Project Report (750 words)

At the beginning of the year I felt under a lot of pressure to make my best work to date. Because of this, entering into the final studio module was really daunting and came with a lot of anticipation about life after university, which up until now has been a bit of a cushion to fall back on. I think this made me more determined to work to the best of my ability and push myself further than before. One of the things I was most looking forward to was having the freedom to choose my own briefs. By doing this, I started to feel more in control of my own practice and where it was heading, which was a very exciting prospect for me. I was also able to identify the skills that I wanted to improve, and work out how I could utilise the rest of my time at university in order to complete all the briefs I wanted to do.

During third year I have found that I enjoy multitasking with projects. I think this is due to the fact that the most exciting time for me is at the beginning of research and roughing stages, when my ideas are flowing and there are endless possibilities to what I can create. This means that later on in the project I can get a bit bored or frustrated if things aren't going to plan, so being able to jump from one to the other helps me to stop this cycle and get a bit of distance when needed. My aesthetic style has definitely become more consistent through the means of combining, experimenting with and developing my digital and practical skills. I found that using handmade textures and painted elements alongside digital paintings gives them more depth, character and tone.

Informing my practice with literature or general research into particular details is very important to me, I enjoy creating images that could exist within their own world. Therefore, a viewer is able to look into them and think about what could be happening before and after. The idea of being able to suggest a full narrative within one image is something I am fascinated with and will continue to explore.

A turning point for my practice this year was working on live and competition briefs and having my work applied to publications and promotional material. I found that the excitement of seeing my work out there helped me to build a lot of momentum and made me more confident that I could work in the creative industries. Tackling briefs put forward by real clients helped me a lot when thinking about how to write my own briefs. Especially with the Wizard of Oz and Momo's Mishap projects, I found that I could make the best use of my time by creating book proposals rather than the entire outcome. The good thing about doing this is that I now have the opportunity to revisit these projects in the future. I am starting to feel a lot more like a professional now and less like a student, which is something I hadn't anticipated at all at the start of the module.

A lot of the things I have learned during the extended practice module I will take with me after university. Although very scary, I feel more prepared than ever to work in the creative industries and am looking forward to taking the next step. So far, I have a few live briefs on the horizon in sectors that I aspire to work in. An author approached me to create a picture book for children in hospitals, which is something I feel really passionate about and can't wait to develop further. This kind of brief brings me a lot of joy, and I definitely want to look into doing more projects like this. I am also creating the promotional imagery for the Left Bank Opera Festival, as well as running a workshop during the event. There is an opportunity to do further work for the northern opera group here, so this is also something I am really looking forward to. During the summer, as a result of the Stratford Literary Festival competition, I won a work placement at Penguin Random House. I plan to make the most out of this experience by taking my portfolio with me to discuss my work with the art directors there. Overall, I gained a lot from this module, and am feeling hopeful about my future as an illustrator a a result.

Design Boards

Statement of Intent (500 words)

During the Extended Practice module I intend to produce a body of work in relation to the skills I want to develop during the rest of my time at University, and where I want my practice to sit within the creative industries.

Character

Learning how to describe characters for a range of different applications is something I am starting to think about a lot more. Before this year, I purposely produced a lot of work that didn't include people or characters with expressions, because I didn't know how to approach the subject matter. Now that I am aware that I want to work within the publishing sector I realise that including characters and designing them to fit the purpose of the brief is very important. I also want to experiment with less figurative characters, which is something I haven't done before.

Scenes

A huge aspect of my practice is thinking about my illustration as an entire scene, almost like a singular little world, where things are happening before and after the moment I decide to capture. I intend to continue exploring this element of my practice through the use of composition and layering. This also links to visual narrative and storytelling, which is also something that is very important to me. I want people to look further and notice the details I often include within an image.

Practical Skills

So far, I feel that I have a good grasp on practical and digital methods of creating images, but would like to have more opportunities to link the two together. Sometimes I think my work can look a bit flat when created purely digitally, so I would like to look at how I can overcome this issue, without losing the efficiency that acquiring digital skills has given me.

The Aim

I aspire to be able to work on picture books for children as well as adults. Something I have noticed about my practice and me in general is that I like variety and don't like being bogged down with one project for too long. Ideally I would like to have the opportunity to work in different sectors, maybe to do with theatre and performance, editorial and publishing briefs. Research is something I really enjoy and I wouldn't want to lose this part of my process after University. Therefore, having a range of projects would help me to keep my practice exciting and constantly evolving.

Specific Briefs

The briefs I will tackle within this module are -

• Folio Society Book Illustration Competition 2018
• Penguin Student Design Award
• Stratford Literary Festival Book Jacket Competition
• Renewi Live Brief
• Left Bank Opera Festival Live Brief
• Editorial Briefs - self directed
• Ink-Tober - self directed
• Character Design Brief (could be an on-going smaller project) - self directed
• Book Proposal 1 - 4x double page spreads & roughs
• Macmillan Prize - book proposal, 4x double page spreads & roughs
• Public domain publishing brief - 3x final spreads
• Self Portrait (for the show)

Final Mega Crit

It was really great to see what people have been working on for the final studio module EVER at uni. For me, it was nice to see how people have developed their practice and how professional all the outcomes looked. People left some really positive and useful feedback on my form! I am very happy with the way this module has gone, and I feel like I have learned so much about working in the creative industry.

What's great...

• Application. Seeing your illustrations applied in context. Very impressive.
• Tone & atmosphere - you are a storyteller.
• A gorgeous cohesive style.
• Beautiful synergy across all work. Practice is strong and application well considered.
• Love the gold! - Yes!
• Adding gold really enhances your images!
• SLAY - Yes!
• Really lovely take and different aesthetic on the traditional stories.
• The composition, colours, character design.. all incredible.
• Noughts & Crosses is great, love the composition.

What to consider...

• Where next? Who do you want to work with?
• A portfolio of scenes/character development?
• Illustrate poems!
• Have you considered animating your work?
• Have you considered not being a powerhouse!! Love the lighting used in the jungle book scenes, adds a real depth, more of that please.
• Get sending your work to publishers!
• Wow! Speechless, such an amazing talent! Loving the characters and how you use composition in your narratives. Just awesome!
• Your work is so brilliantly and professionally executed, it pains me.
• Absolutely love your book spreads - only thing would be the text is slightly hard to read on yellow brick road - maybe take out some lines under text to see?

Young Poets Book Photographs

Today I went to a cafe to take some photographs of the Young Poets book for my portfolio. I definitely think that taking my own photos is a lot better than digital mock-ups. During the time in between hand in and the show I might think about other pieces of work I can do this with - thinking about the context of each image.

Final Shere Khan Spread

I am happy with the way this illustration turned out. I have found that the longer I work on a project the faster I can complete my outcomes. Because of this, I may continue working on these briefs until I have a complete picture book. The good thing about making book proposals means that I can go back to them at a later date.

Biography - Updated

Sophia Watts is an illustrator from Nottingham, currently based in Leeds/UK. She is about to graduate from Leeds Arts University with a degree in Illustration.

Taking inspiration from historical or cultural references, she works mainly with colour, shape and texture to execute her ideas. Creating a visual narrative is an integral part of Sophia's practice and can usually be found within a single image, depicting moments within a story.

From a young age, children's book illustration is an area that Sophia has been fascinated with, and a field she enjoys working in. As well as publishing and editorial illustration, briefs of a theatrical nature have also always appealed to her. This interest which began outside of her creative practice has informed the way in which she makes images. Pacing a narrative, describing a tone/atmosphere, and including details of costume and scenery are all elements that are considered within Sophia's work.

Another thing I was asked to do was to send over a short biography, scanned sketchbook pages and a photograph for the festival to include in their programme where they will be running a feature on my work and process.

Revised Designs - Winning Submission

My design was chosen as the winning submission! I am really surprised but happy that I have the opportunity to work on a brief in this area. I am a big fan of performance and theatre so I'm excited to develop my ideas further using this subject matter.

Final Design

I made a few changes to the original design after meeting with the art director of the Northern Opera Group. He suggested that I make the red more of a theatre red, as people can associate with this more. I also added a shadow behind the figure of the Chinese conjuror. They really liked the idea of separating the images into three and will utilise this idea when announcing each event. He also asked me to produce the same image in a few different formats - as shown below.

Square Design

I moved things around within the frame so that it fit nicely within a square, for social media purposes.

A4 Poster Designs

I also applied the design to work across the three final posters.

 Facebook Header

Twitter Header

Website Header

Another thing I was asked to do was to appropriate the main image to fit into the dimensions of different headers for social media. Application is something I have thought about before but never really used properly in context.

Image 3 Roughs, Tests & Development

Paintings

For the third image I started off with painted textures. I knew I wanted to focus on Shere Khan for this image, and I wanted it to be a lighter illustration in general. The other two have slightly darker backgrounds. 

The actual composition of the image is pretty simple and I wanted the main focal point to be of the tiger. I wanted the opportunity to research into savannah scenery and the hue of the time of day.

Final Council Rock Spread

I finished this image a lot quicker than I thought I would, and I think this had a lot to do with the feedback I got from my peers. I was going to carry on adding details but they said it looked finished and that adding anything else could make it too busy. After having a bit of a break from the image I agree. I think sometimes I get a bit carried away and find it hard to realise when something is finished. Overall, I am happy with the final outcome and think it embodies all the things I intended to portray.

Image 2 Roughs, Tests & Development

Whilst reading through the original story, I really liked the descriptions of the scene with the pack council on council rock. When reading it I could imagine the scene as a whole and the light created by the full moon, shining down on figures of wolves.

I started off with the general shapes of the scenery to try and gage the tones of each part of the image and how it would work as a whole illustration.

To see where each wolf could go I put in little shapes. I was a bit nervous to draw them in as I didn't know how detailed I wanted to make them eventually, or what the shape would turn into. I wanted to include Mowgli's face as his back is facing us in the first image.

I added the ears and tails to the original shapes of the wolves which made them come to life a bit more. In the text they are described as being different colours so this is something I was thinking about in the back of my mind when developing the image.

Final Kaa Spread

Final Image

I decided to put Mowgli on Bagheera's back in the foreground of the illustration. In my initial roughs I had the characters as silhouettes in the background, but I found this a bit too busy. Lighting was very important for me to include, and I enjoyed playing around with light and dark tones. Adding in the foliage was also something I wanted to do, but had to be careful not to over complicate the image. Obviously as it's in a jungle setting, I wanted to include the detail of jungle leaves.

Classic Stories - Book Covers/Publishing Briefs

Public Domain

Treat as short projects - more painted images

Potential Children's books

A Little Princess
Alice in Wonderland
Black Beauty--
Peter Pan--
Treasure Island--
The Railway Children
The Tale of Peter Rabbit

Potential Books
Jane Eyre
Pride and Prejudice
Frankenstein--
Dracula--
Wuthering Heights
The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde--
Les Miserables--
Oliver Twist
The Jungle Book
Robin Hood

Image 1 Roughs, Tests & Development

Rough - Idea

I wanted to focus on the coils of the snake for the first image. The composition of having the snake weave in and out of the scene really interested me.

Painted & Digital

Most of this image was painted, with added details and colours afterwards. I have found that this process works well for me and it combines both sides of my practice.

Final Self Portrait

Finished Self Portrait

I feel like I have developed my visual signature a lot since the first 'self portrait' brief was set. I used to shy away from features and stick to generalised shapes - which is evident in the last self portrait. With this one I wanted to work with a similar theme of putting myself in a historic setting, as I like to work with this subject matter, but change it up a bit to fit in with my work as it has developed.

Change of Nose

After talking to some of my peers I decided to change the way I drew my nose. I think it's a bit less stylised and fits into a wider genre of illustration now.

Finished Book Proposal

Final Completed Spreads

I am happy with my final spreads. I like the atmosphere I managed to create across them all. If I were to continue with this project after hand in (which I might) I would include some more dynamic and bold pages to add a bit of variety to the book as a whole. I think it could be interesting to have some really dark pages.

These are the final finished pages from my book (with crop marks for bleed). I decided to complete the front cover as well as the inside images, just because it felt a bit strange to leave it as a rough. Eventually, I may finish the entire book as I had a lot of fun with the pages I completed - especially with character design and the interaction with environment.

Final Boards - Including Concept

These are the final boards I submitted for the brief - including my statement on inspiration for the ideas behind the final design.

Self Portrait Development

I went through a few different ways of drawing my own face when developing the image. I actually find it a lot more difficult that with a normal character. I also wanted to include historical reference, so I didn't want the face to evoke a particular expression. Portrait paintings are known to depict figures who had to sit for the artist, therefore their faces are expressionless.

Final Design

Final Design

This is the final long image of the design I came up with.

Billboard Mock-up
I imagined the main image to be quite easy to utilise in different formats, for example I also did some mock-ups of how the design could work as individual posters.

Individual Posters

Being able to split the main image into three different posters, each one for a specific performance, was what I liked most about my idea. As a promotional campaign, I think this would work well when announcing each opera separately. 

Individual Mock-ups - In context