Big Heads - Josh Cochran

Josh Cochran is an illustrator working in Brooklyn, New York. He creates dense drawings using limited colour palettes and specialises in representing real life situations in an interesting style, character design and conceptual work. 

It was good to look at Josh’s roughs for some of his artwork, it made me realise how simple they can be and still get all the information down that he needs to arrange and work from. 

Josh works in a shared studio which he says is better than working at home because you can run the wrist of becoming a bit of a recluse. It also makes freelancing feel like a real job. 

Advice to students:

• Develop and maintain a community of creatives.
• Always keep a sketchbook.
• Collaborate with friends as it gives a taster of working with art directors in the industry.
• Push boundaries and take on board other people's input.

Whats the difference between good illustration and great illustration?

You know great illustration when you see it, you feel a connection to it. 

Its great if you put a lot of yourself into your work. Don’t just solve the problem, make it a part of you. 

Big Heads - Josh Cochran

Josh Cochran is an illustrator working in Brooklyn, New York, in a shared studio. He spoke about the benefits of working in a shared studio, saying that it makes freelancing feel more like a 'real job' and it means that you are not becoming social recluse and making yourself go crazy by spending all day at home. He creates dense drawings using a limited colour palette and specialises in character design, conceptual work and producing fantasy imagery to represent real life situations. 

At one point during the Skype session, Josh showed some of his roughs for an illustration he produced. This taught me that even professionals with a lot of experience produce really rough drawings and I shouldn't be worried about the appearance of my roughs, as long as they get the message across. 

Advice for students:

• Develop and maintain a creative community, even after graduation
• Always keep a sketchbook
• Collaborate with friends, push boundaries, share ideas and learn from other people's input. It gives you a taster of working with art directors in the creative industry. 

What is great illustration?

• You know it when you see it
• You feel a connection to it. 
• Don't just make an illustration to solve a problem, make it a part of you. 

10 Questions Task

How do you do book binding?
I really want to learn how to bind my own books so that I have the option of presenting my work in a new and interesting way. To learn this skill, I could attend a book binding workshop at college or research methods of bookbinding in my own time to get more knowledge of the subject. 

How do you go about getting work experience or placements?
I think it would be really beneficial to my studies to get some experience of the industry and gain an awareness of the different options available to me. Getting work experience may lead to new opportunities and I could potentially make some useful contacts. To find out how to get started with this, I could speak to second year students who may have done this in the past or ask my tutors for some pointers. I could also research local opportunities for students. 

How do you use a Wacom tablet?
By learning to use a Wacom tablet, I hope to improve my digital skills. I am becoming more comfortable with using photoshop and feel that the next step in learning about digital media is to learn what these tablets are capable of. I could ask for guidance from other students who are familiar with the technology and would be willing to help, I could then take some time to use the tablets in the studio and explore what I can do with it. I could also ask for guidance from a member of staff.

How do I know when I’ve spent enough time on a brief?
I understand the 20:80 hour ratio of taught hours to independent study hours is a guide for this but I hope to learn how much work I should be producing per task and whether I am working a a fast enough pace. I will ask this question at a one-to-one tutorial so that the tutor can see my work and hopefully judge whether I am on track. 

How do you screen print?
I think exploring various printing methods will really help me develop my work. I have worked with mono-printing mainly in the past so I want to see what outcomes I can achieve with screen print as I have not had as much experience with this process. Hopefully it will be something I can tie into my briefs and use to enhance my work. I could attend a screen printing workshop or ask for tutoring from a member of the workshop staff. Researching screen printing in my own time would also provide a good starting point for learning the technique. 

How can I continue to improve and develop my drawing skills?
I feel my drawing skills have improved even in the short amount of time I have been studying here. However, I don’t want to get comfortable with a certain style or technique so I need to push myself to be experimental and take risks with new processes and media that I haven't tried before. I am sure my work will slowly evolve into having its own unique style but for now I want to keep my options open and make the most of all the facilities available to me. Draw every single day! 

How would you organise a group exhibition?
This may not be relevant just yet but exhibitions seem like a great way of getting your work out there and they can often lead to new and exciting opportunities. A group exhibition seems like a good idea as it will show a wider range of work and people may be more interested in looking around. I would need to learn about how much they usually cost, how much time you have to prepare the space and the best venues to approach. Speaking to older students who have already done this would be a good starting point and attending local exhibitions to see how they are set up could give me some inspiration. I would need to talk to fellow students to see who would be interested in taking this on. 

If I become self employed, how would I set up a business and business account?
I would need to check whether this is taught as part of the course but if not, I could speak to student advice to point me in the right direction. I would need to learn the legalities of running my own business and also learn about the finance side of it. Contacting a few Leeds College of Art alumni who are now freelancers to ask them about how they started their business up could provide me with some valuable advice. 

How do I find a good balance between my workload and social life?
Similar to my previous question about whether I am spending enough time on each brief, I would like to gain an understanding of how I can balance work and play. I feel my education and my social life already blend into each other but I want to ensure I leave some time for me to relax because I have a habit of burning myself out. I feel this will become clearer to me the longer I continue with the course. 

Am I doing my evaluations correctly and in enough depth?

I want to find out whether what I am writing in my evaluations is meeting the required standards and if not, what do I need to focus on to improve this. I can take a look at other students’ blogs to see how other people are tackling their evaluations but I think it would be better to ask this question at my one-to-one tutorial where my blog will be reviewed.

'Making It' Trailer

I found this trailer video for a documentary called 'Making It' which is about the struggles of making a living in the creative industry. I found it amongst numerous other interesting videos (link below) but  I thought this one specifically raised some interesting points worth thinking about. 

http://laughingsquid.com/making-it-a-documentary-about-surviving-as-an-illustrator/

Informal, formal and non-formal learning

Informal: doing something unrelated to the course that teaches you transferable skills which you can apply to the programme.

Formal: specific course content.

Non-formal: non-compulsory activities still relevant to the course.

As a blog group, we took five things we would like to improve and then thought of different ways we can work on this, thinking of examples for each category. After a group discussion at the end of this task we realised that artist research and contacting illustrators came under the non-formal heading rather than formal because it is something you would do in your own time and not as a compulsory part of the course. Also, I don't think that drawing in a personal sketchbook is an informal way of improving drawing skills because informal learning suggests that this is a subconscious process. It isn't easy to clarify which category each of these fit into but drawing requires you to think and analyse what feeds from your brain to the paper which, I think, makes it a non-formal method of learning. 

This diagram explains where I fit in relation to the modules of the course and how the different topics should interlink and affect my work.

Kolb's Learning Cycle - Experiential Learning

Drawing Club

I went to the first drawing club session where the theme was 'Our Big Map'. 

We all drew a square to represent our childhood home and then built what we could remember of our neighbourhood around it. As everyone's individual maps grew bigger they started to connect to each other to form the bigger map, we then went on to exhaust our imaginations to fill in the spaces left  on the page with weird and wonderful things. 

This was a really relaxing and fun session which gave everyone the chance to get to know new people, to practice and improve our drawing skills and collectively produce this huge drawing which was relevant and personal in some way to to us all.

Lucinda Rogers

Leatherworkers at Hyfact Ltd, Links Yard

As Not Seen

Paul Gardner at Gardner's

I have recently discovered the work of Lucinda Rogers after it was suggested that I looked at her work during the feedback on my summer project by second year students. I immediately fell in love with her line drawings and connected with what she is trying to achieve through her drastic variation in weight of line; her technique really draws your attention to specific parts of the picture and leads your eye into the image step by step. I like the way she uses colour washes to draw over and shows bright areas by using white against a coloured background. I think the beauty of her drawings is down to the selective process of choosing which parts of the image need a heavier line and which parts need to be accentuated with colour. Her drawings have a sense of spontaneity and immediacy which reflects her way of working as she positions herself within an environment and records her surroundings from life. 

View over Spitalfields looking west

I particularly like this image because the larger and brighter colour washes in the foreground and mid ground catch your eye at first and then you are drawn to the smaller patches of colour in the distance. After a while of looking at this picture, I also noticed she has used faint coloured lines as well, for example on some of the windows. The more I look at this image, the more I see in it. There is something about the viewpoint of this image over the rooftops that is intriguing and makes you want to inspect the interesting angles and spaces within the drawing because we don't usually see buildings from this angle. 

Who am I? Why am I here?

5 reasons why I chose to study illustration.

1. The simple fact that I love to draw and create images. 

2. Because I want to put my creativity and imagination to good use. 

3. I want to push myself and learn as much as I can about this discipline so that I can eventually earn a living from doing something I love. 

4. I want to be able to collaborate with other creative practitioners  in a studio environment and start to get an understanding of how work is produced in this way in the creative industry. 

5. Because I want to become a professional at something I am passionate about and I am willing to work hard to get to that point.

5 reasons why I chose this programme.

1. I like the small course size because it makes you feel more like an individual rather than another student being pushed through the same process as everyone else on the course. Every student is going on a different journey and I felt this course would address each person’s individuality. 

2. The facilities at Leeds College of Art are some of the best I had seen and I felt this would be really beneficial when it comes to experimentation and trying out new processes. 

3. Leeds has an amazing student community and theres always something to do. When visiting, I got the impression that it is a very creative and interesting city with a lot of opportunities to take advantage of. 

4. Because Leeds College of Art is a specialist institution where I’m being taught by professionals in the industry -  theres nothing better than learning from people with this kind of experience. 

5. I chose to move away from my hometown to gain more independence on a personal level. I think that this is the best way to develop my skills in managing my time and finances which will no doubt be crucial in the world of work. 

5 skills that I think are my strengths.

1. I enjoy trying out different ways of working and am keen to experiment with new media and processes to enhance my creative practice. 

2. My drawing ability. 

3. I write lists all the time and take satisfaction from crossing out completed tasks. I like to plan out everything I need to do each day and I take the same approach when doing a project. I do this to ensure I give myself enough time to do everything and so theres less chance of me forgetting about important (and less important) tasks. 

4. I am inspired by everyday life; I see this as a strength because I find joy in drawing the mundane things that can often go unnoticed and unappreciated by others. 

5. I am a perfectionist. This can sometimes be a disadvantage but generally, I want my work to be the best it can possibly be and I will push myself to achieve the best I can. 

5 things I want to improve. 

1. I want to become more knowledgable and aware of trends in other areas of the creative industry which I can relate back to my practice as I feel this will enhance my work and make it more relevant. 

2. I feel I need to have more confidence in myself when it comes to explaining my work and trusting my instincts. 

3. I need to change the way I deal with mistakes and learn how to use mistakes to my advantage to develop and improve my work rather than feel like something has been unsuccessful.

4. I want to improve my ability to interact professionally and collaborate with other creative people to produce work as a joint effort, putting everyone’s individual skills and talents to best use.

5. I want to improve my research and writing skills so I can get facts and educated opinions across effectively in a piece of writing. 

5 images that demonstrate my interest in illustration.

1. I am inspired by Julia Rothman’s repeat patterns based on her drawings. I love the hand drawn, imperfect quality of her drawings and I think she chooses interesting, quirky subject matters to work with. 

2. Hope Gangloff uses pen and ink which is probably the media I feel most comfortable using. I love his colour choices and how he creates textures in his work through hatching and mark making. 

3. Paul Davis has a very unique and child-like drawing style but I am inspired by his ability to make images from things he sees and hears during his day which are usually relatively insignificant things. 

4. I have only recently been introduced to Lucinda Rogers’ work but I have grown to really like her interesting use of line. Her selective use of heavy line gives the image depth and draws your eye to the parts she wants to you to focus on. I also like the way her unruly drawing style accurately portrays the chaos and untidiness of the scene in this image. 

5. This piece by Isaac Tobin shows my interest in using collage in images. I like the way he has used a variety of surfaces to work onto and his expressive smudges of colour and application of paint contrasts with the geometric lines of this image.