a new term, a new class, a new brief...

"The purpose of this project is to stretch your response to “illustration” in ways that you have never before considered. You have purposefully been kept in the dark about this project so that you would collect arbitrary information from the Jersey Museum collection to work with. We are now asking you to put these drawings to one side and resist the urge to jump ahead with final ideas whilst you research the many aspects, uses and audiences of illustration and then go on to experiment with a range of illustrative media and techniques.

You will begin by spending some time at the Jersey Library looking at newspaper and magazine illustration, graphic novels, comic strips, children’s book illustration and the illustrative work of fine artists. You will also visit the Jersey Heritage Art Store to look at the original drawings of C20 Jersey artist Edmund Blampied. You will look at contemporary illustration online at flickr.com, weblogs such as DRAWN! (drawn.ca) and also use youtube.com to research contemporary digital illustration in advertising, television and film. You will use this time to forget everything you thought you knew about illustration and move your ideas into new and exciting areas of illustration, stealing ideas to experiment with.

Your research will then inspire your own experimentation with illustrative materials, techniques and processes. These experiments will be vastly wide-ranging in order for you to assess the suitability of many different approaches and also ensure that you move away from your usual “style” or approach to illustration. Be prepared to have every mark you make challenged. Whilst you experiment you will also be choosing or perhaps even writing your own words to eventually illustrate.

At the mid-point of your time back in the studio you will write a short brief outlining your final piece plans and pitch your experimental illustrations and story ideas to the group and receive constructive feedback concentrating specifically as to whether the style of your illustrations, the compositions and the media and techniques used communicate the narrative well and whether they are suitable for the audience that you have chosen. You will use this feedback to further develop your final illustrations.

After half term you will develop the illustrations/characters/or even small aspects of your narrative into either two-dimensional digital animation OR three-dimensional moving sculpture."

Joanna