Thoughts about my own work

A while ago Chris mentioned that when he was marking our work, he’d seen personal work folders on blogs and so on, and that he wants us to somehow reconcile what we do for university with what we produce in our own time.  I’ve heard this kind of thing before… you know, bringing our personal and studious practises together, and I’d love to be able to do that.  The problem is that I have absolutely no clue how to.  My personal work is so far removed from any of the briefs we’ve had that I’m uncertain of how I can merge that work without it simply being overbearing for what that particular brief is asking us to do.  Nevertheless, it’s an interesting comment, and it is something I feel like I ought to work on.

There’s an illustrator I adore, and recently she was asked by someone to give some advice on how to start drawing.  It was simple, all she told them (amongst other things but this truly sums up the sentiment) was, “Draw what you like.”

That little statement has made a huge impression on me over the last few days, and all of a sudden, I’ve found myself scrutinising my own work, and wondering, “Did I draw this because I was excited and I wanted to, or because it was a means to an end?”   Unfortunately, as far as university work is concerned, the latter has been the answer to most of those questions.  And I don’t like that, because I want to be excited about all of my work, but I’m not, and in particular, I don’t feel motivated about this current brief on The City that we have, and due to that, I’ve produced not as much work as I usually would, and not to the same standard.

There’s only one way to change that really, and that’s to take Leela’s advice.

Draw what you like.

Draw what you like.

Draw.  What.  You.  Like.

If I just change this brief to draw what I like without concerning myself overly with what I think it ought to be, rather than what it can be and is, then I feel like I’d be much happier in myself and with my work.  I’d probably even be motivated too.

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I wrote the above on the 25th February, but didn’t publish it for some reason.  Today I had a tutorial with Chris, about the very same issues I discussed in this post, plus a few other things.  I feel like my work is too save, too comfortable.  I don’t want to make safe and comfortable work, I want to make work that makes people stop and look.  I want something that demands attention and provokes thought.  I need to shake something up.

So I got some advice in order to take my work down a new and different direction, and, to be honest, it was just really reassuring to hear that I can actually do that, rather than being held ransom to what I said I wanted to look at at the start of the brief.  I can unite the start of the brief with the new direction, too, though we’ll have to see how that goes.  I can switch media, combine elements, listen to the advice I was given, and really go for something here.

The category is Hidden City, there is so much I can do with that, and as I said, I don’t need to be held to what I did at the start, which is obviously incredibly handy.  We had Monday Muse today (which I’ve discussed in a separate post) but it got me thinking, and I finally feel like I have some direction to head towards as far as this project is concerned.