Final outcome evaluation

My final outcome came out better than I expected it to, however I would change many things about this piece. I like the use of levels/layers in the piece as this gives a three-dimensional effect as if the work is jumping out of the page towards the viewer of the piece of work. I also like how the entire piece is devoid of colour and is only in black and white, except for the colour red which also features in this piece of work as it represents love, romance, intimacy and passion as well as being a vibrant, memorable colour that captures the interest of the audience of the piece. I would change this piece a lot if I could do it all again, I would like to change the main background and not have it collaged with photos as they are distracting from the main focus of the piece and look rather messy/unprofessional. I would also find a better way of suspending the heart shaped borders above the piece than folded paper as it bends and collapses if the piece is touched.

My piece was predominantly inspired by the work of Lizzie Mary Cullen as I found the small, intricate patterns used in her work, very interesting and decided to try and use them in my own work. I also used Lizzie Mary Cullen's detailed style of illustration in my own work as well, an example of this is the illustration of the Warehouse theatre in Croydon and the "Make your own memories, visit London" typography. I did however experiment with illustration-only techniques like Lizzie Mary Cullen's and decided that I wanted to add something more to it, to give the piece an interesting contrast of techniques and ideas in order to give an interesting and memorable effect overall.

My ideas have changed greatly since I first came up with this concept in my "Initial ideas". I initially thought about doing a hand-drawn-illustration-only piece made up of a mixture of moments/experiences in my life that have been memorable for me and took place in my chosen city of London. I decided that these moments should be themed and so considered using moments/experiences that took place in London and have been memorable with friends, best-friends, family, school, college, relationships etc. and came up with a list of memorable experiences for each. The list was as follows:
Friends- shopping, talking, meeting for the first time, finding out stuff about each other, sleepovers
Best-friends- meeting for the first time, running away from angry neighbours, sleepovers, inventing a secret language, making mini-versions of each other
Family- moving house, celebrating occasions such as anniversaries, teaching the kids family recipes, spending time with one another
School- first day, meeting best friends, engraving name in desks, weird/scary/funny/inattentive teachers, having detentions but waiting for each other
College- first day, meeting new friends, doing yoga in class, bunking because of getting lost, creating a tower of diet coke cans
Relationships- meeting for the first time, becoming a couple, first kiss, first time, falling in love, standing on a roof holding each other watching the fireworks, planning a future together, falling asleep in each others arms
I decided to go for "Relationships" as it had the most ideas I could use and it was also a very strong, meaningful theme.

Once I'd decided a theme, I decided to create a slogan for my poster that would encourage people to visit London but also tied in with the idea of having many amazing and memorable experiences in that place. I considered using "Memory filled wonderland" "London in love" "Remember your visit here, always" "A place like no other" "Where memories are created" "Make your own memories" "Remember this". In the end I went with "Make your own memories" as I felt that it was the most dynamic/powerful slogan and it captures the viewer's interest/curiosity whilst also bringing across the theme of love and making them want to visit London.

Overall I feel that my piece is convincing, memorable and unique, however I feel that I may have gone a bit overboard with the mixed media used such as rose petals, wooden hearts, collaging etc. as it looks rather busy and over-crowded and perhaps a simpler, two-dimensional design with less going on all over the place would have looked more professional and been more effective than the piece I created. 

My photos of London that I intend to use in my final exam piece

Development

I have collected primary visual research relating to the theme, I have done many observational drawings of London and visited an exhibition in London and drawn observational sketches from there too. I have also collected a number of photographs from both the exhibition and around London.I feel that I have explored and developed my ideas imaginatively, I have demonstrated this by taking influence from an illustrator and experimenting and adding my own style to her work and using mixed media and developing using different materials. I have mainly focussed on the work of Lizzie Mary Cullen, however I have not only experimented with Illustration like she does, I have been experimenting with collage and photography and paper installations too. I have experimented with both handmade and computer generated techniques, I have drawn out designs and edited them using photoshop as well as taking photos which I edited using photoshop, I have hand-drawn using pencil, fine-liners, felt-tips and ink. I have developed my outcomes through experimentation by using different materials and techniques and combining these to create my final design. I have written about all my experimentation and development on my blog and have used this information to help me to improve. My work is both original and exciting as it includes a wide range of techniques/materials put together to create a mixed-media piece that is both interesting and memorable. I have been annotating my blog thoroughly throughout the entire course and explaining everything that I have done. I have been practising my exam outcomes by creating mock-ups of what my final exam piece will be like, these have come out well and look very interesting with a broad range of techniques used. I have created an exam plan which I will follow over the two days of my exam in order to complete all the work that needs to be done.

Final design

This piece was created using a mixture of hand-drawn and photographic elements. I started off by sketching out each separate layer of the design in HB pencil, then went over the design using fine liners, artists pens and black indian ink. I then edited my photographs of London which I have taken, using Adobe photoshop as well as scanning a few of the hand-drawn elements and editing them using Adobe photoshop too. Once I had printed all of the edited pieces of work for this piece, I cut them out and stuck them down where I wanted them to be placed and added hand-drawn and ink layers on top of these to make them look more interesting. Once the entire background was filled, I created a heart-shaped frame which I filled with patterns similar to the ones used in Lizzie Mary Cullen's work and then proceeded to at that atop the background which I created earlier. Then I added some paper rose petals and wooden hearts to the piece too in order to add another element to the design and represent the idea of love and romance which fits the theme of my work. The final element of this design is the hand drawn piece in the foreground which, although it is difficult to tell in this photo, are suspended using folded card so that they stick out of the page, coming towards the viewer of the piece. Overall, I like the idea of this design and think that I will use this as the basis for what I do during the exam.

Paper installations

Exam planner

Ideas for final exam piece

I created this piece using a HB pencil, black artist pens in four different sizes, black ink and a thin paintbrush and a red felt-tip. I started off by sketching out the design using HB pencil, I decided to use the Warehouse Theatre building as the main feature in this piece because it's a very interesting looking building that has rather unusual features such as a set of tables and chairs on the roof  and arches in the windows and a lot of different patterns and textures are involved all over the building. Initially I didn't have the smoke cloud in the sketched design but when I looked at it I felt that there was too much empty space and it needed to be filled some how so I decided that as there is a chimney on the top of the building, I would create a smoke cloud coming out of it in which the lettering could sit and I filled the smoke cloud with spirals and curls to make the piece more interesting to look at and more memorable as well as incorporating more of the style of Lizzie Mary Cullen within my work. When I started going over the pencil sketch using artist pens I felt that although Lizzie Mary Cullen's work is monotonous, the part of the work that I wanted to stand out-the text-wasn't entirely clear with all the details in the background of the text so I decided to incorporate a main colour to the typographical areas. I chose the colour red as it symbolises love and passion which suits the theme of the piece, as well as being a bold and vibrant colour which would draw attention to the typographical elements which is what I was trying to achieve by adding colour. I felt that there was still something missing from the piece when I looked at it and realised that it was because there wasn't very much contrast in tone/shade so I decided to add ink to certain areas of the piece to improve the overall look of the piece and create a more realistic contrast of tone. I am happy with how this piece turned out, however I feel that I could still add more to improve the piece such as creating a background instead of leaving it white as it is right now, I could add a general wash of colour/colour using watercolour paints to the paper before drawing upon it or I could tea-stain the paper or do something similar to create some sort of background. I could also add an element of collage to the piece such as photographs of more buildings or layers of the same building from different angles, or find a newspaper article relating to the theme of London, love, memories or the location of each building drawn and cut them into building shapes and layer then behind these images or something similar. I could also add three-dimensional elements to my work with certain areas sticking out of the page such as the word "London" or I could have the piece build up with three-dimensional elements places atop one another to create an interesting effect.