Cynthia Kingsley-Smith
Illustration



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Newspaper Task


This week: 

On short notice, I received an opportunity to produce a 25x30 cm piece of artwork for a Paper Jam commerical project - a newspaper that could contain a spread that represents me as an artist. While I already had the lino designs done last week as a potential result for this project, I wanted to challenge myself and use this as another test for my personal practice and wether I can produce work to tight dealines using my experimental approach. 




To begin with, I simply measured out 





I tried cleaning up the Whistle piece I did right at the start of this project into a simple poster design, and I think this worked ok! I wasn’t really planning on doing anything with this but I think it worked as an excersize to get me thinking about the potential of the textures and layout I had. 

Additionally, I upcycled some of my older prints that I didnt like the results of, such as that whistle reduction linocut and a simple warm up piece of an apple. 

My First Draft:

While I was happy wth my progress given I had only considered this project for a couple of days, I still found a number of issues with this work: 

  • My colour choices were not wery well done. the dull triadic colour with splashes of brown led to a very subdued scene and I didn’t feel like it felt particularly considered for the hopeful, activist message it spread. 
  • The layout was dull, especially regarding the font. There were no elements that helped guide the eye down through the page. Everything was too regimented. 
  • These were not good uses of texture. They DID add a layer of depth but using similar, roller ink texture for every block instantly taeks away from that effect.

    There are some positives!

  • I’m happy with how the flower roots look, utlising photo-realistic collage in a design like this is new to me and something I need to experiment with more.
  • I liked the repeating apple design, I feel like it looks good as a space filler. 
  • I think with minor edits the font choice was solid. I didn’t have time to make my own via linocut so the easy-to-read with minute embellisments struck a good middle ground to me. 

To reolve these issues, I immediately went back to the drawing board layout-wise.




I looked at preserving the elements I liked such as the apple, in hindsight I probably should have made this flower head a highlight colour to contrast against the background because I think it is an element that should stand out. 




By having one unifying texture for the boxes, and really selectively applying where to break this convention, I thnk I have created a much mroe dynamic image. 











Overall, I am so pleased with this outcome. I completed this task in just a few days using skills I have picked up throughout my time at university adn while I think I could iterate on it forever, this is solid for the amount of time put in because it represents me as an illustrator.



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