The Initial Research

In relation to the brief, my initial ideas were centred around food, I began my research looking into artists such as Charlotte Farmer, Martha Mitchell, and Becka Griffin, which all had styles that would work well to begin my project and show how I work.

I was especially interested in the line work Charlotte Farmer (http://www.charlotte-farmer.co.uk) used, and started recreating some of her illustrations and creating my own pieces inspired by her work. The work included fineliner and watercolour. I felt that I could develop this work with stitch, so I created some linear samples on calico, which created some smaller strong samples for my book. Charlotte Farmer has a different illustrative approach to her work which is why I continued with hand drawn illustrations and adding watercolour. My work from this artist is shown below.

Martha Mitchell (http://www.marthamdesign.com) focused on simplistic fineliner food illustrations. The contrast between Charlotte Farmer and Martha Mitchell is shown through the difference of detail. Martha Mitchell’s work is delicate and shows a more basic style of drawing. I wanted to focus on this artist to show the basics of drawing and still make effectivles. I mainly used fineliner and mono print throughout, and created a digital tessellation which I felt was successful and developed it into a mug design. I wanted to focus on this artist to show the basics of drawing and still make effective samples. I feel I achieved this after recreating the illustrations below.

Becka Griffin (http://www.beckagriffinillustration.co.uk) creates food illustrations and introduces the typography element in the form of word play, typography is an important factor within this project that I wanted to start looking into. Whilst continuing my hand made illustrations, I also liked the prospects of typography within these pieces, and the hand drawn element. Looking at Becka Griffin's illustrations I decided to make my own through the use of watercolour and fineliner. These bright colour pallets were the key to achieving such a nice quality piece. I also created a digital tessellation created heavily inspired by her work, I used my own illustrations and typography to create this piece. I was pleased with how it turned out and showed how the pattern would work on different products.

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The Brief

After being given the initial brief of 'The Coast', I decided to focus into the idea of coastal foods and explore a theme of 'Food Glorious Food'. I brainstormed ideas that would hopefully be useful when I needed to research into artists and ideas related to my project. Thinking of these ideas before the project began gave me a clearer perspective of what topics I wanted explore and the potential of outcomes I could create. In relation to the project I believe it has potential to have outcomes developed both illustratively and commercially, throughout my project I will be looking at many artists which create work that is relevant and will inspire and inform my own work. I am most intrigued by the ideas of food illustration because it can be developed into a variety of merchandise such as: packaging, badges, wall art etc. Within working with these ideas I will use mediums and materials that work to my strengths to help my work progress, my strongest work is usually based around my pen illustration and collage work. I want to make sure that I choose the right selection of materials to create the most visually appealing and successful work. When I've created samples for my book, I will be making sure that my ideas progress and I'm constantly refining things and relating it to the brief to make sure I have a well informed project. Creating a distinctive logo will enable me to create more outcomes which involve the logo or illustration. I aim to focus on the mixed media and advertisement element of graphics which means experimentation will be vital to succeed with refined and meaningful work. By researching artists, I will be able to refine my work and find what personally works well and is effective from their styles to help inform my work. A final outcome will be made as a representative of all the mini outcomes and evidence of how my work was continued and developed into a distinctive piece. 

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