Assignment 1:Introduction - what I hope to gain from the course

 

Today I’ve got on and made my self portrait book, called My Inner Circle. However, it’s been a dark and gloomy day so I’m hoping for better light tomorrow so that I can photograph it and document the making of it here. 

In the meantime I’ll say a bit about what I hope to gain from the course. 

My reason for returning to study is that I feel that I’ve been stuck in a bit of a rut with my drawing. In the last several months I’ve done lots of art for my own use through illustrating the Bible. This is just for myself and doesn’t have to be “good” or meet anyone else’s standards or expectations. Meanwhile I’ve done next to no artwork in recent months for other people and purposes. It’s now 11 years since I completed my HND in Fine Art and I feel that I need to shake things up a bit with some fresh ideas and trying new things. 

I decided to study with the Open College of the Arts as I’ve known about their courses for a long time, and they’re more affordable than other higher education, and offer a wide range of courses in creative arts via distance learning. I want to be able to study and work at home, partly because really that’s the only way I can be consistently productive, and also due to things in the real world being unpredictable during the pandemic. 

I chose Visual Communications in particular because it seems to answer the things I currently do and want to develop. My path has led me away from more of a fine art practice of projects about my own experience towards more outward motivations such as images and designs that other people ask me to create. These tend to be images that convey a message or meaning that people want to get across visually, alongside what they are writing or talking about. I’ve been asked for logo designs, and been very aware of my lack of expertise in graphic design. I’ve been asked for illustrations for documents and magazines which pick up on the content of their themes and individual articles. I have my own project of ‘visual exegesis’ in which I put my degrees in theology to work in interpreting and illustrating the Bible and other Christian material such as designs for banners. 

All of these are about communicating visually and so I want to be better at it. I want to gain and hone skills and be open to new approaches, get more to grips with working digitally and, above all, keep drawing, building on my personal style as it currently is, but being open to as yet unknown changes which will help my drawing to evolve. I want to learn and think more about visual language. I want to be challenged by other people’s briefs and approaches to work in new ways. I want to be surprised by the visual and to be more intentionally aware of the world and culture around me. 

In short, I want this course to enliven me and equip me to communicate visually.