Hopes and fears

In this blog post I will be talking about some of my hopes for what I want to achieve post degree and some of the fears I have.

Unlike some of the others on my course my aim isn’t to go into editorial illustration, instead I’m building a brand which has been the goal even before I took this degree. The course has helped me come up with new ways to do this and has also let me see what alternative paths I could have taken. It sounds like I’m just set in my ways but I can tell you I have given each avenue suggested to me plentiful consideration. I have come to the conclusion building my own brand is the best way to get to get my work to its intended audience and maintain my artistic integrity while doing so. With my style of working I can’t wait around for art directors see that my style does have a place in their publications.

 One of my hopes is that I will become a better salesperson; it’s something I will need to work on. The course has helped me build confidence in my work, now I just need to become more socially confident. One of my fears is I could set up my brand in the wrong way since I don’t know much in terms of registering a business and how small businesses are taxed. To remedy this fear I intend to take a short course in business to help me market and properly set up my brand, since I’m not going down a more traditional illustration route there are gaps in my knowledge that need to be filled.

The course has also helped me step out of my comfort zone before I would have been hesitant to email people but now I find it a lot easier and know that the skill will be necessary to contact stockists.  Due to my anxiety I would often catastrophize things like sending an email or asking someone to give me feedback on my work but through repetition it’s getting easier. This takes me onto a fear of mine I’m afraid my anxiety will get in the way of potential opportunities, there are techniques I have learned to help with my anxiety through the past few years which will hopefully help me in this regard.

Another hope of mine is that through my brand I can help de-stigmatize mental illness and work with mental health charities to help fund services for people suffering from mental illness and raise awareness of what people can do to help those who struggle with mental illness. Mental health is a subject I have often brought forth in my practice and I fully intend to continue to do that outside of university.

I think a lot of people leaving art and design courses have a fear of getting sucked into jobs not related to their preferred field, I can say that in my case I’m not scared of having to pick up a day job to support what I want to do. If anything I’m actually looking forward to having that experience. I don’t think I will ever be able to stop making work which is why I don’t feel threatened by having to do other things to get by. Being an illustrator is not a stable job which scared me a lot at the beginning but I’m not limited to just being an illustrator. With that I don’t fear failure because I will never stop trying and that’s the only true way to fail.

The fear I have had is that my direction is a lot more fluid than others; it can come across as me not knowing where I am going because there is not as many boundaries to what I can do. There is no need for me to limit myself to just doing t-shirts, prints or books. The thing about creating a brand is you can explore many different outcomes under that umbrella instead of limiting myself to just illustrating other peoples book or articles. Creating my own content suits me better otherwise most of the time it feels like I’m forcing my style to match up with content that it doesn’t go with.

Visiting Practitioners: Group portfolio feedback

On 20/04/2016 I went to Cake and Doodle and asked if any of the illustrators there could take a look at my portfolio and give me a bit of feedback. Most of my feedback came from Luis Gainzarain who is a Graphic Designer and comic artist from spain and Marta Gonzalez 

Luque who is a freelance photographer who also dabbles in illustration and animation.

Feedback from Luis Gainzarain

You should think a bit on the Why? What? and Where?

Why do you do the work you do? Is it self expressive? Does it have a message? Are you pursuing a stylistic ideal?

What are you going to do to convey what your work is about? What form will best convey what your work is about? What audience do you need to market your work to? (Who will appreciate what it is about).

Where can your artwork go? Where is your audience going to be? Where will your work be seen by the right people?

There isn't a right or wrong answer to these questions you just need to know what your answers are so you can take a step in the right direction.

Reflecting on the feedback

For why I create my work I would say it is primarily self expressive but I would also say I was pursuing a stylistic ideal but I have gotten to a place where I am happy with my style but I still like to play with different mediums it keeps my work fresh and exciting. 

Not all my work has a message behind it and I've come to terms with that. I think in the illustration world right now creating decorative work is frowned upon and seen as fluff in a way. But maybe I just want to create bright and cheerful work sometimes that doesn't particularly have a hard hitting message behind it, I don't think it is wrong to do. There is a Japanese principle called "ma" and I think ma can explain why I do my work the way I do. Ma is the space inbetween the action, if you want to see ma in practice Studio Ghibli is a great example. So my work which is mostly for decoration is my ma as you will, it is the break I need from my hard hitting work. In terms of studio ghibli ma comes after important parts of the story to help the information sink in and to transition to the next plot point. Ma comes in the form of mundane details for example a girl has a hard day at school lots of bizarre things happen. The ma could be she goes home and runs a bath and just goes about her normal routine before she is thrown into the next set of ordeals.

 But I do also create work that does have meaning to it, I mostly focus on mental health and opening up that conversation and making the whole subject less taboo. That work is often very introspective and it takes a lot of energy to translate it into an image.

The what for me it to make prints, to make stories and t-shirts, I basically want to make the topic of mental health as accessible as possible. The more people are exposed to it the easier it becomes to talk about it. And I want to approach my decorative work in the same way, if someone wants to wear my designs doesn't want to wear a t-shirt about mental health instead they want something a bit lighter in tone I can also supply my customers that option. My main audience is 13-25 I think the younger end of my audience will like my work for it's style and the older end will appreciate the message behind some of my pieces.

I think in terms of where I could sell or display my work I think there is quite a few pathways I can explore. Comic conventions are where I have had the most success up till now and I think with me producing t-shirt they are going to continue to be one of the best places to sell. I've had varying levels of success when it comes to selling my work locally, children and teenagers are my main buyers when I sell locally. I have recently started to see a raise in street artists taking an interest in my work and I feel like paste up's might be a good way to reach that audience. I think selling my work online could work if I concentrate on actively advertising, as of now I have had no success with it but I think that is all down to me not giving my etsy and redbubble enough exposure.

Marta Gonzalez

Sometimes you need to experiment with platforms and what you are creating, the best thing you could do is just try things to see what is a viable option or not. And I would recommend just getting a regular job first because it helps you develop as a person and helps you gain confidence.

(when I mentioned Fig Taylor and her feedback regarding my work) Even professionals can give bad advice sometimes, just because one person tells you something won't work for you doesn't mean they are right. I don't see why you couldn't do editorial illustration for more alternative magazines. Don't let one person tell you what you can or can't do.

What might be unpopular now might be popular next week or next month, trends change so don't base your decision on where you want to go with your work on what is popular right now. What is selling now might fade out of fashion in a few months, what has faded out of fashion a few mouths or years ago might have a resurgence. If it is selling even if it's not selling much keep doing it, if it isn't selling at all that's when you need to consider shaking things up a bit. Just keep doing what you love doing and keep developing it.

Reflecting on the feedback

I think Marta really helped me realise that just because my style isn't popular with art directors at the moment it doesn't mean it never will, and maybe it's not worth worrying about how popular or unpopular my style is. Sometimes you just need to go with the flow.

Other thoughts

When I mentioned Fig Taylor I quickly found the people who did know of or have encountered her have a rather low opinion of her. One woman said when she was a student Fig Taylor gave her feedback and she said it was useless to her and ended up being completely off. She said Fig had been out of the industry for too long and didn't really have much of a grasp on what is currently popular. and to take what she had to say about my work and what direction I should take it with a pinch of salt She also said Fig was the one approaching universities to do these feedback sessions not the otherway round which it's a very good sign. 

Contacting Clients: What I have learned

Contacting clients even over email has been one of the most nerve wracking things I have had to do on this course. It's one of those things the more I have done it the easier it has become, and looking back to the first client I personally contacted (because my Dad did contact someone he has connections with on my behalf) the email I sent could have been better.

 I could have sold myself more and been more confident in my work, I could have maybe benefited by being a bit more laid back and not being so straight to the point. I have taken time to look at all of the galleries directors, aims and artwork on display and in their archives, and I have learned how to reflect that in my emails.

It has also been a lesson in rejection, currently I have had no responses but I haven't let that demotivate me if anything it has made me try harder and develop a thicker skin. I stand by my choices on who I have tried to make contact with. I don't doubt that my work would at very least be interesting to them if they would have given me a chance. But I will have to get used to the fact not everyone will give me a chance and if they do my artwork won't be of interest to everyone. It is nothing personal it is just how it is.

The problem I have found in regards to contacting the right people is that what I do is very niche and there's a limit to how many professionals I can find which may be interested in that niche. That is the nature of the beast sadly when you develop a style like mine. Call me stubborn but I'm not going to change my style just so I can have an easier time, my artistic integrity personally is the most important thing to me when it comes to creating work.

It might turn out that I get no responses whatsoever and I don't get the feedback I need. But it hasn't been in vain I have learned a lot about what I should expect and be prepared for when I leave. It may not be the lesson that was intended when this task was set but at least it is something.

Client: Sam Thorne Director of Nottingham Contemporary

This one is pushing the boat out a bit, Sam Thorne is a very experienced as both a critic and gallery director. To be quite honest if he replies I am going to be scared of his response.  

Dear Sam Thorne,

I am Sophie a BA illustration student studying at MMU. I am currently at the end of my final year of my degree, as part of our course we have been asked to contact gallery directors and other industry professionals to give us some feedback on our portfolios. I can send my portfolio via email and it contains 6 pieces of work so it won't take up much of your time. I wanted to contact you because of the varying styles of artwork you display at Nottingham Contemporary and how the gallery is doing a fantastic job of inspiring young up and coming artists.

Kind regards
Sophie Stratton

Will update once I have received a reply.

Client: Stephen Hayles Director of the Upfest Gallery and festival

Today I contacted Stephen Hayles the Director and founder of the Upfest Festival and Gallery in Bristol. I once attended one of the Upfest festivals with my parents and wholeheartedly plan on attending again on my own. My artwork as of late has taken on an urban art feel so I thought I would try my luck.

Dear Stephen Hayles,

I'm Sophie a university student studying BA Illustration at MMU and I'm currently approaching the end of my final year of my degree. As part of our course we are required to seek advice from gallery directors and other industry professionals such as yourself. I have had the pleasure of attending one of your Upfest Festivals and was in awe at the work which was on display and I feel my work is in a similar vain. I wondered if you could take a look my portfolio and give me some feedback, it contains 6 pieces and can be sent over email and won't take up much of your time.

Kind Regards
Sophie Stratton

Will update when I have received a reply.

Thoughts For Final Show

Recently I have been thinking a lot about the final show and what I want to display and I feel my uni work is just not making the cut for me personally. So I have started to produce work outside of uni that I would rather display. 

I want to display work that I genuinely enjoy making because I feel that it really shows in the finished pieces. I am setting RaelDanger up as a brand rather than just me being an illustrator and the degree show will be a good place to showcase my brand. After Fig Taylor came in I felt like I was left with very few options with where my work could take me, but after thinking about it for the past few months I have decided I want to put my artwork onto apparel. I feel like the graphic and vibrant nature of my work really lends itself to t-shirts, dresses etc.

Brands I feel that are good examples for what I would like to do is 

Iron Fist

Carries a lot of bold and vibrant designs aimed at teens and young adults.

Emily Strange

Emily Strange is a particularly good example since not only is Emily Strange a clothing brand, but they have produced comics, books, figures, plush toys, prints etc. And the brand is centred around a character called Emily Strange and her four black cats. Much like my work

"She first appeared on a sticker distributed at concerts, record stores and skate shops to promote Cosmic Debris, the clothing line founded by artist and skateboarder Rob Reger, racecar driver Matt Reed and Nathan Carrico, who designed Emily in 1991 for Santa Cruz Skateboards in Santa Cruz, California."

I can see how my brand could work in a similar way since my artwork is very character centric . 

Feedback from Fig Taylor

Yesterday Fig Taylor came in to have a look at out work and suggest directions we could go in.

First she gave a talk on finding clients. She talked about having a strong style with diverse subject matter is what art directors might look for in a portfolio, if an art director can't see in your portfolio you draw cats for example they won't hire you to draw cats. She warned us against buying mailing lists of clients and sending out generic copy and paste emails because it is a fast track to being blacklisted by those clients. She told us to only target clients who you think will be interested in your work, if you are contacting a client who is the wrong fit you are basically just wasting your time.

Fig talked to us about two different illustration pathways

Mainstream which is editorial which has a fast turnover, book publishing where your designs will be heavily shaped by the retailer, and advertising which is where you can make a lot of money but it has to go through a lot of people who will demand a lot of changes.

Gift industry which more about making products like greetings cards, wrapping paper and I assume things like t-shirts and apparel etc.


Fig's Feedback

After the talk she sat down with groups of us and gave us some quick feedback on where we could go with our work.

When she got to my work I couldn't help but feel she didn't know what to really suggest, she told me that art directors don't like manga influenced styles but she didn't know why that's the case because it is rising in popularity with consumers. So pretty much editorial would be hard for me to get into but there maybe some more quirky children's magazines like Aqila I could try. She kept wavering on if my style would be a good fit for children or would be better aimed a tweens and teens.

She suggested I could try and get into character design and if I was to include some of my roughs in my portfolio but otherwise stick with finished pieces. She also suggested I could try selling my work for tattoo flash.

Her biggest suggestion was for to try and sell my work online on sites like etsy and redbubble. But she also said hardly any artists get popular selling online.

My Thoughts

I don't think Fig Taylor seemed to grasp my work and it's audience. I have most success selling to people aged 11-25 yet Fig kept telling me my work was only for children, tweens and early teens. She didn't explicitly say I should go into the gift industry even though that seems to be the obvious best fit for my work. The whole experience was very de-motivating for me but I have to keep in mind my work is a bit out there and is very niche so I can't expect everyone to understand it.

Days of hope

Saatchi & Saatchi launched a campaign called 'Days of hope' in 2013 to raise the profile of increasing homelessness in major cities across Europe. I have been looking at a lot of Saatchi related artists for my dissertation which is project based.

This video highlights the struggle that homeless people face in winter, with the homeless population rising I feel this kind of campaign would be effective here in Britain.   

Dealing with a loss through art

On Saturday my cat got hit by a 4 by 4 and died later at the vets, my parents are on holiday so I had to deal with it head on. I have never taken the loss of a pet this hard before.

I woke up this morning and decided I really want to get a tattoo so I can remember him the way he was before the accident, I don't want the mental image of what he looked like when me and the neighbors son took him to the vets or what he looked like when I said goodbye for the final time.

The process of planning the tattoo has really helped, I had to look at pictures of him so I could draw up a good design. I had to think about my memories of him to come up with the elements I want to include in the tattoo. I'm picking out nicknames me and my parents had for him and hand lettering them. I want the tattoo to be lighthearted and put a smile on peoples faces because that is what Casper did on a daily basis. This design progress is stopping me from blocking it all out and trying to just push it to the back of my mind. And through the process I am learning it is perfectly okay for me to be upset about this. He was a family member and I am so glad so far no one has said "he was only a cat". "Just get another" or "losing a dog is worse". I know my heartbreak is very valid and very real and that art is 100% helping me through the loss.

I don't know when I will actually be able to get the tattoo done but I feel the designing alone is helping me through the process. I feel like I can take something away from this, whatever happens be it good or bad that energy can be put into something more constructive which still confronts the problem instead of running from it.

Overthinking worriers are natural artists?

New Research Says Overthinking Worriers Are Probably Creative Geniuses

 I was reading this article because I am a chronic over thinker and I suffer from anxiety so it caught my attention. Also I am always interested in research about mental health and creativity. I remember someone asked me once if I thought that my trade off for being creative was my health and I think in a way that is true. My mental health has been a problem for over half of my life, before my mental health started to decline I wouldn't say I was particularly talented creatively, yeah I drew a proper stick man before any of my classmates in nursery but noting spectacular.

I remember becoming engrossed with art around 11 years old, this was also around the same time I started experiencing anxiety and a little later on depression. Being creative was for me the most natural cause of action especially when I was younger because I didn't know exactly what I was experiencing yet so I found ways to represent it through art.

So in a way I didn't find this article enlightening but more reaffirming what I had believed to be true for many years. It was comforting in an odd kind of way.

I am homeless but I am a human being

Today I watched this buzzfeed video and I think it informs people about homelessness and the stereotypes homeless people face in the right way.

I am homeless

I was in Manchester on Wednesday and one of the homeless guys came up to me and my friend, I remembered him and how I had given money to him before. He gives people poetry in exchange for their charity. The last poem he gave me was on the back of a betting slip and sadly I misplaced it, that poem brought me to tears and I instantly thought I need to bring attention to this. From what I can recall the poem he gave to me the first time was about how he used to be addicted to drugs but now he was clean. This time I was glad to see he had gotten a note pad instead of writing on the back of betting slips, it's such a small change for most people but for someone on the streets paper is a luxury item. My friend gave him some money (I have a rule that I only give what I have in my pockets) and my friend told me to chose a poem, he just so happened to have a poem called stereotyped so I asked for that one and told him about my project. He seemed so happy when I told him I wanted to dispel stereotypes around homelessness he said "that's good, there is way to much of it believe me."  He was the one who inspired this project and I told him his poem will really help. He smiled and I am so glad I saw that.

Uni project and upcoming stall

My university project 'Outside The Penthouse' is about dispelling preconceptions of the homeless.
Going straight into doing work about homeless people didn't work out very well, I found myself really hitting brick walls, thinking that my super vivid style just wouldn't fit the message I was trying to convey.

I had the idea of depicting the homeless people as monsters because a lot of people seem to adopt the attitude that they shouldn't exist and to validate this I feel people connect negative connotations to homeless people. The most common being drunks, druggies, lazy and uneducated.
I wanted to pull the carpet out from peoples feet and show them how they have been thinking about homeless people compared to how they should be viewing them.

A big challenge with this project it to keep it out of the realm of being too condescending but also try and make it so it isn't a guilt trip. Talking to members of my class they told me that most charity ads are patronizing or tell the viewer though the use of black and white that this should make them feel sad. People don't like being told what they should feel on a subject, that's the reason why differing opinions can spark arguments. I have thought at length how I can stay clear of all of these things and realized it's probably not possible to do, my priority instead has to be keeping these factors to a minimum.

People told me they would rather see something that is uplifting and that will inspire people to help rather than something gloomy which would just depress the intended audience.

My tutor recommended I step away from the theme of homelessness for a bit and focus on creating characters (which is what I enjoy doing) and that has really unblocked me creatively. Since switching the focus I have been coming up with concepts I really enjoy. The project before had become a chore but now it has become something I do for enjoyment and if I have learned anything forcing creativity rarely gives good results. Also my tutor's lecture on metaphor really helped me come up with new ways of communicating my chosen message without blocking myself off creatively.



Switching topic, I have a stall coming up in November and I am focusing on making things that are reproducible in order to keep the balance between my stall and uni work. So far I have come up with the idea of doing lino prints, I had a little look on etsy to see if anyone does pop culture inspired lino prints and found one person by the name of Chase or TheBeardedGoldfish as the shop name is called.

If there is one thing in this world I love, it is Pokemon. And Chase does very unique Pokemon lino prints (if only he shipped to the UK). I have always loved the bold look of lino prints. 

He prints them on to rice paper of different colours depending on the character in the print.

I think the boldness of a lino print would look absolutely amazing paired with a vivid watercolour background that I have recently been creating with Dr Ph Martins concentrated watercolours.

This is also something I would love to experiment with for 'Outside The Penthouse'. Maybe I could even bind them into a zine format.

The etsy shop for TheBeardedGoldfish

Personal project reflection

My personal project went through many changes throughout the project. It started as a zine turned into a comic turned back into a zine. It was suggested to me that I hand bound using coptic or stab stitch binding but instead I opted for heat binding it. If we are realistic if I was to sell these zines the hand binding wouldn't be cost effective or time effective driving the prices up. Also with how thick the zine ended up being it would be a risk to bind it that way because it could crinkle the paper that would effect the overall look of the zine. I also decided to no print the images back to back because I didn't want the pages bleeding into each other also I feel like I am unveiling each new piece as I turn the pages.