I initially decided to do the degree because I wanted to work as a creative some day. I want to earn money using my strongest ability which is my creativity and the toughest learning curve has been realising the complexity and practicalities of doing this. I've had to negotiate a compromise with the perfectionist in me.
I needed to stop, reflect and ask myself, 'What do I want from the module and degree as a whole?'. It came at a time in the module when I was really struggling and became very self critical. I was blinded by tunnel vision for a while, making work I didn't believe in so I'm happy with how I've resolved my practice as a whole over the module and proud of the work I've made.
Self imposed restrictions were crippling my productivity as well as my ability to create an environment in which to let work flow naturally. I fell into a laborious hand drawn process which really slowed my productivity and didn't allow me to communicate ideas or let me realise my ambitions of making inspiring work.
To have a USP I had to fully express my fresh perspective on the world. I needed to be open and honest to let this happen. Using collage has helped me realise my ambitions for the kind of work I truly want to make. It's allowed me to fully express my voice and create darkly humorous work that challenges both my audience and the subjects in the work. A huge benefit of collage is I don't overthink, become precious or fussy as I make the work so I can visualise a finishing point and a resolved image as I work that captures the tone and message I'm looking for. I rarely achieved this with drawing so it's eliminated the dread that came when starting new projects before. With drawing, my ideas were dictated by which ever drawing I rather randomly came up with. With collage, the idea always drives the process and outcome.
I've been able to reach out to my audience, realise what it is I want to say to the world and how I want to say it. I believe I can create a stunning spectacle that grabs my audience and I've been able to absorb my passions and influences such as film, TV, science and nature into my work. I've rearranged and adjusted my practice to fit my mental health and personality. I believe I've achieved that through being less hard on myself and allowing myself to enjoy the process of making. It was becoming unsustainable before and it wouldn't have been worth the mental strain I was putting myself under. I've fully realised the importance of finding a process that is flexible and fun as well as being efficient at realising an idea.
Being able to incorporate type into my illustrations has also been a massive breakthrough for me. I'm pleased with the Beautiful Beast final outcomes because they've allowed me to create the kind of work I want to make professionally and visualise my work in more varied and exciting contexts such as editorial and commercial illustration which often inspires me so I was able to contextualise and format them into mock up editorial articles.
While I was disappointed not to produce any significant work with Kubrick films as the focal point as I'd planned, this failure was precisely the failure I used as the spark to change my process, stop and ask myself why I couldn't achieve the spectacle I'd wanted and do the work justice. The Kubrick project failed in the same way the adidas brief had. I've been able to use these failures and try new methods and that has been my biggest success. The module has been as much about reflecting on my process as it has been about building my portfolio. If I hadn't realised, learned and adapted from my previous projects in the module then I'd be finishing my degree with a much more pessimistic mindset.
Whilst researching Kubrick's The Shining I started to see parallels in the jittery madness between the film and my head space at certain points. Luckily that's where the similarities ended and I've finished the module with a very positive and optimistic outlook on what I can achieve with my practice after my degree.
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