This brief felt very freeing after the last one with the amount of research and development I had put into the final outcome, it felt nice to just be able to draw and not think too deeply about it, thinking more about having fun with a concept and running with it. I think over time I have come to realise I am a person who runs on instinct, especially when it comes to illustration. I always think back to my first year of university where we did life drawing. For whatever reason, I was better at doing the fast 30 second impressions of the life model than I was doing the long form drawings. Perhaps because I would have to go off instinct, rather than having time for self doubt and self loathing. 

So, all in all, I enjoyed this project a lot. 

The concept behind the first task I chose was to create a series of portraits based off the Instagram page Earth's World. On the first day when we received this brief I spent the rest of the afternoon browsing the page, it was such an interesting Instagram page, to see all these people from all walks of life and yet with each one you felt like you knew exactly what kind of person they were like just from looking at them. Well, superficially at least.

At some point in my browsing I started conversing with my friends about whether one person would be racist or not. This is how I came to decide my format and series of portraits. It was based in the realms of racial profiling, a very stupid concept that already exists and is used in the police force to ascertain whether a suspect is likely or not to be the perpetuator based off the colour of their skin. This concept shouldn't really exist and yet it would be hypocritical of me to say that I don't superficially perceive people upon a moments glance and assume everything about them. It's just human nature to be judgemental and cruel and tribalistic, still, it made a good funny series of portraits for me. 

This series of drawings I did for a conceptual kickstarter page ended up being a lot more meaningful for me than I initially expected it to be. Allow me to introduce all of you to Acts 1:9, the comic I have been writing with my best friend Liv for the past 3 years. 

I spent three days working on this for the first part of the kickstarter task. A good part of a kickstarter page is a punchy trailer of sorts. I have experience doing videos and editing them however I was new to frame by frame animation so you can, very much so tell I had never done it before and I had barely any idea what I was doing but I am still very happy with the results. 

So what would you be supporting if you decided to pledge?
My idea would be to fund a physical comic book, perhaps with a pledge you'd get a copy of its release once it'd be finished. The comic itself with what we've written is planned to be something a lot longer than just a singular books worth, so instead I'm opting to put it out there as a webcomic to read online. However, I'm still a person who will possibly need money to live in this hypothetical scenario so having something like a book, merchandise, possibly fan spaces (imagine being popular enough for that wow) and the goal is to be able to produce a physical book. 

I know the concept of the book itself would look like a Bible (thematically fitting), this is something I'm planning to explore more with our final project for university. This task was just a good way to start thinking about how I want to go about doing things and what exactly I want to achieve. 

Part of the appeal to me when looking at other people's content is the characters, of course in a comic a character and the main character can mean a lot to people, so I also decided to make a series of fullbodies showing 4 characters. All of them are main characters of the story, showing its a pretty hefty story to have multiple main characters each with their own arcs and backstories. 

I also decided at this point, it's probably important to show potentially what the comic itself could look like. This is still a rough draft for me, I'm not sure I like how it came out, it also took a lot longer than I wanted to to finish it (did not help I got covid halfway through working on it.) I chose a scene that would ask a lot of questions, create questions and put some action, saucy sauce and some mystery to it. Who are these characters? How did they get in a fight? Why is the last panel implying a lot about what is about to happen and is it okay for this to happen? Who's the grey haired chick and the strawberry blonde anime hair lookin' guy? I'm sure no one's actually thinking these things but it's what I wanted to create with it. 

I think I will be changing how I want to do certain aspects of the comic, it was told to me that this scene felt a little stiff with the action to action panels not being fluid and the flow seemed off too. I think I still need to figure out how exactly I want to do formatting to go on into the future but I do have more of an idea of what I want to do now that I have done this first rough draft. 

I kind of went back to my comfort with this one and did my usual thing, not sure if I'm particularly happy with how these came out but by the time this week was rolling through I was very ill with covid 19 and I was struggling. However that's not to say I hate these and all of them are true about me and drawing digitally. Even though they are internal rules I never do any of them because I'm a sucker for self sabotage. May my back and eyes be in pain and broken forevermore. Amen. 

For starters I would like to mention that the choices for this brief were way out of my comfort zone, but that's okay, because I think I'm happy with what I've managed to produce in the end. The process was stressful, I struggled a lot with coming up with ideas but in the end I managed to produce something I'm proud of. 

image of a mind map I did while listening to the audiobook

Out of all the options given I was most in love with Diary of a Young Naturalist. It made me feel young again, growing up in the countryside in Wales I had a connection with nature growing up. Some of which were fun, others were gross looking back (including playing with cow pats, we used to wait for them to dry over summer and play stepping stones with them, finding some satisfaction in the way they would crack and crumble.) Dara's relationship with nature was something I could personally connect to, as I also grew up in a celtic land full of folklore and history and dramatic mountains and ancient forests. 

I actually started off my research by looking at various celtic symbols and folkart, I wanted to perhaps develop an idea involving it basing if on how much he writes about various different Irish folklore especially with the landscape and nature. However I ended up not using this as a basis of my development and instead was lingering in the back of my mind, I kind of wished I had looked further into it and perhaps come up with some ideas around it but it was the basis of my start. 

I also took a look at the locations mentioned in his book, I was particularly drawn to images of the Mourne Mountains, reminding me of Snowdonia and where I grew up, the Mourne mountains look similar to the Moelwyns in Wales, two different mountains called Moelwyn Mawr and Moelwyn Bach which are attached to each other. Mountains are always in the background of my mind and I wanted to include these mountains in my final piece somehow, after this I decided to start my development through thumbnails.

I feel like I started off by delving into too many different ideas, I was kind of excited by the book and Dara as a person himself, he had an interesting personality and I really enjoyed his pure ideas and close connection to nature. What stood out to me was his mother calling him a blackbird and his love of them, I definitely wanted to include a blackbird in my final piece as you can see through my thumbnails I included them a lot. I started with the idea of somehow merging the image of a blackbird with the silhouette of Dara combined with nature behind him, linking all three as the book intertwines life, Dara and nature. However I feel like that idea wasn't convincing enough on its own, or I couldn't get it to work no matter how much I tried to edit and develop it so I would move onto separate ideas. 

One idea I really ended up loving was the image of the drystone wall, but instead of it being its usual grey and beige colours I decided to change it to various different bright colours. At first the colours I chose were random but then I decided to look at various different colours of seasons as part of my development.

Upon my travels of searching for good sources stumbled upon Dara McAnulty's blog, which features some of his experiences that he also writes about in his book. I found the images of him surrounded by nature, warm hues which he talks about a lot in his book from the golden sunset to the orange and yellow of a blackbirds beak and the intense amber of a goshawks eyes. I love his descriptions of colour in particular as I've personally always felt a deep connection to vivid bright colours, they make me feel safe and warm, which is why I feel I always am a little more down on a gloomy typical British day where all colours are washed out and replaced by a murky hue. 

From my look into colours you can see how I was experimenting with my colour palette and coming up with ideas for an overall look for my book cover. At this point I decided I really liked the drystone wall idea a lot more than the others I had started to develop and I at that point had been told that I probably shouldn't be exploring so many ideas at once. I did find coming up with so many ideas quite handy, because it enabled me to combine ideas in a sort of way. 

I was surrounded by drystone walls where I grew up, I had mentioned earlier that I found significance and nostalgia between myself and Dara. The tragic thing is, I lost that love of my local surroundings and nature but Dara's book almost brought it back to me. There was one scene in particular that stood out to me while I was listening to the audiobook, it was only a small scene, a tiny moment in between it all, but it's where Dara mentions going to a drystone wall with his sister, there, he spends a while looking into the wall in search of bugs and other wildlife. It unlocked a familiar memory in me, I remember being a kid and looking into the walls near my house and looking for things like lizards and garden snakes. I loved collecting snails and keeping them as pets too. Mice were always around as well as listening to nearby birds in the trees. I decided to look into drystone walls and see if what I remember was actually correct. 

I actually found out that drystone walls are a rather beneficial form of walling for many reasons, including providing a habitat for various different species. I took this list of various fauna found in walls and decided to use it in my book cover. 

The final bits of development were deciding what font to use, what colours I should predominantly use and which colours work together for the final cover. One struggle I did have was coming up with a sky background for the final cover. Because the rocks were so colourful already it would have been a bad choice to go for a bright blue sky as it would definitely clash. So at first of just going for a plain white background however I think that made the colours look a little blander than they are. I did what I'm really good at and thats slapping a sunset setting on everything. Although I guess you could call it dawn, maybe like a new horizon for our young naturalist. The blackbird faces towards the new horizon, expecting another beautiful day as the goshawks goes out for its morning hunt. (Something poetic like that) 

For the text I knew from the get go I wanted something that looked handwritten but also 'contemporary' if you will. Something not so handwritten it would look childish but not too clean it looked like it was a GCSE how to maths book. The font I found the most appealing to look at as well as fit with the theme was one called Luna. I think it works well with the colourful drystone rocks around it. 

A lot of the themes and topics of Girl, Woman, Other were something I could also feel a strong relation to in many ways (even though I am the whitest of white). There was a lot of conversation about femininity and what it means, being nonbinary and finding that identity, trying to fill in a traditional role or fighting against it, sexuality and exploring it healthily or not. A lot of it also struck a chord with me so that's the one I also went for. 

The only kind of issue I really had was finding a way to define what I really wanted to show in the front cover. 

I started by jotting down notes as I had listening to instead of the audio book I listened to the bbc radio 4 reading of the book that went from character to character in a condensed way while still getting across the main themes and developments of the book. 

A few notes I came out of it was

• I like Amma's whole vibe
• holy shit lesbian cult what
• nigerian imagery?? 
• yazz is a whole vibe also (she's amma's daughter that makes sense) 
• i relate to carole a lot and i dont like relating to her (lol)
• Everyone somehow all link back to Amma and her work and thats kind of cool

With this book cover I decided not to go too broad and overly increase my scope of design ideas and instead limited it to four main ideas. I mostly took a look at African Caribbean and the relationship to femininity and being British. That was what one of my original focuses was, as well as trying to connect all the characters or perhaps drawing from one character in particular.

In the end I think I really liked the second thumbnail I did and decided to solely focus on developing that one. I really liked the description of Amma's character and how her and her theatre is what in the end links all the characters together. I feel like she is the embodiment of being black and a feminist and having explored her own sexuality and being successful in her career as an actress and director. By the present day she has her own theatre company and is the evening of her production about Amazonian lesbians which is a big hell yeah from me.

Colours are also an important factor to consider of course. In my mind going into this I mostly thought pink was going to be the main part of my colour palette (as usual)  but as it turns out purple is actually the colour associated with feminism. Looking further into it in African cultures purple is seen as an important colour that depicts fertility and feminism, so adding that as a colour felt very significant to my final design. 

www.sikaa.com/blogs/blog/the-meaning-behind-the-colour

Somehow or another I got to third year so let's go!! 

For this project we had been set 4 random characters and given the glorious challenge of creating an illustration for each one based off the descriptions provided. I knew for each character I would have to do individual research but I also had an overall vibe I wanted to go for based off a game I've been playing way too much lately

The Warioware franchise: Warioware is a spinoff game of Super Mario of all things, the main character designs are by Ko Takeuchi who's art style is kind of wacky and very goofy and works well with this kind of idea of character design and tropes. 

For John Senior JR I wanted to create a similar piece as 1950s men's fashion illustrations. The image of the ideal man of the great 50s America. The long weirdly baggy pants, the tight shirts, the ties, oh and the pipes and cigars. Oh, what a time to be alive (if you're a man that is.) To do this I started by working on paper to create a similar ish lining style as those seen in older drawings

So my eventual conclusion was to combine an analogue and digital drawing to create something unique but as usual I think I suck pretty bad at drawing on paper a lot of the time (where's my CTRL+Z??? how do i cope??? i can't?? flip the canvas?? AAA??) But I think I'm happy with the drawing I came out with, it looks very nice with it tidied up a little.

For the background I took some images found on Googley of Madison Avenue and edited them to look like an early comic print of sorts to fit with the time period that John Senior is set in, I think the perspective of the buildings makes the final outcome look bigger than he probably actually is. If you're American, you gotta be big or nothin'. 

I've always loved a good Henry vacuum cleaner, he's so personable, he's got a cheeky grin, he definitely does cocaine on the side I mean look at that nose. That doesn't happen naturally, I tell you. So my first port of call was definitely looking at Henry's and how I could turn that into a robot called Batty without just blatantly ripping off the iconic Henry design. 

I dont know if its obvious from my insane doodling but I love Batty, she has to have been my favourite character to design out of them all. She has a lot of personality and my story for her is that even though she's the first by the time the illustration I created for her she's been reduced to a bargain bin grab and doesn't quite function as well as some of the other cleaning robots (listen I know the price is high but you gotta consider inflation, one day 4 grand will be cheap lol)
​

Here are some more images that I took inspiration from, I wanted to create a maid like character who was slightly insane with a mix of a vacuum for limbs, a mop for a skirt, a steam cleaner for a hand and some more attachments and cleaning utensils which I'm still not 100% sure how she uses by herself but it's not all about functionality, sometimes you just have to do what you think will look cool. 

I will be honest I'm not a big football guy, I'm not a sports guy in general. Have you seen me? If you haven't, I definitely don't look like a sports type of person. Multicoloured hair in a bob cut and a body that hasn't been to the gym ever in their life is definitely not a sporty persona. So basically I had no idea what I was doing, however I do like to make a few cheeky jokes. 

I took a look at different uniforms from the 70s and the general vibe that was going on. I don't like sports but I do love big Americans thinking they're bigger than they actually are. I also really loved the sideburns look as well as the big cowboy vibe. I took a look at different examples of the cowboy hat or in this case the 10 gallon hat and their extreme examples. 

For this project, we were asked to make a series of protest art based off a topic of our choice, I decided to go for something a bit contradictory because I'm just edgy like that. The topic I decided to do my project on Performative Activism. 

Performative activism actually started as a term to signify when a protest was performative in nature, but later it was twisted to be about how social media in particular affects activism in a negative way. 

Firstly I looked at what others had produced, seeing as it has been a recent hot topic especially with the George Floyd protests last year, it was something I was interested in looking into as someone who's fairly active on the hellsite twitter dot com where all performative activism festers and boils. I witnessed firsthand the results of the infamous #blackouttuesday that happened after the death of George Floyd. 

At this point in my research I had come to the idea that this project really can be a big one and I needed to focus it down a little to what I was really feeling passionate about. Performative activism can both be physical and in social media. My other risk is making it very hypocritical, using something I don't really care about to gain clout on twitter, that kind of vibe. 

So I broke it down what I am actually passionate about :

• LGBT community (im part of that, somehow)
• Black Lives Matter (an ally for that, i still go around donating money sometimes and signing petitions whenever i have the spare cash and time) 
• Feminist movements (such as the #metoo movement) 
• social media as a platform for activism (i do genuinely believe it can be used for good i swear)
• youtubers and online influencers (most are garbage, some are good) 
• fuck corporations by the way

So after that I pinned down who exactly I wanted to go for with my protest pack and decided on a main group focusing on social media and corporations, two things that end up stirring the mix for activism. 
​

So from there I decided to go on a bit of a ramble with drawings, trying to figure out a direction in which to go with the pieces themselves. 

I was happy with some of these designs and wanted to use them in some way,  but I had yet to decide exactly how I was going to be doing the protest itself. I decided to do a not quite conventional protest instead? By using the idea of trendiness and social media as a basis I wanted to create a brand of sorts whereby purchasing any of the items would go to any charities associated with the causes I was protesting about. I had a variety of ideas on what to create, which I compiled in a pinterest board.

From looking at this I knew what kind of vibe I was going for, something a little witty or sarcastic while also being buyable, I came up with a brand idea. "Do you really care?" It's not insanely smart but it does it's job in questioning an audience's moral obligation to care about these matters. If they're so focused on looking good to their friends with their little black squares in their instagram posts then they can buy a neat tshirt to wear around town :) 

So from this I decided on a few things I wanted to create for this project

• website/social media mockup page with products
• few different posters/prints
• enamel pins
• polymer clay pins
• tshirts

I decided to go for The Lottery as part of the brief, one of the reasons was because the story intrigued me especially part way through when it's revealed the lottery is whether someone gets stoned to death or not, the twist was very appealing to me. The other reason why I decided to go for it is because I have a friend in America that lives in Ohio now but is originally from Kentucky, part of the south that's based off the location of The Lottery, so I could personally ask her for insight on what it's like in farmland America. She even used to go to her Uncle's dairy and tobacco farm to work with him as a child so it was interesting insight that I personally do not have. 

I took one of the screenshots of our conversation as proof of her telling me about her experiences on the farm and with that I went ahead with my work. I started with drawing out thumbnails immediately, I wasn't trying to go for any specific one more like just coming up with concepts alone 

For the research side of things I mostly took a look at American countryside landscapes, it was where I drove most of my inspiration for, I decided to change things up a bit and focus more on the landscape than the character although I struggled because the way I usually work I focus so much on character interactions and expressions. 

From looking at my research I started to become more fascinated with the churches in America, the wooden planked buildings with the spires has an interesting look and rather iconic to American smalltowns. I also felt it was appropriate for my design because of the link towards ritualism and tradition, which is ingrained towards the churches in America as well. 

I then took a look at images of the people found in rural America in the 1940s to further push my research and get an understanding of fashion and characteristics of America from the time. 

I took some more time to finalise some of my ideas and draw them out a bit more. 

After that I decided to do the final drawings and I also created some mockups as well. 

For this brief we had two illustrations to create for a ghost story, I had Martin's Close, a story about a man in the 1600s who was trialled and executed for a murder of a young girl and is subsequently haunted by her before his demise. I actually ended up really enjoying the story told and I was excited to come up with drawings for it and come up with ideas and research. 

My first thought went to Junji Ito, one of my favourite horror artists of all time, he is amazing at conveying all sorts of horror from the macabre to the psychologically disturbing and I wanted to take influence on his expressive characters and haunting drawings that often times send shivers down your spine. 

Here's some more work I took influence from for my work, I like the mistiness of the watercolour effect.

This project was the hardest one I have ever done and I struggled throughout it, I struggled with both research and coming up with ideas for it. I think I found that conceptual illustration really isn't for me. 

this was the article i was given, it is about the recent GameStop stocks fiasco where many people from Reddit decided to up the stocks to an insane degree to stop rich men getting richer. It was a genius use of anarchy against the 1% which I always appreciate. I really enjoyed the whole ordeal as well as the subsequent memes that came from it. It really showed how easy it is to stop the big guys by using all the little guys they can to put a stop to something. And it also showed the hypocrisy of the stock market how everything is "free" and people should be allowed to do as it pleases but as soon as someone takes advantage of it, suddenly it's something that needs regulation.
www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jan/29/gamestop-tulip-mania-16th-century-dutch-bubble-internet

I created a pinterest board with different conceptual illustration ideas to get me started on the ideas and what kind of vibe I should be going for:
www.pinterest.co.uk/Pibis__/conceptual-illus/

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I was asked to do two illustrations, a headline one and a spot illustration to go somewhere in the middle. These were all the ideas I managed to come up with and I went ahead and did my final illustrations from that point

I also did two mockups where the illustrations could be placed on the article.

For this brief we were each allocated with a set text we had to follow and produce a final piece for. The text I was given was a ghost story by M R James. I was supposed to communicate unease and a sense of being followed by something unknown and perhaps dangerous. For this I took a look at different artwork produced alongside the story itself.

These pieces although really interesting and rather spooky are often monochromatic or just black and white, which in itself does convey this sense of old and decrepitness which reminds me of the Victorian's obsession with ghosts and the occult. However that is not what was our brief was about, so I simply used these as composition influence.

This was also a main inspiration for my final outcome, surprisingly enough. I was initially almost confused about the use of warm colours for the beach but then I realised those warm colours could have an entire other meaning than the one I would immediately come up with. The reds and oranges convey this sense of danger, starkly contrasted with the ghostly white figure in the centre of the composition surrounded by the dark gloomy clouds which give this sense of a storm brewing in the distance and darkness creeping in closer and closer as day turns to night. I started to appreciate this piece a lot and I would say it was my main influence for my drawing. 

Another artist I could base my work around thematically is Trevor Henderson. Trevor Henderson creates artworks which are probably what I could only describe as anyone's sleep paralysis demon. When viewing his work I get a genuine sense of unease, mainly because the creatures he draws and creates seem like they could definitely be real, there is a found footage feel to all his pieces, like they are images of ghosts he found himself and it genuinely fills me with horror seeing his pieces. The sense that a majority of them are so close to being human and so far as well, it is the definition of creepy and it sets something off in our tiny monkey brains that tells us to run. The dark gloomy atmosphere is astonishing in his pieces and I love them as much as I want to hate them for the amount they terrify me. 

This piece in particular stood out to me for the same reasons as the painted one above, the warm colours contrasted by the gloom. The bright red sun that almost looks like an eye, the sense of danger looming from the dark surroundings and in the centre a being you can't quite make out. It is truly the kind of horror you see in your nightmares and it made for perfect reference and influence for my final outcome. 

For this brief rather than looking at specific artists I tended to lean more towards looking at photographs for influence, I used those photographs as direct influence and reference for the pieces I produced. 

However one particular artist came to mind and that was author and artist behind the manga Haikyuu (manga again? lord forbid.). It is a weird place to draw from but when I think of dynamic and expressive action I immediately thought of him. Haikyuu, if unaware, is a manga about a high school volleyball team as bizarre and niche as it seems it's one of the best pieces of art I could think of where it shows dynamic posing the best. 

Comics are a thing I draw a lot of, it is what I'm passionate about and what I would like to do as an illustrator full time so researching for my comic was difficult for me because I sort of do research for it all the time without even realising it.

I also decided to link some pinterest boards I frequent when drawing, these are just a collection of different things I use when drawing and take influence on, but I suppose everything revolves around me drawing comics and usually what I sought out on how to improve on.