Summative Position Statement

This year I have identified that I am an illustrator, image-maker and designer. I enjoy working with character, applied illustration and typography, which form three avenues of my practice. When creating more personal, character based work, Western comics, Japanese manga, edgy-cute phenomena and intersectional feminism influence me. The design aspect of my practice is fuelled by my passion for developing new skills to make more specialist commercially viable work, such as brush lettering.

The audience for my practice is primarily young women in the 18 to 25 year old age range. I have identified this through my use of social media and the resulting interaction with my work. The tone of voice for my personal work is often fantastical, mystical, edgy and gothic, whereas my applied illustration and typography is much more flexible depending on the brief.

Going forward, I want to position my practice as a brand specialising in cute merchandise of characters and motifs. In order to do this, I have created an appropriate logo to use on promotional material, packaging and stickers. To further promote my practice, I have created a professional website and additional social media including Instagram, a blog and a Linked In. 
The blogging element of my practice is really important because I like to have quite an open dialogue with my audience and it helps me stay connected to current trends and discussions. It's also a really good platform for me to talk about what is currently influencing the content of my work, processes I am enjoying or events I will be taking my work to. 

My ultimate goal is to own my own shop/brand offering products such as bespoke books, prints, apparel and giftware. To further my applied illustration and typography skills, I would like to gain experience in a design studio and continue working on collaborative projects through my collective, the Pink Cat Club. 

Summative Evaluation OUIL602

This year I have really tried to focus on what kind of practitioner I am. Since the beginning of this course, I have struggled with exactly what type of illustration I want to produce and I have come to a conclusion by process of elimination. Building confidence in my practice is something else I wanted to work on this year so that by the time I finished I really felt like a professional.

It wasn't until the final presentations that something really clicked and I was able to identify what kind of practitioner I am. Through hearing some of my peers declare that they did not think of themselves as illustrators, I think it gave me the confidence to state that I am not an illustrator in the classical sense of the word and I have different aspects of my practice. For too long I tried to confine my practice to one area so realising that this doesn't have to be the case was a big relief. With this in mind, I think this was why I struggled to identify agencies or studios to contact - I was looking for something that encompassed my whole practice (which is quite broad). I understand now that I should target agencies or studios based on one area of my practice - for example I could send some of my character work to one or perhaps some of the typography work to another.

Contacting people in general has really helped me with my confidence. Initially I was hesitant to write emails to people in case they just ignored me - which was the worst they could do and I soon realised it wasn't anything personal, they were probably just busy. The few responses I did get from other practitioners were really encouraging and motivated me to reach out to others. It also got me to consider who else I could contact, so I set about finding opportunities to get my work out into the world - now I have a few art markets booked and I'm excited to start selling and meeting new people!

When it came to addressing my creative and online presence, I don't think I really had many issues and I really enjoyed the whole process. The only problems I came across were related to decision making when it came to what artwork to use - and this stemmed from not really knowing what sort of practitioner I was. I am pleased with the promotional material I have created so far and I'm confident that it is consistent and looks professional. If I change my mind about it in a few months, then I have made it easily update-able. If I did have longer to work on it however, I would look into creating different promo packs for the three avenues of my practice (one for character, one for typography and one of applied illustration). These are reflected in my portfolio however, so I don't think it's necessary to make this change until I have a substantial amount of work for each.

Forming a collective/partnership with Abby (the Pink Cat Club) has probably been one of the most defining moments for me this year. It made me consider how we can present ourselves as a brand and encourage each other to find as many opportunities to get our work out into the world. When it comes to my individual practice, I would also like to shape that as a kind of brand because I am really interested in creating products with my work. Creating a blog for my practice and another for the Pink Cat Club will be essential to defining them as brands. I think it will also be a really valuable tool for reflection as I will no longer have my programme blog!

Overall I have had a really positive experience with this module. I have had many moments of self doubt but having the opportunity to reflect on my goals as well as hear about other peoples has helped me identify what makes my practice unique. Although I haven't been hired by any one just yet, I am confident in my plans for after I graduate and what I need to continue to do to get people interested in what I can do!

SH Final Presentation Boards

SH Creative Presence 2016

SH Professional Portfolio 2016

Setting up blogs!

As talked about in my presentation, I have set up a blog for my practice. I haven't finished adding everything to it just yet and I'm not sure what my first post will be, but I think this will be a really important aspect of my practice in the future.

http://www.sophie-hargreaves.blogspot.com

I've also set one up for mine and Abby's collective so that we have more of a platform to write about what we're doing, where and who with. I'm quite proud of all the HTML I've had to edit/add in to make sure there were all the right sections and so that the right links opened in new tabs etc! 

http://www.pinkcatclub.blogspot.com

Hopefully these should be up and running by the end of the week. The plan is to get a proper domain name for each of them and I want to add links to each of them onto my main website. 

I'm really excited to get the first posts up - I'd like to include videos/timelapses of my process one day and I think regardless of the content I am going to have to be super organised to make sure I post regularly.

Print n Pint Fair Shoutout

I just thought I'd put this up here because I'm super excited about the upcoming Print n Pint art fair (it's been so long since I got to do something like this!) and they gave me a shout out on the event page which is pretty cool!

Another art fair!

In my presentation I spoke about mine and Abby's intentions to do some art fairs/markets as the Pink Cat Club so that we could start getting our work out there and create some new contacts. I found another one for us to do and we have two weeks to prepare for it!

I was worried I wouldn't have enough to sell but I found loads of old packaged prints and I've been getting stuff printed at every opportunity possible so I've built up quite a lot of stock! I'm really excited about doing these art fairs! I know they won't be a sustainable income but I think it's important for my practice that I engage with my audience and it will be a good way to test what sells!

Final Presentation Boards Feedback/Reflection

I am so happy the presentations are over! I think the delivery of mine went alright, I'm just annoyed at myself for being so anxious! I have days when I just don't feel confident about my practice and unfortunately that was one of them. After seeing what everybody else is up to and their future plans however, I feel somewhat reassured that I'm on the right track.

A major turning point during the presentations for me was realising that I might not be an illustrator in the classical sense of the word.. My practice has different avenues and I suppose I had been trying to smush it all together to try and force it to all be the same type of work. This was silly but I now recognise that I have design based work which is kind of typography based, then there's my applied illustration which is decorative/pattern based and lastly, my personal work which is about drawing cute, sassy characters. Recognising this has made me consider how I might set out my website - perhaps I need three distinct sections? I could also have three sets of promotional material.

Feedback from the tutors was overall positive. I should have included more of my work because there were a couple of slides that just had text on which I probably didn't need. My branding was a success so I don't feel the need to change that too much before submission. I also spoke about setting up a professional blog which was definitely encouraged!  My only regret is letting my nervousness get the better of me because I think I left a lot of stuff out that I wanted to talk about - at least I'm a thorough blogger and it's all on here.

Character Commission!

I was recently commissioned by a hairdressers/shop to create an illustration of the mother and daughter who run it. It's an independent shop/salon called Frockalicious in Lincoln and they actually heard about my work from a friend of my parents, who referred them to my website (it's paying off!). They asked for the characters to be based on them with a 50's vibe because that's what their current branding is based around. The image will be used on their promotional material/stationery/banners so all the info from the AOI lecture was really useful when it came to pricing, creating an acceptance of commission, T&Cs and invoicing!

I love drawing cute characters like this and I really enjoy the digital painting process. I hope I can get more work like it!

Booking Art Fairs

I've been searching for more art fairs to do for ages and by chance this morning, a friend from York posted about one happening in Leeds at the end of May! I emailed the guys at ShuffleDog as soon as I could and got everything confirmed! Can't wait! I'm really excited about selling work in Leeds and creating more contacts. I'll be doing this table with Abby so we've agreed to set up a mock stall to see the best way to arrange all our prints - we want to look super professional after all! 

I was also interested in the Leeds Illustration Showdown but unfortunately I was too late in finding out about it! I've been put on the reserve list though, so not all bad. (kind of awkward that they called me Sarah though)

Selecting a portfolio!

Since I've been putting together my digital portfolio recently and I've already booked my print slots to get it all printed, I thought I'd better order something to put it all in! I've opted for an A3 portrait folder and I'm hoping this one is really good quality! It's a bit of an investment but presenting my work well will definitely make people take me more seriously as a professional illustrator (I hope!).

Printing new business cards/visual identity

I finally decided on a design for my promotional material and I intended on printing out this promo pack/mailer (here) but once I got to the print room, I realised I had a file missing! That will have to be dealt with on Monday so that I can get it photographed nicely for my creative presence boards. 

I've been thinking a lot about how I want to present myself as a practitioner and as I may have stated in previous posts, I'd like to create my own sort of brand/shop. So much of my work is created with the intention of applying it to something. I know that my strongest suits aren't book illustration, designing posters or editorial, so that has helped me rule out what kind of illustrator I am. Last year at the Creative Networks event with Babs Tarr (here) she said that she just loved to draw cute girls in cute underwear and it's taken her to places she never expected - now she's one of the artists behind Batgirl for DC! My point is, although I am still going to keep trying to improve on my design based work (packaging design etc), there's still a huge part of my practice that it just focused around drawing cute, sassy characters and I want to capitalise on it. So to do this, I have started to create a range of products with this work on (stickers, prints etc) and adapted the designs for my promotional material into packaging for consistency. I will take this to as many art markets or conventions I can to get it seen, but also use it for selling stuff online. 

Different applications for my work?

I created this design for fun and with the intention of getting it printed as stickers to sell either on my Etsy/Redbubble or art markets/cons but my boyfriend suggested I submit it to the Steam Workshop to be used as an in game sticker/decal for CS:GO. I've seen some pretty cool designs on there before but since I don't actually play that game I wasn't sure how it worked. As he is a games dev student, I asked him to turn it into a texture file (something I am completely unfamiliar with) so that I could submit it.
I think this is a pretty cool idea for little spot illustrations that I do and granted it gets approved, it might be a good way to earn a bit of money and get people to see my work.

Another promo pack design

I really need to stop messing around with these and stick to a design but I still felt unsure about the previous floral pattern. I've missed doing super detailed patterns like this and I think it looks much more interesting/attention grabbing. I'm printing on Friday so by that point I'll have something I am going to stick with for a while. At least I know that these formats are really easy to update whenever I feel like I have better work to use.

NCC

Officially on the NCC website as the Pink Cat Club with Abby (our little collective)! It's just a one day convention but it looks like there will be some pretty cool guests there, including someone from Marvel! Exciting stuff.

Illustration Ltd

I've wanted to contact Illustration Ltd for a while because they represent a diverse range of illustrators and I think this is the kind of agency I need to be targeting. Rather than going through the general artist submissions page, I read about their team and decided to email their senior agent/associate director for a little bit of advice on what they look for. 

I kept the email short and to the point whilst hopefully showing my interest in what they do. I don't know whether I'll get  response because I'm sure they're pretty busy. If not, I'll try emailing somebody else on the team (link here).

From looking at the illustrators work on their website, I feel a bit more confident that there is a place in the world for my work. I definitely think I need to draw more for fun. At the moment I've just been working on briefs so I don't think I've really let my work develop through play. I think I'll set myself a goal of producing one drawing per day that isn't work related but might help bulk out my portfolio.

Mailers

Whilst getting a load of stuff ready for print, I decided to design some mailers to go with my business cards (and I hated the previous designs). I always struggle with this because I feel like there are two quite distinctive areas of my practice and I can't really get them to fit together.. But this is ok! It just means that I'll have to target clients with different material. One area of my practice is character based and I think that's what people follow me for on my social media - cute, sassy, edgy girls. On the other hand, I have my more design oriented work - pattern, lettering, packaging etc, which feels less like 'me' but I enjoy it nevertheless. I think it's important to show both of these areas of my practice in my portfolio but it might not always be appropriate. With these two mailer designs I'll put in some postcards/samples of work to send to people and tailor it to them. 

Promo material?

I've been thinking about the kind of stuff I can take to conventions, art markets or any other event I want to go and sell stuff at/network. I've started creating some simple sticker designs with existing work which I could send out with my promo mailers or I could make sticker packs to sell? I'd like to take full advantage of the print resource whilst I can and I think this is the kind of application I tend to design my work for.

Portfolio Progress

Since my previous post, I've asked a few people which business card design they preferred and this is the one everybody picked!

I agree that it's more eye-catching and because it's more recent, it's probably more appropriate for my body of work right now.

To create some consistency with all my promotional material, I've decided to carry it across onto my portfolio layout.

It's a work in progress but I'm slowly selecting work to go in it. I think there will end up being different sections within my portfolio because the content of my work varies quite a lot - I have packaging projects, pattern designs, character and lettering. The thing that brings all my work together is the fact that I often design with the intention of it being applied to something (product.packaging etc). I could try and organise it by process, but I flit between a few that I like, depending on what's appropriate so it would probably just look jumbled together. I'm not really sure why I'm being so precious about what I put into this because I've already uploaded a lot of work to my website. I suppose anything I put into this will be swapped out with newer work in a few months anyway!

More Business card ideas

I decided my previous designs were way too boring and I actually use a lot of colour in my work so my business cards need to reflect this! I knew I wanted to use some sort of pattern on the background so I've used some of the ones I made in OUIL603. I'm much happier with these! I don't know whether to have all the info on one side or whether that will make the details too small - maybe I should put that stuff onto the back instead? I also can't pick which one I prefer, I think it would depend on the client/who/where I was handing them out and which would be appropriate at that time.

Amended Business card design

FRONT:

BACK:

I thought the front was too cluttered before so I simplified it. I'm a little unsure about the polka-dots though, does it make it look too busy? Does the white look boring? I could potentially hand-embellish them somehow to make them more eye-catching or use an off-white stock (or both??). I'll have to do some print tests and see how they look off screen. 

Acceptance of Commission and ToC's

I'm SO happy I went to the lecture we had a couple of weeks ago with the Association of Illustrators (post about it here). I wouldn't have known how to put this together without the template they gave us and since somebody just contacted me about a commission, I can finally put it to use! Feeling pretty professional right now.
I had to type up all the ToC's because we just got print-outs, but it gave me a chance to read them through properly and get a better understanding of my rights as an Illustrator and the Client's rights. All the info the AOI gave us on how to price work/the questions you should ask about the client were really helpful too. As I've just been commissioned by a small independent business, I tailored my price to them - when I asked about their budget, they said they had no idea what the going rates were (they were scared I was going to ask for something like £500 which was way out of their budget). I got this commission through word of mouth essentially, so having up to date work on my website and various social media platforms definitely paid off because they were able to look me up before they contacted me!

Business card/Mailer Design

I haven't really thought about things I can hand out to people in quite a while - I've been more concerned with my online presence recently. I'd really like to make a sort of promo pack with a couple of samples of work inside and a little 'about me' section, to show off what I'm all about. 

I've played around with a lot of business card designs so far and I've changed my mind about all of them. I figured since I used this image (sort of based on myself - the pink hair!) on a lot of my online profiles, I should probably carry it over to the physical stuff to make everything look consistent. This way, people are more likely to remember what I look like too! Drawing girls with colourful hair is quite an integral part to my practice too, so since I don't get to do that for a lot of my 'work', it's nice to get that in somewhere.

Yoshi Yoshitani

I recently came across Yoshi's work and instantly fell in love with the colour palettes and patterns she uses with her characters! I really want to improve on my character drawing skills because I feel like everything I draw looks a bit stiff? It's not really my intention to focus my work towards animation/character development but I find it so useful to get ideas from because of how they are able to capture the movement/personality in each piece. 

I also think this would be a good reference for my OUIL603 final project! I love how the mermaid's tail comes out of the frame here.

Confirming NCC

In this post I mentioned that I had to send some stuff over in preparation for Nottingham comic con and I've only just got around to doing it!

I think I'm getting much more confident in planning these sort of events and how I want to be perceived there. Although this correspondence isn't anything major, I suppose it's just part of trying to get your work out into the world.

Ricardo Bessa

Whilst looking for agencies that might be suitable for me to contact, I came across Ricardo Bessa's work on FolioArt. I've been following him on Twitter for sooo long and I'm pretty sure I saw him at Thought Bubble too!

I just really love the colour palettes and the kind of glowy lighting he uses! All his work looks so unified/harmonious. It makes me realise just how much I still have to improve on. I really like all the backgrounds/scenes in his illustrations which is something I've kind of avoided tackling because I'm lazy. Feeling really motivated to go away and practice this stuff now! 

Illustration CV

It's getting to that point in the year where I need to start thinking about employment for when I graduate so I've been looking at a few Junior artworker positions in Leeds that I might apply to.. However I'm not all that confident in my CV writing skills, so I think I'll ask for a bit of feedback from somebody before I send any out.

Vivian Le

Whilst uploading some other work to ISSUU, I noticed an issue of Forge in my suggestions and was immediately grasped by the cover artwork! In her work Vivian Le explores issues such as the objectification and commodification of women and children through doll-like characters.
What struck me about her work is the juxtaposition of the colours/characters with the deeper conversation that's happening with her work. I also immediately recognised how her work is influenced by Hayao Miyazaki and Ghost in the Shell!

This is the issue of Forge, worth a look!

Getting Organised!

After the assessment briefing this morning I realised I needed to start thinking about what I need to get printed for the submission - like my creative presence boards which will need to be A3 on some nice stock.
Print slots seem to be filling up pretty fast so I've booked one for Wed 30th March @ 11AM and another for Friday 8th April @ 10AM (highlighted to help me remember!). 
These will act as mini deadlines for most of my ongoing projects and I really need to make the most of them. Today my planner has been my best friend but I think I'd like to make something I can colour-code and decorate because time management for the next couple of weeks is going to be so crucial to the success of everything I'm working on!

Plum Pudding Illustration Agency

Whilst I was sat doing a bunch of emailing, I thought it'd be good practice if I sent a quick email to another agency. I'm not sure if Plum Pudding is necessarily the right fit for me since most of their clients look like children's book illustrators but it's worth a try just to get some feedback right??

Edit

Here's the response I got;

I wasn't really expecting much from these but at least they confirmed that I didn't really fit what they're after. I think I need a bit more time to work out what kind of illustrator I am. I see this as good practice though, I'm getting a bit more confident with contacting people and introducing myself as a professional!

Lisa Barlow

On LinkedIn I found Lisa Barlow who graduated from Leeds College of Art the year before I started! She's represented by Plum Pudding Illustration and does a lot of cute character & pattern based work. She gave me such a well thought-out response to my questions and I'm thinking about going to the New Designers showcase in London that she mentioned.

Genevieve FT

I've wanted to speak to Genevieve for soooo long so I figured it was about time I actually did it. I'm worried I ramble a bit too much in emails but I think the more I do it, the better I'll get at articulating things.

Gemma Flack

I have so many questions about life after uni and I'm so unsure about what I'm going to be doing, so I'm going through a list of people I wanted to talk to right at the beginning of the year and hammering out some emails. Hopefully I hear back!

Lemonade Illustration Agency

I've posted about this agency before and I finally plucked up the courage to send them a submission. I have no idea if I'll hear anything back and I probably should have had somebody check what I'd written but I have to learn to be independent with this sort of thing and have confidence when sending out applications.

Right now I don't think I really need to be represented by an agency, but I think it's good to start thinking about my options and creating those contacts.

Albion Place Market & Public Liability Insurance

Myself and Abby are really interested in selling some stuff at the Albion Place Market (more info here)but we got a bit confused about the application and forgot about it for a while.. We've set up our Public Liability Insurance and we're ready to start the application!

We're happy to do any of the highlighted dates but we got a little confused about what we need to actually send.. so I found an email for the market manager and decided to as him.

Hopefully I hear back soon! I'd really like to get this sorted as soon as possible. At least now that we have the Public Liability Insurance we can do any markets we want.

Updated Website

I have FINALLY got my head around how Cargo works (with the confusing project lists etc) and now I really love my website!! I've made it so that whoever visits it can see a good overview of what my work is like and then they can click onto the individual images to see it better or see more of the same project. I've also ordered it so that my favourite and most recent work is at the top so that's seen first. 

NCC & Thought Bubble 2016

So I definitely have a table at Nottingham Comic Con (I didn't even know it existed!) so I have something to work towards. It isn't until after I graduate but I need to start doing some of the prep now! The email above is a couple of things I need to do so that I can be listed on the website but it'll also give me a chance to consider how I want my practice to be perceived online.

As well as NCC, I've applied for a table at Thought Bubble! This will also be after I graduate but there's still a lot of prep I need to do to get me into the professional mindset!

Madelen Foss (Illustrator)

Madelen Foss is an illustrator based in Oslo and we've actually been following each other on instagram for quite a while. She recently hosted a little giveaway which I ended up winning, so she sent me the stuff below!

I spoke to her about it and she said she was really glad it was me she was sending this stuff to! As there was a return address on the package I think I should send her something back for sure. She's collaborated with other illustrators before for her 'Babelien Zine' so I think she's a really great contact to have, just incase! I'd also love to ask her a couple of questions about how she got established as an illustrator.