Comprehensive relfection

This year at college alone has really flown past quicker than I could have ever anticipated, beginning this course I had a certain set of goals I wanted to reach by the end, in doing this course it has allowed my creative freedom to reach new heights I did not think my creative talent could reach, in doing this course I have not only found my new flair in creative arts but I have also allowed myself the space to develop into a young adult with my goals for my end of the second year changing also. Academically, I feel like I haven't really learnt new skills or been pushed into new and exciting briefs to really put my all into this year; however my software skills have really shone through. I started this course with absolutely no idea what I was doing and had no creative direction, yet coming back this year from September I hit the ground running feeling comfortable in my abilities to do each task given to me, this year i really wanted to focus of where my talents were strongest by working with some of my preferred softwares such as Photoshop and Illustrator to build up strong work for my portfolio in the future. I also found a new skill in website design, something I never thought would be an enjoyable task for me, however I have found that design is a huge strength to me, although the website template creating isn't due to never being taught coding I feel like this is something that I could work with in the future and something to consider now we are coming into FMP season. Some of my strongest work from this year has been created by myself via being allowed the creative freedom to make something suitable for the work needed but also slightly out of the box;

Here is one of the pieces of work i am most proud of from this year, it may not look like much but this abstract self portrait was created using Illustrator, a software that I had no idea what to do with last year. What I am most pleased about with this drawing is that it takes influence from an intimate picture taken of me in a much unhappier time in my life. Drawing the interpretation and using the photographic for reference really allowed me to see the stark contrast between then and now & how much I have grown mentally since the photo was taken, the artistic flairs such as the intricate, hand drawn hair strokes and added in dashes of colour for detail adds up to look like something I would be drawn in by naturally therefore this is an image I am incredibly proud of for its sentimental reasons. The image was created to add into a visual CV, due to the success of the image I will use CV when applying to creative job roles in the future.

Another piece of work I am exceptionally pleased with is a piece I have already spoken about, Creating a website is something I would have never thought of doing before this however using a template website such as Wix really helped with what I struggled with such as coding the website and allowed me to really focus on the websites overall ascetic. Working with Lj Hugs was probably the brief I have enjoyed the most, getting the opportunity to work one on one with the owner, Lewis behind the company gave me the boost I needed to work hard, as the project was very personal to Lewis, I wanted to nail it to give him a clear direction of where I wanted to take his business or at least supply him with ideas on what he could to benefit his business. Doing this project meant I could also show Nick, our lecture, my skills when it comes to marketing and PR which is what I hope to do in the future. Overall, he was really impressed, as was Lewis who was overly complimentary about my work; without realising it, I needed that boost to push me forward into the last few months of our time at college due to feeling quite burnt out, working with Lewis was great as it was refreshing to see a man so passionate about his business give all of us as students the time of day.

The finale piece of work I want to talk about is similar to that of the Lj Hugs project, as this was only a micro project not much was done into it accept creating visuals to show ideas. For this project we were asked to work with the museum of Bath at work to create some visual mock ups of art work, these mock ups really show my drawing/artistic style. This was the last project we did before signing off work for FMP to begin so really this style has come full circle to me from not having a style at all to finding one that represents my artistic style.

Overall, as said previously I feel like this year has not benefitted me in terms of education, however it has given me the opportunity to really push myself creatively and get the chance to practise the skills I have learnt in the past. I felt like all but one or two of our projects have been time fillers to allow first year students to have the time that they need to do projects, which I understand entirely but I think in the future the staff should look at giving second years major projects to do that will take some time rather than small ones that are too easy for us to do.