Final Major Project Journal

So there's a space to fill with what I've learned. I must communicate something with the most appropriate medium from the range that is available to me. I must carefully consider the experiences and skills I have taken on board during the past four months, in order to achieve work worthy of its allotted dimensions.
Though I am likening this opportunity to that of Gormley's Fourth Plinth, I don't want to do art. I don't seek to provoke, to question or confound. I want to explain a process, or to show a narrative. In order to achieve this more practical approach, and hopefully outcome, I must carefully consider the context of the proposed work. Where, when and why will it be displayed to what target audience?

What have I learned? How have I developed? Techniques? Media? What do I want to communicate?

I have begun a journal using pen and paper. I find writing by hand beneficial in organising my thoughts. I spent today writing six pages of questions, answers, directions and development, and have made considerable headway.

I have chosen to take this project very literally. They want me to show what I have learned from the Foundation course so far, so that is what I shall illustrate.

After coming to this decision, I listed the past nine modules I have encountered, how they affected me socially and academically, and how each one helped me progress. How all of the skills and ideas accumulated during these modules have aided my understanding of illustration and art. After the most recent few projects, I understand that process and narrative are required in any good illustration in order for there to be a point to the image or object's existence, and to captivate the viewer long enough to communicate this point. Here I find a great deal of research into advertising most helpful.

I don't want to make a book or a zine, but am trying to opt for instant visual appeal. One overall image that is also an entertaining sequence of images, conveying a narrative. A presence, perhaps, like that of the manipulative advert. I would like honesty, too. And I'm not looking for fine art depth. Then again, if this arises, I will not stamp it out.

Figurative? The figure is very important in much illustration. A living human's presence in the image automatically suggests a kind of dynamism, bringing life to a still image. From this thought process I was lead back to work I did a week ago for a market research company for which I am employed as freelance product illustrator, which utilised the human hands to demonstrate the function and process of use of a product, showing how the hands would interact with the object. The human hand is universally recognisable in its capabilities.

And so we begin with the research. The visual research. I will constrict this post to the long-winded text it's been filled with. After this I would hope the documentation flows better, since I've started to host relevant images.

I also note that I currently feel the need to write extensively due to the fact that I am still working towards a statement of intent for this project, which requires sufficient explanation and citation. Things will flow better when that horrid thing is out of the way. Then the creativity will come.