Hi everyone and welcome to my first blog post! I studied Illustration for three years at the University of Derby and I graduated one year ago. In my first year, in the very first module we were required to write a blog. We got a different illustration brief every week - we had to find (not just) artists and artworks that inspired us, create mind maps, note numerous different ideas and then start working on the final images. Sketching, experimenting, learning - all that took a place until we created the illustrations we liked and were happy about. That wasn't the end though. After that we had to create a blog post where we covered what we did, why we did it that way and most importantly how it did or didn't work, what we could change and improve next time and what we learned by the whole process. At that point I found it a bit boring and annoying that we had to analyse and justify basically everything we did. However, it was a great way how to critically think about our work and how it's developing rather than just creating pictures that we liked. We could then see our actual progress week by week. Some briefs were useful than others, sometimes we learned something completely new and sometimes just discovered a little trick which would speed up our working process. After all it was a good way how to think about our a work a bit differently than we used to. And that is exactly what I would like this blog to be. Space to share thoughts about my work, how it's developing, what I'm learning... and basically anything that comes to my mind related to Illustration and Art that I think you could find interesting and/or useful. I hope you will enjoy reading my blog posts as much as I enjoy writing them. Thanks and have a good day! Natalie <3
