CRIT.

Well, I don't have long left now, in-fact, the deadline I have set myself is for the final Crit, to have all the creative work done, then I can concentrate on putting together my final report submission. I have already started thinking about it and writing it, which is important as it's important to start pulling it together as it is the biggest requite of the brief minus 'professionalism'!

To start, Matt and I discussed what I wanted to have by the final Crit...I want to be able to show people what I'm going to submit, minus my report. Therefore, I need my blog to be update, and all my work almost ready for the craft fair. I need to also have my final image for Simon at 'On The Wall' and all jewellery design up to date.

BROOCHES.

My main focus is the next 'Reetsweet' craft fair on Sunday 5th, each time I have gone to a fair, i feel I've been more and more prepared and now this is the last push. I need to have a business card ready which I have decided will roughly look like this:

photo

I need to refine this design and from what I've learnt about the laser cutter, I'm going to create it all using the pen-tool, this means they will cut quickly and I can produce lots in the timescale I have... I need to reduce the size of the grey space to fit the sticker design as the size of the grey one above is a bit too big for someone to take away and comfortbly carry around in their pocket. I think the design is good as it's what I'm about, integrating my illustration, use of the laser cutter and love cutesy things. So, for in the next week I need to:

- Buy more grey card (The pink complements the grey really well)

- Get creating the doily pattern using the pen tool and resizing it

Another important aspect of it all is, creating a 'Brand-name', in discussion with people, whether to just use my name or an actual brand name, people have advised a brand-name and from watching 'the influencers' and doing a little research it is clear to see that, this is what makes things catch on and people 'big-up' a brand

As well as the brooches themselves go, I need to refine them lots, I tried out the designs I had, and I'm not sure on the quality of them. From speaking to people they have commented on the clarity of them. Something which was important to me was keeping my illustration style within the brooches, so they had some illustration style to them and also thought this would give them quirky character as everything we see today in a jewellery piece is really defined. However, from doing some little experiements

It also seems that the favourite wood for me to use is 'American Cherry', I've used pretty much all the samples I created and they seem to come out the best on the 'american cherry'. It's the most expensive wood, but the line work looks much nicer and well defined/clear. On the other woods it just doesnt seem to cut it. The oak is a little too dark and so the image looks a little dull and blurred and on the cheapest wood I had, the rings (of it's growth) vary in darkness and lightness, meaning that some bits of the lines rastered into the wood creating the image look darker and merkier than others, giving the image a blurred and confused look, with different lines of tone running through it.

Matt and I discussed making the brooches a little more graphic and refining them using the pen-tool in illustrator to get these crisp lines and anchor points. This should give lots of clarity to the line work of the piece...I may however draw them all again first then to go over them with the pen tool. I'm going to come up with a new cardigan, refine the spoon and refine the perfume bottle.

One other thing for the brooches is producing a nicer illustrated backing for them, since my crit I have been sat mocking up idea for the backing of them. One Idea I had, was to make them all into cards...easily given to people as a gift then... I do know that I want to stick to pastel colours.

'ON THE WALL.2'

The image for Simon at 'On The Wall' which I have started putting together is the cardigans...

picture...

I'm not sure about a couple of the paintings so might change them, the most important thing now is getting a quirky quote to finish it and complement the cute cardies...which I'm going to do by talking to people and asking them a bit about their cardigans! Once I have the final image I'm going to change the backing colour to something other than white, perhaps a nice pastel blue/pink or red? ...then having the cardigans as a nice charcole black. I want digitally print it and screenprint and see what difference I get.