Introduction

Introduction  

My name is Courtney Squire, i live in Gloucester, and i am a student currently in my second year at the University of Gloucestershire studying illustration. For this blog which is associated with the professional practice module, i am planning to express my thoughts and opinions on my intentions for the future in terms of where i see myself in five to ten years. What inspired me to become an illustrator, which route i am going to take and different situations that may occur whilst on this journey. My main focus right now is looking for more experience in my practice to expand myself, i am hoping to gain more knowledge and acknowledge where i need to take my myself in terms of research and my practical work to get to where i want to be. 

My interest;

.As an introduction to my practice for this professional practice module, i am going to explain my interest, what aim to do, and how i intend to get to that position. From a young age i have been interested in cartoon/ animation illustrations especial Japanese anime, as i used to and still to this day watch a lot of cartoons and has a big influence in my art work. As an illustrator there are many different direction i could take as i have had many different experiences, my first intentions relating to a practice at University of Gloucestershire was to become a graphic novelist drawing and self publishing graphic novels and comic books as most Japanese anime start of as graphic novels and comic books. However during my time at Gloucestershire University i have realised that it is a lot harder than i first thought and soon became a distant interest i would still love to be a graphic novelist but i a slowly loosing interest in that nature. This was because of how time consuming is was for me due to my slow work ethic. 

.Apart from just being a graphic novelist i also took interest in game and film concept design art. This was purely on the fact it looked cool and the detail of work they put into concept art and had high hopes to work with in the gaming and film industry as a concept artist. Again this is a very time consuming process and skill i am still perfecting, and know that i am a long way from a professional level and currently aim to teach myself how to get better as it would take time for industry level of work. During my second year at University of Gloucestershire my confidence in my practice has shot down and i have started to doubt my ability to be an amazing concept artist as the industry is massive and i would be competing again other amazing concept artist and at this moment in time i don’t have the skill to do so but i hope to improve over time.

.Because of this i have started to think outside the box in terms of what my practice could be and how it would improve my way of working. I realised i liked to draw from my mind and what ever i come with i will treat it as a piece of illustrative art, instead of drawing something specific turn it into an abstract piece of work. At that same time i was heavily influenced by colourful psychedelic art purely because the artwork was not straight forward and had interesting composures to it.I started to involve other interest that was not specifically art but related to art in one form or another. From then i started to incorporate other things i heavily enjoyed such as fashion and music as i see them as another form of art and expressing yourself. Which got my thinking i could go down an unconventional art route for the professional practice module. I started to realise i had an interest with stuff i see in my everyday life that but had no idea what i could do. I started see illustrations on clothing and illustrations incorporated in music whether it was animation for a music video or an album cover, that is where i made the decision to become a freelance artist. I thought as a freelance artist i get to work and manage my own time, so rather working for a company i get to work for my self which i feel more comfortable doing because i get to use my own working method. I am going to base my freelance work around clothing brands and the music industry as i feel i have more connections in that area to help push my type of art work out there than i would if i were to become a graphic novelist or concept artist. 

. My current time as an illustrator before i came to University of Gloucestershire i had dabbled in different softwares trying to inform myself about the features of the different adobe softwares. I first started of using photoshop which is a main software i use to this day for my work practice, but i have also used Adobe illustrator to practice making characters that look professionally designed. Even though my work of practice of freelancing i still wanted to involve my love for cartoons and planned to make an independent animation series and thats when i started to learn more intricate softwares such as Adobe After effects, Flash and only recently TV paint, as i thought it was vital i learn about these softwares and what they can do to help improve, to think of innovative ways of working, and showcasing my work using these different platforms. Now that i have decided what my main practice is i will make targets to what i am aiming for and what i intend to do as a start to reach those targets. 

My Aim;

To becoming a freelance illustrator i have my own aims and objectives to help me achieve the most of this practice.

my aim as a freelance artist is to have people commission me to be involved in their project  and use my work as a statement, i want to improve my work also with use of colours and how diverse i can be to make my work stand out from the others meaning more commissions. 

. For clothing brands my aim would be to target clothing brands that use illustrations as their main selling point 

. for the music industry i would like my work to be used for album covers but not identifiable making each album cover illustration different from the others with hidden meanings and metaphors