SELF ASSESSMENT STUDENT EVALUATION (SUBMITTED)
Strengths:
- Critical evaluation of my own work is a strength of mine outlined within my blog consistently throughout the project. I analyse the techniques that are successful and justify the reasoning behind it while acknowledging that my work is not perfect and therefore highlight the areas that need to improve by setting myself goals, and using adaptation to create my next set of work influenced by the successes and failures of the previous set of work. I talk through composition, influences and how my work compares to my points of research, comparing my newer work to older work and highlighting what to bring forward to my next set of experimentations.
- Experimentation is another strength of mine consistently shown throughout the project and evaluated on my blog. Using a variety of different techniques within my specialism such as tactile collages, digital collages, photo manipulation, digitally manipulating tactile collages to create mixed media collages using Adobe Create Cloud applications, incorporating illustrations within my collages, poetry and creative writing, as well as, taking photographs: printing them out, ripping them up and transforming them in innovative ways as opposed to just taking an image and digitally inserting that into a magazine etc. and using those to collage, taking my own collages apart and building them up again. I used all of these techniques to truly be free and create a large range of work within my digital sketchbook that shows thorough experimentation and investigation within my specialism.
- Another strength of mine within this project is that I have sourced a lot of visual research, responded to non-visual research visually to build my work and style around while sticking solid to my own personal style which I have seen develop throughout my creative career. For example, I analysed a few sections from a book called ‘Manifestations of Venus’ by Jennifer Shaw, and took this by noting down the visual symbolism I could include to reference Venus, the goddess of love, within my work as it fits my theme perfectly, therefore not only did I create a create response in the form of several poems, I took pictures of water in an experimental way (contact sheets on sketchbook and blog), incorporated the use of shells within my collages as well as responding to my theme in other abstract ways to add symbolism and surrealism to not make the visuals of my work to become to immediately obvious to the eye, I prefer my work abstract and open to interpretation while incorporating symbolism and layered meanings.
Areas for Improvement:
- An area to improve on could be my time management; this is due to me sometimes feeling lost, uninspired or heavily scrutinising my work, which after analysis, most likely comes from my not organizing my time to the best of my ability. I am glad that I have managed to create a lot of work for this module that I am actually proud of however if I were to have created a Gantt chart or some sort of timeline then I could have potentially avoided feeling uninspired or lost at moments, and could have referred to the timeline to make sure I was on track. I feel very lucky that there was never a moment where I fell completely lost or extremely behind which was due to my motivation and determination however I do feel as if I could have managed my time slightly better. However, after creating a Gantt chart for my FMP, I feel as if I am on the right track to being able to organise and prioritise my tasks to the best of my ability to achieve create work successfully.
- Secondly, I fell as if I could improve on being able to thoroughly utilize my research in more creative ways that apply to my work, I was able to source a large variety of research in the form of looking at studies, forming a few of my own questionnaires, reading books, academic texts and journals, watching films, taking my own imagery, drawing from observation as well as online galleries and articles however I felt like I could have taken those points of research and directly implement them in my creative work further. I just found it difficult to be able to utilize a reading, for example, which is a piece of written work, and transform that into am influenced piece of experimentation, however I did try a lot but could have done it further to improve.
- Another area for improvement could have been to refine my technical skills on Adobe Creative Cloud, as I feel like I experimented to the best of my ability within tactile collaging but could have furthered my illustration skills, for example, on Adobe Illustrator or used some features of Adobe Photoshop that I had not explored before, however I was limited with resources and was only able to acquire Adobe Create Cloud within my personal laptop a few weeks into the project but now that I have them easily accessible, for my FMP/ before my FMP starts, I will be watching tutorials online and potentially exploring different applications to Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator and Adobe InDesign, which are the three I have currently used most.
