Response to Tutor Feedback Part 5

 'Overall your response to this assignment has been focussed and in depth, showing a clear sense of your personal interests and the development of your design process. It's great to see you beginning to broaden your research, through looking at artists from other disciplines, for instance painting here, and in considering the historical context of christmas cards, e.g through looking at victorian examples. You mention that these have impacted your approach to design which is great. Perhaps add in a note or two on how your research has inspired your own designs in your evaluation in order to make this evident. As mentioned, you do well to break down the illustrators and artists' use of different techniques e.g gold leaf in the Victorian Christmas cards. To push this further, remember to consider and detail how the illustrator uses these specific techniques in order to help to communicate a feeling, story or to symbolise something. E.g. the gold perhaps communicates a sense of warmth and luxury which the illustrator wants to bring to the cards.'

For this last part of the course, I feel like I am finally making some strides in the right direction for research, planning projects and being more descriptive in my reflections.

Choosing my own brief for the assignment and being able to shape it to my voice was surprisingly challenging. I wanted to push myself creatively and make something I haven't made before - washi tapes.

Designing them and even designing the card was more challenging than I expected. Perhaps I had too much expectation and that resulted in putting pressure on myself to make the 'perfect' designs.

I intentionally made sure to be thorough in my research and my designs for this project, especially since I was to make these washi tapes, I wanted to make sure I was really happy with the designs. I was also conscious of not just drawing the flowers straight from reference but putting my own spin on them and using my own colours. When trialling the initial colours I went for a more natural palette and this just didn't work for me. The colours were too dark for the look and feel I wanted to bring. I like to use pastel, slightly muted colours with a mix of brighter pastels for a nostalgic look and feel.

All in all I was really pleased with how my designs turned out and the first of the washi tapes should be arriving to me in the next week or two. I am really excited to see them in the flesh.

I am ending this course having created a huge body of work, in so many different types of illustration and with a good idea of the kinds of projects that I want to work on in more depth going forward. My interest in narrative and digital art is where I would like to focus my efforts and really take time to explore and learn this area more closely.

Practicing with client briefs I have learnt that I do have a good understanding of audiences and how to break down a client brief to the fundamentals. Now I need to apply that knowledge in my own work and really think about the creative decisions I am making and how this communicates to my audience.