Final Concepts and Progress Tutorial

This morning I wanted to clarify all of the separate concepts for all of my prints, the animation and the overall body of work I am producing. I looked through all of the work I have done in my sketchbook so far and pulled out any things that can relate to these final things so I have a list of words and imagery to work with in my final compositions. I need to do final roughs now for the composition and then get these drawn out large scale and identify any problems with them.

Feedback from Progress Tutorial

• It is good that I have clarified the concepts for each of my prints and my animation. 
• Monoprint tests look messy, linocuts are cleaner and more sellable. I am glad someone has actually told me this, I wasn't sure that adding the mono print was the right way to go with this because the tests weren't very successful but whenever I asked for an opinion on them, I felt that nobody was being really honest with me. I just needed to be told that my work would be better without them and now I can feel like I can leave that behind and move on with my project just as a linocut. 
• Don't make too much work for myself! 
• Simplify the dip pen drawings, avoid cross hatching because this will be so much cutting in lino. Think about following the contours of the shape and using weight of line to show form. 
• Use more stronger shapes, lots of like work will just blend into each other. 
• How am I going to add my second colour? Consider adding a second colour digitally and making it look like another layer of lino print. Think about using Photoshop to add textures - this is a useful skill to have when I leave university and don't have such easy access to print studios. 
• Simplify the sting! Consider how much time I actually have. 
• Does the animation have to contain all the chess pieces or can it just focus on one like the prints? I wanted the animation to tie all of my prints together by including all of them but I understand that this might be a lot of work, especially if I am choosing to linocut the individual elements for my sting. 

I think the main thing I took from this progress tutorial is to not make too much work for myself, which is something I always manage to do. I just needed someone to be honest about my work and just say that the mono print wasn't working because as long as I kept hearing 'keep experimenting' or 'it might work if you do this' I was making more work for myself when deep down I could tell that it wasn't working for me. I guess this is a confidence issue and I need to have more faith in my own gut instinct. 

The digital process suggested by Ben of adding my second colour in with Photoshop is something I would like to experiment with. I would really like my final prints to be analogue rather than digitally printed but maybe this is a compromise I will have to make if I am going to be realistic about my workload. From the talk we had at Colours May Vary, I understand that it is the overall quality of the print that gives it its value, not just the process.