is it a bird? is it a plane? is it bicycle repairman?


oh, no, wait... just a bird after all.

you can't really see it when you look at it straight on.

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so now that the illustration project is complete I thought I'd look back and see what was done and maybe reflect a bit.
A) I thought it was great. the fact that we had one week deadlines (with internal deadlines in those) meant that when it came to assessment, there was no last minute crazy the night before trying to finish stuff off. it all flowed quite naturally, no stress involved. and at the end of the four weeks I was even a little surprised how well it all worked out!
B) great opportunity to draw something proper again, I haven't had the chance to do this in a long time for some reason (projects upon projects, wanting to try new techiques and being overwhelmed by all the new things that were being discovered, etc). I felt as I completed each week's assignment that I had learned a lot about editorial illustration and my personal place in it, learned a lot about what I'd done right or wrong generally. personal development, yay.
C) the result was clear cut. there was room for experimentation but in the end there was a definite response we had to come up with. I kind of like that; too much freedom can be a bad thing in my case (I tend to never finish anything...).
D) integrating the blogs into the project was also a very good idea, it meant you could easily see what everyone else had done (for whatever reason). people could share easily and it was all a very open atmosphere.

now for the other side:
A) I wish the crit sessions were structured differently. The final one was pretty interesting (Catherine from Arena came and gave us her thoughts), but other than that it was generally quite... uninspiring. sometimes because there was nothing said, sometimes because everyone was just too brain-numbed waiting for their turn to contribute (the first session especially!). the positive-negative-interesting was a good idea but I really wish we had had small groups of students sharing work with each other and giving each other feedback and most importantly of all getting to know each other a little bit. it felt like people tended to shy away when it went through a third party (eg. the tutor). I think in smaller groups people would feel much more comfortable sharing their thoughts and starting discussions maybe. but hey.
B) thought the diversity of the articles we were given was perhaps kind of... bland. maybe too abstract? All Ears is fine but 4 times in a row it just gets a little boring. we were encouraged to experiment, and maybe it would've made sense to make the articles more 'challenging' (ie. with varying levels of information/content/theme/length etc) as we went along (so that the last one required us to use everything we'd learned already but still teach us something more).

that's all I can think of at the moment. generally it was a very enjoyable and positive experience! and I'm even quite happy with the outcomes, I feel like I actually got somewhere with this, so it's all good... I'm really interested in comparing the assessment outcome now, hopefully we'll get it back soon.

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amazing amazing amazing.
so much beauty in this. jónsi's new solo work Go is sounding incredible so far, must see it when he comes round to this continent (hopefully). I want to dance and cry and laugh and jump up and down when I hear it... I've loved sigur ros a lot for a while but decided to really look into some of their projects closely and am so surprised that I never actually grasped until now how beautiful it all is and how I feel like he's creating the world like I've personally always wished it would be. where man is aware of his inseperable link with nature... now that may not be what the projects intend but that's cetainly what I get from it all.

a youtube comment made me think (what!? major paradox there)... "Ironic, how some of the most beautiful music makes everyone think about death." it's sort of true isn't it... but maybe it's more to do with the fact that awareness of death means there is a greater awareness of life. I read Sogyal Rinpoche's Tibetan Book of Living and Dying some months ago and he mentions this a lot, and that our western society is failing to grasp life by neglecting our own death and we are suffering more because of it. I wonder about my own stance in this... I wonder about how much it overwhelms me sometimes that life is so beautiful and it's all around me all the time and I am part of it... I wonder about what paradise is like... can it only be reached through art? I wonder about what it would be like to live with birds and animals in a harmony that does not involve predatory relationships... I say wonder rather than think because I try not to think so much anymore, I cannot be left with myself for too long, everything becomes so egocentric and I find that distracting and weary. and wondering can be like dreaming. and you wake up and the world is so full of life. how fortunate are we...

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last all ears for this project, #4. sort of timed it... took about 2 hours. was quite entertaining I s'pose.

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