In September I started a part time MA in illustration - authorial practice. It's a course with a great reputation, run by Falmouth University, on their beautiful tropical garden campus. As this is paid for by the studio, and with the aim that we'll be able to expand what we can do for people, I thought it was time for a little update.
Authorial illustration is basically about using imagery to tell stories - that could be anything from making a kid's picture book, through to reportage (news reporting via illustration) or data visualisation. It's an incredibly open topic and the course leaders are fabulous at helping people find their own, very different ways through.
It's been quite a difficult few months learning to balance the course with running the studio, hiccuped even further by the devastating loss of our very loved pup at the start of November, but I think before too long it should be possible to find a comfier balance - at the moment the weekends are spent on the course, and rest time is a rare unicorn.
The course is quite full on, despite being part time, and it's a shock to the system going into a Masters level course with no previous educational background at all in arts - keeping it in mind that I'm not really there to prove anything, just to learn and be inspired, is helping, especially when faced with all the beautiful work being produced by drawing and illustration graduates on the course!
We've had one assessment already, and the second one is due this month. The first module is about expanding our visual language - basically lots and lots of experimentation and learning to choose appropriate methods for the topics we're wanting to work on. We've had weekly workshops on things like line, colour and tone, composition, perspective, storyboards, and visual scribing (live illustration in response to a talk). We've also had inductions on various bits of kit, like etching (with acid, using zinc plates), screen printing, riso printing, and various bits of expensive proprietary software (I'm taking these courses partly to try to work out whether they're actually better than free open source ones like Gimp and Inkscape). I have drypoint printing workshop and a letterpress induction next week too.
We also have weekly/biweekly life drawing - it's been my first time doing this and I'm way behind most people, but having done a biology degree that involved quite a bit of comparative anatomy drawing has helped I think. My drawing is a bit lifeless, perhaps because I'm more used to doing technical drawings of skeletons and pickled specimens than the more expressive (and skilled) work that the other students do.
It's particularly exciting having access to really brilliant technicians. They are milling around full time, there to help us figure out how to do anything we could possibly want to try. It's a huge change from my previous experiences with science education in universities. This is far more collaborative and also, ironically, far more encouraging of experimentation. The culture of sharing what we're doing, right from day one, with everyone - things we're struggling with, things we've found that we like, things we've tried - is wonderful.
It's early days but it's clear that there will be benefits for our studio work. We've made quite a lot of traditionally illustrated games like Wasplove and Nergal, and I think these might get a bit more daring in future. We'll also be able to expand into printed work, I can imagine doing posters and books for example for various projects. There are also opportunities for doing beautiful interactive articles on serious topics, with more illustrative data visualisation work that isn't as cold as the normal stuff we see.
I'll leave this for now with some test slugs I did for a task on tone (how light/dark a colour is) - we had to use a coloured ground (in other words coloured paper) and only black and white. I think there is power in elevating creatures like slugs to the position where they are viewed as worthy of having their portraits painted. One day we'll get to make a slug game, one day.
Here's what I did for the first assessment, where we had to work to the theme 'washed up on the beach', and produce something A4, portrait, and for print (using CMYK colours which is a whole new world for me). The theme brought sad imagery to mind, stranded cetaceans, pollution, and what I ended up focusing on which was people lost at sea who were seeking refuge and a better life in new countries. This was based on photos by Alfonso Di Vincenzo. It got a merit, I couldn't quite believe it. Putting the effort into depicting this scene as well as I could felt like an act of remembrance and hopefully respect to those we've lost (largely due to border violence and climate change).
