Hopes, Fears and Opportunities

As this is the third and final year of the course we had a group discussion on what some of our hopes and fears for this coming year and for post-graduation may be. We also talked about which events/projects/circumstances which will come up this year have good potential for each of us.

To start with we were asked what do you wish to achieve this year and after graduation. My three main hopes were:

• To develop and refine a consistent style of working; get to a point were my work looks more professional/polished
• To gain more confidence in my own work.
• Graduate and work as a freelance illustrator.

I hope that by the time I do graduate next year I will have gained more experience and knowledge in working in collage. I have found so far that my work can look very amateurish and needs to develop a more professional and consistent look in order for me to be confident enough to work in the outside world after leaving the college. This will only come about with me producing more working in collage and learning how to use my work in more sophisticated design pieces.

We were then asked what is worrying us about this year and beyond:

• The workload through this year.
• Becoming a lot more independent this year.
• The uncertainty of finding work after graduating.

The way in which i work, mostly in paper collage, means it takes me a long time to complete each piece. Through practise I hope to speed up in order to create enough work expected of me in the third year but without effecting the quality of my work. As i tend to just see the bad bits of my work and feel more confident i the direction I'm taking if I'm told that its good by others i am worried about becoming more independent through this coming year. Although i still need some reassurance of my work these first few weeks of semi-idependance in the Hello World project has let me follow a path I feel I want and my work wants.

Lastly we were asked about the opportunities which we feel will be most beneficial to us in the final year of the course:

• Help in promotion of myself and my work
• Gaining the advice and experience of working artists.
• Have the chance to work on project of my choice.

The help offered in creating business cards, portfolios and a website will be essential for me as I know I would be pretty lost if i had to do them on my own and they wouldn't be professional enough to be seen by the outside world. I hope that by working on a long project created by me will mean I make a lot more work and am more passionate about the subject than i would be if i was just given a selected brief to work on into the new year.