Reflective 2

Following on from the gross studios banner my love of drawing has increased. With a new approach of a more developed version of my line drawings I had confidence in trying to put this into practice with some live briefs. When choosing live briefs I always look for ones that i will find most fun. If no fun ideas come to me when i  brainstorm then i scrap the brief. Usually the  breifs i like to chose may involve character design and naivety so anything for children always caught my eye more then an editorial or book cover for example.
Some of the live briefs i did:

- Children's Tennis clothing company (lion mascot)
this brief i knew would be easy for me to come up with an outcome as i draw lions on the regular and the mane gives me a lot to play with in terms of texture. I sketched out so many lions until i got one that felt like it had a sporty aesthetic  and from what i learnt earlier in the year with the orgy that a analogue drawing coloured in digitally can make it look more professional and finished. For a logo especially a sports one it's important to have strong bold sporty colours.
I was happy with the final outcome as it was a sporty naive looking lion with bold colours and nice playful textures. However, I'm not sure if it works well as a mascot as the texture may be hard to transfer onto a lot of different products. This is something that in the future i would like to team up with a graphic designer to help me out with making a mascot more versitile for products.

- t shirt LAU T SHIRT
this was a brief for the new student union t shirt at LAU. For this brief i wanted to design something with limited colour and a simple design. Doing something very immediate seemed like the best option. I did this very lazily but ended up enjoying the image. It was a product of me just testing out brushes on photoshop but it ended up creating a character with some charm. This design came as a happy accident and although contained little thought sometimes a quick idea can be the most effective choice. Especially when i feel like i am spending too much time thinking about the process of making the image i have in my head. It's fun to go in with no intentions and let the work create itself sometimes.

- Lau tote bag
For this one i just wanted to do a very simple design of loads of small things involved within the courses at LAU and put happy faces on them all. small faces is the easiest way to make your work look fun. This design does the job but it doesn't excite me as i don't feel like it's anything original however, it works well commercially.


- Nest submission
For nest i had an idea of a genderless person looking scared and knew that paint would of been perfect for this as recently I had been getting into paint more. Painting is a fun way to show immediacy as the brush strokes offer lots of texture in the colour. I was happy with the submission and glad that it made it within the magazine however, when i look back at my submission it works really well in the context of the magazine but if i had to critic it myself i personally think i can do better humour wise. The joke feels to "Shrigley" to me and this is something i want to avoid at all costs even if i do consider David Shrigley as an influencer I think it's important as a Humorous illustrator to keep my jokes and drawings as original as possible and this piece feels too similar to me even if i never intended it to be originally.

from doing live briefs this year it made me realise a very important thing and that is that i much prefer my own set briefs. A brief that is already set gives me to much limitations even if the brief isn't limited. Perhaps it's more that i feel less confident to approach a serious live brief in a completely silly and stupid way  therefore i keep it commercial with less effort and fun as i would if set it myself.