Illustration Portfolio
For the past year, we've explored different aspects of what it means to be an illustrator. I've made a variety of illustrations and other projects, so here is a quick recap of all the things I have made this year and a reflection on what I've learned and how I've grown as an artist.
Growth
I think it's fair to say that I have grown as an artist in the past year. I have learned a lot of things and my illustrations got better and better. I have learned things like composition, color theory and finding my own style. The one project that shows this best, is the background illustration.
I focused a lot on composition, color theory and style in this illustration. That's also the reason why I'm most proud of this illustration, using all the things I learned so far turned into this end result and I think the entire drawing is very cohesive and balanced. If we started with the background illustration at the start of the year, it never would've turned out this good.
Diversity
Something I am also proud of, is how diverse all my projects are. I don't have just 1 style, I try to come up with something that suits the subject and type of illustration I'm drawing. The 'meet the artist' illustration is a drawing of me, so I came up with my own style. For the bookcover, I came up with a very simplistic style which I also love and turned out to fit really well with the illustration and the topic of the book. The project where you had to draw yourself in 3 different styles was also very fun, because I got to explore even more different styles and literally copy them for once, that was very fun.
But trying to match the style to the type of illustration can also end up not working. The editorial illustration is the drawing I'm least proud of. I did my research and thought a very minimalistic style would fit the newspaper illustrations theme, but I ended up not liking the end result. When looking back, I see a lot of things I can do differently and better. But I guess it's a learning point, because I realised this minimalistic, simple style just really doesn't fit me. This was also kind of the turning point of where I thought "I need to focus more on finding my own style and make that work for every project". And as you can see with the illustrations I made after that, I definitely did better with those.
Style
As I said before, I experimented a lot with my style. But I think now that I've experimented with a few different styles, I know what I like best visually and what I love most to draw. The background illustration and the mural in the picture above are the two illustration I like best when it comes to style. I love the cartoon style with the flat colors, but I also found out in these past few months that I love drawing realistically.
Reflection
At the end of the year, there are things I'm proud of and there are things that turned out less good. That's a little problem I have though; when looking back, I can always find things that I can do better. It rarely ever happens that I'm 100% content with an illustration and still am half a year later. I can always keep working on things until I think they're perfect, which takes a long time. There are still a lot of things I have to learn as an artist and as a person.
But of course there are a few project I am pretty proud of. The background illustration is the only project I wouldn't change a thing of, I am so happy with how that drawing turned out. I think the mural is also cool, but even though I finished it one day before making this portfolio, I already have 3 things I want to improve. Drawing myself in those 3 styles was just very fun, which was nice, to just have fun without having too much pressure of making a big, original project.
I am very happy that I choose to follow the Illustration classes this past year. It taught me so much, I made a lot of cool, diverse illustrations and almost all the projects were great additions to my portfolio, which I'm also really happy with.
