My practice as it stands right now

I feel like I am often critical of my final outcomes from individual briefs, however I think it is valuable to reflect on my practice as a whole body of work to better understand what defines me as a creative practitioner. Sometimes I feel like I lack visual consistency from brief to brief, and so drawing links can help me see, hopefully common trends cross my practice, but also what parts of my work I need to build on to develop a more distinct visual language.  

Shape

• Chunky and wonky block shapes to define figurative elements - like people or animals. (e.g. noughts and crosses snake design)
• Abstract and geometric shapes (for more ambiguous work e.g. COP)

Composition

• I like my compositions to have a sense of either literal or visual balance. 
• Literal balance - I like the sense of tension created in a composition where each shape is placed carefully balanced in relation to one another within the frame (almost as if you remove one of them the rest will topple like a game of jenga e.g. Cop work). 
• Visual balance - using areas of concentrated visual content contrasted with areas of pure fill or negative space to balance the composition (e.g. tree illustrations or christmas card design). 

Pattern and Texture

• `I always like my final outcomes to have a sense of the handmade and high-crafting to them - whether this through using actual print processes and collage or just creating this effect through digital simulation. 
• I like using handmade processes because I think it gives an illustration a sense of authenticity and authorship. Especially since my work is so shape-based I think it sometimes lacks the visceral feeling so easily achieved with the varying quality of a drawn line.
• This year I began (and enjoyed) experimenting with contrasting different textures against one another, as well as putting textures through multiple processes to achieve a final desired effect. e.g. bitmapped mono-prints with pencil textures in secret 7" screen-prints. 

Limited colour palettes

• Limiting my colour palettes I think helps maintain an air of simplicity as well as simulate a more print-based aesthetic in perhaps digitally finished illustrations. 

Tone of Voice

• Even though at times my illustrations can be quite fun and playful (which I think is hard to step away from when using shapes and bright colours), I also like my work to have an air sophistication and I often think this comes from the process in which I make my final outcomes. 
• Abstraction of visual content and not illustrating the obvious - 'evoking a feeling rather than boldly presenting the truth' Karel Martens. 

Things that drive my practice (content-wise)

• Illustrating moments/experiences and the way I see things through my own lens. Taking real-world observations and illustrating these but in an abstract or ambiguous way (e.g. tree designs)
• Briefs that offer an initial content (e.g. editorial, publishing or music) but are open to my own personal interpretation of that content and in terms of idea generation are very research-led. 

Creative practitioners that resonate with my current practice: