creative report: emailing helena covell

The person that I have decided to email is Helena Covell. Over the last year she has been a big inspiration to me, even though our styles aren't necessarily the same, I think there are still similarities between us. I wanted to also email her because I think I can relate to her more, as someone who is still quite fresh into the industry I think she can give me a good insight on what to expect and some helpful tips.

I hope to hear back from her soon! I am excited about the possibility of talking to her.

lifes a pitch: final presentation

(the first slide is supposed to blink...)

Here is the final presentation for our collective. We are named 'Field Trip'! I'm really happy with the final presentation and I think there's a little bit of all of us in it. Although it was really nerve-wracking I'm really proud of myself for standing at the front and doing it. It was a lot easier to be stood beside such nice people and I think it helped in gaining confidence from eachother. From this, I've learned that being in a collective really is about supporting each other and helping each other. It's opened my eyes to this, as before I didn't know much about being in a collective and it was confusing. But you bounce off of eachother's ideas and motivation and it makes all of the process a lot easier. I can imagine  myself in the future working with a collective because I find myself more confident when I have friends beside me.

life's a pitch: field trip logo

For the Field Trip logo, we wanted to capture the essence of what our publication would be about but we didn't want people to think that we were just a publication about actual Field Trips. Or like an outdoor magazine. So we had to be careful when coming up with imagery for our logo because a lot of them made it seem like we were a nature publication. Although I have nothing against those, it's just not what we were going for. 

In the end this is what we went for:

We decided to go with the flashlight because it still is inspired by our name 'Field Trip' as you use flashlights when going on adventures. But we also wanted it to be inspired by the fact that we were en'light'ening subjects. Shining the light on different themes and artwork. I think this was a clever way for us to tie in our name with what our publication is about. 

life's a pitch: collective meeting

Here is a slideshow to show the meeting that we had as our collective. We met up to decide what our collective name would be and what we wanted to propose as a collective. 
All of us are quite similar in the fact that we love to make light-hearted artwork, that's fun and naive. We wanted this to come across in our collective as something that ties us all together. 
In the slideshow you can see our mindmaps, logo designs etc. which helped us in the process of growing our collective.

We eventually decided on the name 'Field Trip'. This is because we all like to discover things and be adventurous, like the activities that you do on a field trip. We wanted to get across the fact that the name 'Field Trip' wasn't just about going outdoors, but it could be about discovering new things about, for example, wizards. You can go on a field trip in the mythical world and discover new things.

This is why we wanted to do a quarterly art publication, which is also called Field Trip, which will help to enlighten our viewers on different topics each time. Each publication will have a different theme, or 'Field Trip', with responses to this in artwork, poetry, and different contributors. 

We were inspired by magazines such as Cabinet and No Brow, which are very collaborative and always have contributors.

lifes a pitch: similar publications

When we had decided as a collective that we wanted to do an art publication, we decided to look into some that already existed as a form of inspiration and to see what they are like. The publications that we looked at are all art-centered, as this is what we will be too (obviously).

CABINET

  

The first magazine that we looked at is Cabinet. Here is some info about them:

'Immaterial Incorporated (aka Cabinet) is a non-profit 501(c)(3) art and culture organization founded in 1999. By operating with the most expansive and inclusive definition of “culture” possible, one that includes both the quotidian and the extraordinary, Cabinet aims to foster curiosity about the world we have made and inhabit.'

- CABINET Website

I think this quote 'foster curiosity about the world we have made' really relates to some ideas that we had for our publication. We really like the idea of exploration through art, as we all enjoy doing this as a collective. The content of their magazine is very broad and interesting, and I think doing something like this would bring in a wider audience.

NOBROW

Nobrow is another magazine that we are inspired by, as it is heavily focused on the art genre. 

'We have sought to bring new stories to life, as well as to revive well-worn yarns for new generations of people. We have played with concepts, narratives, genres, formats, printing 

methods, production processes and design in ways that have come to redefine the standards of quality in visual publishing the world over.'

- NOBROW Website

Nobrow is more like an art zine/publication than a magazine which I think is really interesting. It helps to get artist's names out there so I think what they're doing is really amazing, especially for the smaller artists, who getting published would create a lot of publicity for them.

FRANKIE

 Frankie is another magazine that we are interested in. It has playful artwork and their demographic seems to be mostly female through their use of character and colour. 

'looking for a magazine that’s as smart, funny, sarcastic, friendly, cute, rude, arty, curious and caring as they are. We cover design, art, photography, fashion, travel, music, craft, interiors and real-life stories – we aim to surprise and delight readers'

- FRANKIE Website

 

life's a pitch: existing collectives

SQUEEZE ART COLLECTIVE

• Advertises work together
• Exhibits together
• Promotes each artist individually
• Local art community

ONE FIVE EIGHT

• Manchester based
• Range of disciplines including Illustration, DJs, Photography etc.
• Everything you need on one page
• Good for events

BREAD COLLECTIVE

• Lots of different artists
• Work a lot with the community
• Work across varied locations
• Holds different workshops

Looking at all these different collectives has been very interesting because they are all so different. It goes to show that a collective can be anything you want it to be as long as you are a group of creative individuals who work together and support eachother. I myself have always thought of myself as someone who works alone, however, looking at these different collectives and how it can be whatever you want it's changing my mind. I always thought a collective were people who had to work together on every single project but it can just be about having a network of friends who support  you and exhibiting together to create a stronger breadth of work.

life's a pitch: what is a collective?

'An artist collective is an initiative that is the result of a group of artists working together, usually under their own management, towards shared aims.'

Artists working within a collective are united by shared ideologies, aesthetics and, or, political beliefs.

In the early modern period, there were roughly two forms of art collective. Those who sought to bring about social change by cultural means like the futurists. They looked towards the future where they envisioned a radically new way of life. Others, like the dada artists, represented the psychological consequences of the loss of a pre-modern existence and reflected that in their art. They spoke for a collective group, in this case those mentally and physically scarred by the First World War.

Today, thanks to social media, art collectives have an extraordinary global reach, giving them the power to bring about change through direct action. Collectives today are about the present and how they can change society in the here and now.

- http://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/c/collective

An arts collective is a group of artists, curators and supporters who work together to support and promote the work of every member of the collective. Usually this is through shared workspace and materials, marketing and promotional efforts, advocacy, and collaborative works. Everyone who is part of the collective jointly shares costs, benefits and risks.

WHAT DO I THINK?

I think a collective is where a group of artists come together who have a similar working pattern. They help to support eachother through not only artistic values but friendship. It's a network of friends who help each other through different situations. You can advertise your work together, or even set up an exhibition together, that way because of all the different work working together, it will gain a bigger audience.

SB1: character design references

https://characterdesignreferences.com/visual-library/

I found this amazing website for Character Design! It has lots of references and images that are collected into sections like certain poses or clothing. I think this will be really helpful for me, especially with the Illustration 2 brief that I am doing at the moment which is all about character design.

I think that this website will give me good opportunities to learn more about how certain poses work and help me to gain inspiration for projects that I am stuck on or unsure of what to do.

They also hold a monthly challenge where they will pick a theme or a word and people from all around the world will submit pieces of art relating to this. I think it would be a good opportunity for me to try and submit a piece to this and see what happens, but for now I am too shy and after seeing so many of the amazing entries I feel like my work is not up to scratch!

SB1: glen keane

Glen Keane is a famous animator working at Disney. I chose to look at his work because he has been an inspiration of mine for some time now, and I wanted to celebrate his work here on my blog.

His work that I am most interested in is mostly his character sketches. They are rough but so full of life. It's really inspiring to see how he uses curves and lines and sharp angles to create different personalities for the characters not just in how they look but in how they are posed too.



It's really interesting also to see how he works things out in his sketches. He draws the same thing but in different ways to help with knowing which looks better. This is something I should take into consideration when doing my own work too.

SB1: momolish

Momolish is someone that I found whilst using Tumblr. Her illustrations are simple, but effectively adorable. She uses complimentary colour schemes and really nice merchandise photography to promote and sell her art.

I decided to feature her on this blog because I have been interested for some time in selling items with my art on. Her aesthetic and cute vibe is something that I think I can relate with as a lot of the time my work gets described as this. I would really like to do shots like this someday of items that I am selling and I think that the photography of your pieces really does matter when selling because it gathers more interest and appeal.