WOO proffessional journal buckle urselves in children get ready for REFLECTION to a very mediocre degree :)
luckily for me ive been able to do an A L M O S T- illustraton job since march 2022 being a tattoo artist and i love it to absolute death!!! its very similar career to editorial illustration from what i can tell, but the actual process of tattooing is like linocutting because you cant make mistakes and you have to try and not stab your fingers :) thats why i dont look happy in the picture i was CONCENTRATING.
one of the hardest parts of the job is keeping up to date with social media and trying to lureeee people in with my sparkling personality. i really struggled with this right in the beginning but its essential to the job (sorry luke i do need instagram to get work :')), but i knew i needed to trick myself into enjoying so now i make reels and make my captions fun and it has worked, ive got lots more followers, and im rarely short on work now!! it also means i have skills in marketing myself online and i understand how to get people interested in my work on a superficial level.
i want to tattoo for as long as i can but i think because i love illustrating so much, i'm going to try and get a regular editorial job to keep me going during winter.
here are some of my favs ive done during second year!! tragically i do have to do some that bore me (i work in a village walk-in studio so i do alot of infinities and roman numerals) but i think it makes me enjoy doing the designs that i design more, and it also has improved my patience with doing things at uni that i don't immediately enjoy because i understand that it will benefit the work that i have control over.
and these are some examples about how being on the course has directly improved my tattoos!! i alway liked observational drawing but it wasnt until first year that i decided i r e a l l y liked it, specifically continuous line, and now its my automatic way of drawing. all of these are observational drawings ive done on my travels, most of these have been done in kew gardens and on the uni trip to amsterdam, and when i get home i scan them in and slap them on instagram!
ive only just posted them the other week so i have no pictures of any tattoos yet but i have about 4 people booked in for the flowers so ill add the pictures here as soon as theyre done!!!
these are also some good examples of how i recycle any miscellaneous sketches i do at uni into tattoos :) most of these i draw in lectures and because i don't have all the time in the world to crank out new flash designs for work every week, i scan in my doodles and tidy them up abit which saves me a lot of time and means i have more time to do uni work. TIME MANAGEMENT!!!
the next big hurdle i have to hop over (in terms of blending my illustration style with my tattoo world) is trying to convince people to get colour tats :'( everyone HATES colour, especially the age range that almost all my clients are because of their parents having faded old colour roses. tragically i L O V E colour and so i desperately want to work with it, so over the summer im going to test the waters and make some colour flash to try and convince the masses that they're cool and won't look ugly in a few years. this drawing i did last summer on holiday and its my dream tattoo so im hoping ONE MAGICAL DAY someone with have the rainbow crow and i can know i've peaked in life.
i think both my illustration and tattooing have massively influenced each other so far and i can't imagine only doing one, so i dont think ill ever stop tattooing as it is a pretty steady job in comparison to a lot of other creative work, but i think im going to keep pursuing a little illustration gig on the side to keep my brain happy :)
these are some illustrations that were using in a linkedin article !!! you can click here to have a look
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/data-walk-across-brussels-james-walker-ii0te/?trackingId=g9xosjWgS6GYHA3DGVYBeQ%3D%3D
even though the person who wrote the article was my team leader on the trip, i was just drawing these possibly to use in a presentation my group have to do (it was the European Inclusive Communities challange trip 2024 woo crazy times). when we got home James emailed me asking for a few more drawing (specifically the doorbell) to use in his article so thats fun :) even though its not a traditional editorial project its still the area of illustration that i'm wanting to get into, and lots of other people will see it on Linkedin and possibly find my account so my fingers are crossed :0
PRINT SALE TIME WOWOWOWOWWO sorry luke ur going to have to read about this six hundred times were all wrote about it in d e t a i l
Eve's lovely friend let us run a stall for free at the event at Bohn's Burgers on the bank holiday Sunday it was really really good it got really busy we sold loads of stuff we made lots of friends I loved it. I talked to lots of people about tattoos, I talked to people about friendships a lot people booked in for flash and we had a really good time there was also alcohol involved. This is probably something that I would happily do once a month it was nice having to print everything off because I got to use the print shop and it was my first time making stickers, we just bought the sticker paper from bonnington and we put it in that through the laserprinter in 307, cut them out ourselves and they went really well!!! we got all the little plastic folders from Bonington and I printed out tiny little 20% off tattoo cards which I think helped people want to book in with me ;) AND i gave out prints to all the other stall holders who was still there by the time we left and it was really nice to ma k e f r i e n d s with other creatives. a lot of people from the course came down to have a look and it was really good. I definitely want to do it again in the future I earn about 30 quid but I had about five people booking for tattoos so we can say that's another 300 so £330 is definitely not bad OI OI
I was also really interested in seeing to see which designs were the favourites a lot people bought the one of the eyes cover in the face and the sword girl and the apples, the least people bought the vase with the eye no one brought that one but I think it would still work really well as a flash design so I think maybe the continuous line one's or ones with a thin a line as opposed to the thick outline( the cupid one sold well). I think the thinner line designs work better as flashes and less as a print because it will be harder to see if it was on the wall and it wasn't as striking when it was all out on the table. Also, because it was Eve's friends who ran the event,they said they were going to try and start up a tattoo event in Nottingham and would let me know when they were doing it!!! So it might not work out but its nice some really cool people now know who I am because I work so far out of town it's nice that people recognise me from my Instagram and want me to be a part of stuff so I think it was really good for us all and just great fun and relaxed way to almost end the uni year.
i also made this little ad for us all to put on Instagram because I had a bit of spare time and everyone was very stressed about the live brief so I thought I'd make it as my good deed of the day :')
I chose the last one just because I like how faint the lines are in the background so it looks more like a pattern from far away and then when you have it on your phone you can see it's a little flowers and eyes because the whole event was about flowers and it being May and it being sunny and nice. I do like the middle one but the last one looks a lot better on my Instagram profile because I use a lot of the dark shade of green in my flash sheets so fits more cohesive
I really like making these ads and little posters and signs I think it's fun and I think is a good way to test your creativity and test how you can make people want to go to something and catch the eye of people scrawling through hundreds and hundreds of flashing pictures and colours all the time I tried to make it nice and calm and happy and citrusy and minty like a nice mojito and I think did.
I dhappily do these in the future it's abit like editorial but obviously I'm making this for my own benefit but id happily make them if people asked me to and people paid me great fun and I think I'm good at it O NO SHES TOOTING HER OWN TRUMPET AGAIN :0
SYMPOSIUM WOO
I love the symposing days I think theyre really interesting I did fall asleep in one talk that was the last talk and it was the end the day we been sat down ages I'm not very good with been sat down for a long time however I find the talks really interesting I really enjoyed Left Cultures talk I thought was really interesting because the man was from a random village in the north and he didn't realise how much history and politics and movement was happening where he lived because he always fought it was just like a terrible place full of grass and boring old people :)
Robbie Cathro's talk was really good for me because it made me realise I definitely don't want to do children's book illustrations because they're such a long projects and if you want to do multiple projects at a time they overlap and it's really hard and I don't want to do that I find no appeal in doing really long painstaking projects I would much rather do editorial, so even if I don't enjoy the topic is quick, and it's over in maximum a week.
I went f e r a l at the gallery it was full of cardboard boxes that we're able to draw on I got excited we made a fort and then luke very kindly asked me to go and start drawing on other peoples boxes and infiltrate their friendship groups and cause chaos and that's what I'm good at so I did ALOT of that and then he said can you start kicking over towers and making a ruckus I'm also very good at that so we all did a lot of that and then it seem to break up the metorphorical ice and make everyone talk to each other and we started working together to make really big structures. we made a big massive circle of boxes that we called box church and then we also stacked all the boxes against the wall and kicked them down and put them back up and try to build a little house and then was really fun it's like creche but for almost adults :)
I think is a good way to understand how people are because it's not really got anything to do with illustration that has so much to do with how you are in the world and I think it was fun that Luke asked me to do stuff still don't really know why but I'm going to take it as a compliment HORRAY
On the Bath trip we went to magalleria it was a zine and publication magazine printing shop I loved it because I like holding things are made from nice paper. the owner was mentioning how he likes when students send their zines in so can put them on sale behind the till for like £2 and I'm not really that bothered about making the money so I think all of us in the little friend group Luke you know who yeah you know and we are going to send our zines in one big parcel and say that we are from NTU from the trip and we are happy for them to just put him to put down for whatever price they want :) I think I'm going to send down my amplify and Joe Kessler and just see what happens!!! I'm not too bothered if they don't sell, I'm just happy to say that they're in a shop somewhere and a couple people might have looked them up and investigated it which is really nice.
I don't personally see myself making zines in the future because theyre a bit of a longer term project and I think that it's not something that I be able to do alongside tattooing. Editorial I'll be able to do and selling prints and merch that's fine but a zine is longer term and it be alot of work in the background however I love doing them now, I know that after the Joe Kessler brief, so I'd like to make more in the future that might be when I have time off of through winter when it's a quiet season, and I'll have a little bit more time
PS I also really enjoyed getting tipsy with the course was great fun everyone on the course is great even on the bus trip, great hostels, great cider is the best cider of ever had a really nice pizza and we met and very friendly dog and it took us about an hour to walk back in the dark 10/10 i loved it
Around January time Viv put on a teachout outside of uni at DIZZY INK to make posters for Palestine and I'd been watching shit scared of the genocide happening in Palestine but I wasn't sure what I could do is a student in Nottingham 10,000 miles away from everything and who lives in a place that had no idea it was happening, did not want to know what was happening, and would happily go about life not knowing what was happening. I didn't know what I could do with the skills I've got so i went to the teachout, there's about six of us VIV MADE BISCUITS it was amazing and I made a poster on the left in the riso machine, I drew the bird in pencil it's got really nice texture on it now and then all the type was collaged and this then got pasted around, once by the people at the teachout and then also by the posters for Palestine group that a friend on graphics runs there is one half ripped down on a lamppost :)
I felt like I was able to finally do something public, rather than donating and reposting news while hoping something would happen.the group also sold a lot of them at a protest in the market centre where they were doing five prints for £5 donation and that all went to aid. even I wasnt able to be at the sale I was able to help out and I use my money to print and it made me feel like I was finally able to be obvious in what I believed in and raise awareness for things I wasn't sure how to help.
last week I was feeling really sick for Rafah and completely out of control so I made two new posters and I wanted them to be Rafah specific because that's what i thought needed to be seen and the news isnt being up to date or specific enough, so i drew the poppy and the crying eye. i needed to use the visual symbols being used by protest groups, but I also wanted it if it was up as a sticker or a poster people would look at the picture because it was pretty and then realising it's a protest poster and maybe taking a little bit more time to read it, I know that not all part of posters can be like that because they need to be real and horrible and painful to make you understand the reality of the genocide but I know that if this was put up where I lived in my village people wouldn't understand the red and green and black was the Palestinian flag colours and would probably stop and look at it or stop to take one before even knew it was about. I sent my posters into a group called flyers_for_falastin which makes all the illustrations accessible for everyone to use in a protest if they need prints, or stickers to sell to raise money it's all free and everyone can use them like an open resource. I normally don't feel like I can do anything big because I've lived in a village all my life where people don't watch the news because they would rather just not know, but going to uni in town gives me the freedom to be loud and maybe think of ways that I can bring that to my local area, I want to do this for as long as I'm humanly alive with little working hands. It's there really quick and easy to make they take no time, it's better for them to be two or three colours it so you can easily printed and risoed, and using my art for something I believe in and should be believed in is way more important than tattooing and selling stickers of my own designs and making prints of flash designs none of that's important if I'm not using art to do this as well.
Colab was a tricky one because no one wants to meet new people and make them hate you so for the whole project I think we all want to be friends more than we wanted to have an argument about a bombshelter animation and I'm happy we did that because I love Tara and Ava and Amelia obviously but amelia is here to stay Tara and Ava are only here for a couple of months and I did not want to ruin their exchange time by being a collaborative menace.
we had a lot of difficulties with deciding on a style and away to animate because none of us had a lot of experience of animation well and very basic stop motion knowledge, and I think I spent more time trying to make sure everyone was happy and feel happy with the project than I actually did contributing to the work but it helped us stay organised and make a really good presentation. I'm very proud of how I did because i used to get very nervous and I did this one really well with this pitch and we still talk to each other so must've done something right :0 but I think if I was to do big collaborative projects in the future it have to be with people that I didn't know at all completely new people that I wasn't worried about hurting their feelings or being biased to people. I just want to have arguments about illustration, make something that's really good and I don't have to worry that someone might hate me forever, however that is the best case scenario is and I know that is not how all collaborative work happens so maybe Id do it better either a pair or a much bigger group. i reckon this would work better for me because a pair is easy communication and you can talk really easily and it's very easy to get things together, and in a big group you're more like a cog in a big machine so they're less emotion involved and you're basically just there to do the work and give it a go try your best and l e a v e.
Even though I've never acted like I have in the collab project in my life, very proud of myself I tried to get things sorted and I was very motivated to try to make sure it was really good experience for everyone, I think one of my biggest room-for-improvements is being stressed that people might feel uncomfortable because a collaborative projects where everyone draws so differently everyone, literally everyone, in the group is from completely different parts of the world people are going to have to do things they dont like no matter if we did an animation or a leaflet or a sign, and I reckon I should of let people feel uncomfortable, and if they were struggling help them with understanding everything. at some points i felt uncomfortable, I find it hard to create work that's beige and grey and white and I also find it hard to stick to a very rigid style but that comes with the project the brief and the time era that the project was set in, and I know that at the end I kind of got a grip of it and tried to make work that fit what we needed. At the start I just wanted to do everything in colour and make it an experience to make abstract and that's not necessarily what everyone else in the group wanted and if I'd accept it a little bit sooner, I could've probably contributed a lot more to the physical work of the project.
for the artist interview i contacted jean lee, who is a graphic designer and illustrator from Florida! I wasn't aware that we were just meant to get the answers via email because me and Ruby were struggling to find artists, I'd message and email is probably about 40 I'll got a lot of mixed responses saying I'm busy at the moment or I don't have any editorial work to talk about ,so when I got a reply from jean lee we got excited and set up a zoom meeting IMMEDITATLY. because of the time difference the zoom was at 7pm at night just so it was about 1pm there and it was really fun!!! they're really nice to talk to I enjoyed it better on zoom because it meant that now I feel like I have a little friend in Florida even though obviously would've been easier to get it by email. I think that it's really good that we got to do a zoom call and they were happy for us to do a zoom call with them. It was more realistic as to what would happen if we were interviewing someone who was abroad, and it was a really cool experience.
I found Jean Lee because they had made a tour T-shirt for an artist I really liked and it was spiky and black and red really graphic and it didn't look like tour T-shirts id seen before, it had a lot more on it and it wasn't just like the artist logo on the dates, and they really inspired me so that's why wanted to talk to them!!! they said that the deadline that had was about a week or two and it was for a queer music night called colorwaave, they said they had really wanted to work with them because they liked the events and the morals of the group :) they only had to make small changes but other than that they had a lot freedom!!
this is probably what I'd like to do alongside tattooing. It seems like another side of editorial that have slightly longer deadline times and is more permanent in terms of how long your works in the public eye. a tour T-shirt would be on sale for about 7 to 8 months as opposed to a newspaper illustration that will probably only be seen for a day or for a week. it seems like you can get a lot of work from traditional editorial, but I think it be nice if I did a couple like this just to change it up and I think that's what my style suits best because I think its fun making the little details needed in merchandise and advertisement, and things that musicians and events would need.