Uni Diaries #1

(Enjoy this completely unrelated picture of me reflecting over the Mekong River in Phnom Penh..)

Hello. This strand of my blog has come into existence to document my journey through life as an illustrator, and currently as an illustration student in her final year.

During my final year I will be working on my portfolio, and writing a lengthy degree essay. The most important aspect of this year, in my mind, is not only to improve my practice and be able to show a variety of my outcomes. It is to explore the question (and hopefully answer it!) of who I will be as an illustrator. In order to do this I need to really examine and reflect on what it important to me as a person, and what I want to bring into my practice as an illustrator.

One issue that I am currently interested in, and which will affect the work I create in this final year of the course, is the representations of different groups in society and the world. In Level 5 I wrote an essay about gender stereotyping in children’s picture books, and in my research I was shocked to discover just how under-represented females have been and in a large part still are, in illustration of children’s stories.

Another issue that has been on my mind a lot recently is the representation of different cultures and countries. There does seem to be better representation of different peoples these days than when I was a child, however I’m sure there is still a long way to go in this. This is something I may choose to explore further and write about for my degree essay. I feel that there is a lot I may learn here that I have been ignorant to.

One particular area of this that I may delve into deeper, is the representation of migrants in current times. I have seen a couple of artists/authors tackling this subject recently, and hope I will find more in my research.

Fig. 1 Rigano, G. (source: theguardian.com, 2017)

Giovanni Rigano illustrated ‘Illegal’, a graphic novel written by Eoin Colfer and Andrew Donkin. The book tells the story of 12 year old Ebo, a refugee making his way from Africa to Europe. I have ordered myself a copy of this book as I want to examine it and see how such a harrowing story has been told in a visual style aimed at children.

SBS Radio also presented a case of refugee struggle, with their storytelling site The Boat. Based on a story by Nam Le, the site tells the story of a young girl called Mai leaving Vietnam on a boat to find safety. Again the story is dark and harrowing. The interactive elements of the scroll-through story, while typically used for sites who wish to engage the user in the fun way, really heighten the impact of the story and left me as a reader feeling like I had better understood the ordeal the main character had gone through. I highly recommend a scroll through this story, and make sure the sound is on!

Fig. 2 Huynh, M. (source: sbs.com.au, 2015)

I will definitely be keeping the topic of representation, particularly of migrants, in my mind as I begin to explore potential topics for my degree essay. I would like my illustration work to tell under-told stories, of people who are generally under-represented. So this research will also inform my own practice.

References

Rigano, G. (2017) Illegal [Online] Available at https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/oct/17/illegal-eoin-colfer-andrew-donkin-review-moving-child-migrants (Accessed 3 March 2018)

Huynh, M. (2015) The Boat [Online] Available at http://www.sbs.com.au/theboat/ (Accessed 3 March 2018)