Person of Note - Evaluation

Research

I feel the research aspect of my project is strong as I have taken time and enjoyment in reading about Ella's life, her successes, troubles and what she stood for. I formed the opinion that Ella Fitzgerald was a strong women who picked herself up from an extreme low in her early life and managed to become a timeless star of the music industry and the general aim of my work for this brief was to celebrate that. I also did some visual research when I produced mark-making samples while listening to her music, this meant that I could directly involve this research in my final visual outcomes. This was quite difficult for me to get into because its been a while since I've been so free and expressive with mark-making, I felt a bit silly at first and wasn't sure if I was actually achieving anything but soon got into it. My research into Ella Fitzgerald has all worked towards forming the basis of the concepts for my poster, postcards and stamps so I feel that my final outcomes are well informed by what I have found out. 

Intentions

More specifically that just celebrating Ella Fitzgerald as a person, I has individual aims for each set of images. 

Poster - I wanted this to show her strength as an artist and woman and her influence on others. 
I feel the poster is partly successful because Ella is seen as a strong, powerful figure at the top and it looks like she is ruling over the people below as a figure to look up to. I am really pleased with the drama in the top half of the image but I think I could have worked more on injecting more life into the people at the bottom, especially the women. 

Postcards - My intentions for these were to highlight the important people in her life. 
The people on the postcards all had links to anti-racism (explained earlier on my blog) and although I initially wasn't planning on this to be clear in the images, I feel I could have made this more obvious and given the postcards a stronger concept to link them all. I think my postcards are successful in meeting my initial aims of highlighting key people but looking back I think I could have pushed this further and conveyed Ella's relationship with them more clearly. 

Stamps - I wanted my stamps to show how long her musical career spanned. 
The stamps are my personal favourite images from this project. I think they are really effective in working together as a set of images by themselves and as a greater set and are clear in showing time moving on through changing fashions and technology developments. I really like the simple compositions which are needed for them to work on such a small scale but I think the patterns give that extra bit of smaller detail to complete the image.

Problem Solving

One of my main problems was that I struggled for an idea for my poster, I seemed to be getting on with my stamps and poster but neglecting getting a solid concept prepared for my poster. I decided to tackle this head on numerous times but still to no avail until something just clicked and I got an idea and ran with it. I am really pleased with the final outcome of my poster and I am glad I kept having a go at thinking up ideas but its a bit frustrating when you're struggling for an idea for so long and then it just comes to you out of nowhere. 

I battled a lot with my roughs, especially for my postcards and poster. With my postcards, I kept thinking I'd reached a point where I was ready to take it digital but then I often found myself designing on screen so I forced myself to go back to my sketchbook and make it exactly clear what I wanted because it would save me time and complications in the long run. 

Finding an appropriate pattern for each of my images was more challenging than I thought. I built up a bank of mark-making and patterns to work with but I found myself being very critical of their meaning in the image and whether they were confusing the other components. I am glad I took so much time over this because it means that the outcomes have more research and meaning embedded in them. 

Not having Photoshop on my own laptop proved to be a hindrance during this project as it meant I couldn't experiment with things on Photoshop over the easter break. I think it will really help me to get Photoshop on my laptop because I can see my skills developing and I want this to continue, especially over the summer break. 

Media

Throughout this project I have used gouache, watercolours, fineliners, felt-tips, pencils, coloured pencils, ink and water-soluble crayons. Most of this was during the exploratory research stage at the beginning of this project and I think that I should have experimented more with potential media choices for my final pieces. I knew that I wanted to use something fluid because I was inspired by the Katharine Asher portrait I briefly looked at at the very beginning of this project. I love working with ink and thought it was appropriate in this project because working in greyscale linked to Ella Fitzgerald being 'timeless' and if used right, I thought it would look classy and smooth just like the style of jazz music. I wanted my drawings to be portraits and recognisable as the person they are meant to be, but not photorealistic and I think I have achieved that, in hindsight though I could have pushed myself out of my comfort zone more with my media. 

Organisation

I try to be critical of my work on my blog and evaluate my progress as I go but I think I am guilty of getting so into something that I work really hard on it but forget what I've actually done and therefore struggle to explain it. This is especially apparent when it gets closer to the deadline and I am starting to feel the pressure. 

I felt quite under pressure towards the end of this project because my digital print slot was booked for four days before the actual deadline. I had to plan my time effectively in the form of weekly timetables plus daily to do lists to ensure that it was all completed but I should have payed more attention to when I would have access to Photoshop. By the time college closed on the Saturday before my Monday print slot, I hadn't finished my Photoshop work so I came into the studio at 7.45am on the day of my print slot to ensure everything would be done in time.

I write myself lists every day of what I need to complete before I go to bed. This project has been a turning point for me as I have learnt that I need to set myself realistic targets for each day because I was starting to feel disheartened when I didn't finish everything on my list for that day, when deep down I knew that I had set myself too much to do. Having realistic targets for each day has made understand when a solid day's work has been productive or not and it has also helped me stay less stressed because I'm not constantly feeling like i'm behind.