘how green’ illustrations are great, the visual metaphors are there, and they’re funny. Given that you’ve also been researching some interesting contemporary examples of editorial practice, I wonder whether the finished quality of these could have been simplified? 

Project: Editorial illustration You were asked to visually interpret a number of headings within the context of editorial illustration, and produce three illustrations for a series of books jackets for Istanbul, Helsinki and Milan. It would have been good to see some of your abandoned ideas as well as the one you put forward – I always think the measure of a project can be determined by what ends up in the bin as much as the qualities of the finished illustration. In terms of your final idea, the realisation of it is heavily reliant on existing imagery, but as an idea I could see this working. Perhaps it would have been better to simply work on paper to quickly visualise the possibilities of the suitcase? 

Project: Text and image You were asked to explored how to creatively integrate typography as part of
your illustrations, and produced a series of illustrations for a new range of organic biscuits for children. Targeted and interesting research into packaging for children. I like the sense of enthusiasm embedded within your character – it’s very simply done, but effective. On a similar note to the previous exercise, your research is pointing towards a cleaner aesthetic at play in contemporary packaging. I wonder how your more painterly approach might tie in with this? Not to say that you should move away from painting, but how might this painterly approach incorporate or stand in contrast to the predominant aesthetic? At the moment your backgrounds are hovering somewhere in between – they’re trying to be flat but they’re painted – it might be worth finding a balance between this positions or to try and create something that is more exaggerated and obviously painterly. 

Project: Working for children Responding to a range of age groups and themes you were asked to develop an animal illustration. The wrestling frog, frog on a bike, little red riding hood and Hawaiian bear all work well within their own frames of reference. As a body of work, perhaps they’re less connected but perhaps more interesting because of that – they invite the connections to be made. Is that Inspector Clouseau in the audience at the frog wrestling? The portrait is interesting because it’s about the nature of storytelling, it’s probably for an adult audience but it’s a very interesting piece of work.  

Within the form of a five frame strip you were asked to help illustrate an educational leaflet called ‘What’s happening to my body? It’s all going mad!’ A good range of research, but it would have been great to see how your often humorous approach might have been applied to the difficult topic of puberty! 


Assessment  

 This is your last assignment for the Book Design course. If you have decided to put forward your work for assessment, please re-read the section on assessment in your Student Handbook. The Your Assessment and how to get Qualified study guide gives more detailed information about assessment and accreditation.  
For assessment you’ll need to submit a cross-section of the work you’ve done on the course. You’ll also need to submit your learning log, sketchbooks and tutor reports.  
In terms of organising your work for assessment, you may want to consider pulling together a portfolio of your best work into an appropriate format, for example as an additional blog post or a PDF portfolio. It would also be worth summarising your experiences on the course as a whole as a way for the assessors to get a sense of your motivations and journey through the course.







Feedback on assignment 

 Creative and analytical thinking, Visual and Technical Skills 
The final assignment was an opportunity to consolidate the understanding you’ve gained so far by developing illustrations around the theme of Seven Days. The idea of the seven days was very simple and worked well in terms of a narrative for children. Perhaps there was an additional narrative you hinted at in terms of numbering, that could have been woven in further, for example in the number of monkeys, shells or other elements. The illustrations were simple but effective and I particularly liked the simple line versions, which were supported by the use of a cross-stitch typeface. The Mary, Mary illustration worked very well with the shells and bells acting almost as a pattern surrounding the girl, which was lost in a bit in the later painted version. This became more about picture making than the flat surface suggested by both the textile typeface, style of drawing and composition.  
Obviously, you ran out of time on these illustrations, but it would be worth finding an equally simple way to finish them off, one in which the essential qualities you’ve established aren’t lost. 

Sketchbooks  Research and idea development, Context 
It’s good to see the inclusion of sketchbooks on your blog. You may want to consider handing these in for assessment. 

Learning Logs or Blogs / Critical essays Research and idea development, Context  
Your blog is a well balanced document of your working process, reflections and research. It would be worth reviewing the blog to see if you’ve missed anything off and adding in additional material prior to assessment, for example reworking of projects you wanted to extend. 

Suggested viewing/reading  Given your little red riding portrait, which was a rich piece of metaphor and personalized mythology, you might want to look at the visual work of British comedian Harry Hill who mythologies TV celebrities in his self-taught paintings.  
In terms of the painterly versus the digital – Psillos Demetrios illustrators through a very painterly medium: http://www.demetriospsillos.com/ You might also want to look at Anorak magazine which is a fanzine for children’s illustration: http://anorakmagazine.com/ 

Pointers for future learning You may want to consider undertaking other OCA courses. If you would like any advice on what is available then you can find out more at the OCA website http://www.oca-uk.com/ or talk directly to OCA advisors.  

The only thing left for me to do is say thanks for all your hard work, I hope you’ve enjoyed doing the Illustration 1 course. If you need any support in putting your work forward for assessment please get in touch. 
  
Tutor name:  Christian Lloyd Date: 18 July 2013