Guest Illustration Lecturer University South Wales
I was recently contacted by a Sarah Carter, Senior Lecturer at the University of South Wales in Cardiff to give an illustrated lecture to her class of first-year fashion promotion and illustration students. The lecture focused around their 2nd-semester module, to design a tote bag for a local solicitor firm based in Cardiff.
I created my slide lecture focusing working as a full-time illustration artist, and the projects I work on, the way I promote my work, as well as other external projects and collaboration, which consisted of the Tote Bag Book which I had written for Laurence King Publishing in 2009.
Arriving at the University of South Wales, Sarah greeted and briefed me about the tote bag design module. I was given a brief tour of the Cromwell House campus, a short walk away from the main campus. It was also a pleasure to meet the faculty staff of the BA Hons Fashion promotion and illustration course. Sarah kindly introduced me to the class of 80 students. I was happy to speak to the class, as well as speaking to individual students regarding their illustration work for their Tote Bag Module. Below are some of the slides and notes, which were covered in the lecture.
Self Promotion
Here are a couple of screengrabs from my website. Its useful tool to have to promote your work, it’s the place to have your online portfolio, as well as your blog which you use to use to update and talk about your current projects. The website is also linked to my social networking accounts such as Facebook and Twitter accounts.
Behance
Feedly
Social Networking
I use social networks, such as Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, to talk about my work, and my interests, it’s a good way to harness followers of your work, as well as connecting with designers and clients. Behance is a great site to connect with other designers. And is a free portfolio platform. I also use Feedly, to pull in information from sites I follow, such as design week, and creative review. It’s a good blog-reader website, which pulls in all the websites you follow for inspiration into one place. It makes things efficient.
Illustration Agencies
My work is represented by 2 illustration agencies, Central Illustration agency, based in London, and Bernstein and Andriulli from New York City. There are advantages of being represented by an illustration agency, Mostly the commissions, which can be large advertising jobs. It helps to have an agent deal with clients regarding negotiating fees as well as chase invoices and understanding contracts and licensing your artworks. Illustration agencies tend to take a commission, which can be from 30 to 35 per cent of the project fee.
External Projects
As well as illustration, is involved in other projects, like here The Tote Bag Book which I researched and wrote about, and had successfully published by Laurence King publishing back in 2009. The book publishing idea came from the blog I write, about Tote Bags. I have an interest in tote bags because of their illustration value, as well as being a platform to make connections with other designers, of which I write about, Designers contact me regarding their tote bags and I am sent tote bags too.
Marriott Hotel Brochure Illustration
Here is an illustration which was commissioned for the Marriot hotel county hall London, next to the London Eye, the commission was to create a quilling illustration incorporating London landmarks close to and near the Marriot County Hall Hotel. Which includes sites such as the Royal festival hall, Big Ben, the London eyes as well icons such as the black cabs and London Route master bus.
Marriott Hotel Line Drawing.
Here is the line drawing I created using adobe illustrator, I draw the illustration using my Wacom pen drawing tool, and I individually draw each line and shape, creating the illustration.
Marriott Hotel Line drawings
With my illustrations, I tend to use the whole artboard, when I create an illustration. These include key illustrated details from the illustrations, as well as different variations of the illustration, which happen because of comments from clients once they have seen the first draft of the artwork, and there will be quite a few revisions before it becomes approved as the final artwork.
Marriott Hotel Cinema 4D
The vector lines I have drawn are then exported to a 3D package such as Cinema 4D, there are many other programmes, but this seems the best for this effect I work on, it is also a great package for animating the lines which I have done I the past for clients who need an animation for a web advert. The vector lines are then extruded to simulate the look of real 3D quilling, this is done, but the angel of the camera, as well as the shadow and lighting which are all set to specific parameters within the package, its then set to render according to the size requirements of the client, which can range from A4 to Billboard size.
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