Development of Creative Thought and Structure in Illustration and Graphic Art

Overcoming Mindsets

When people used to talk about Illustration, I thought they meant drawing. Hand drawn images to accompany text to be precise. I used to think illustration was the creation of detailed images, mostly to go with a story, that Graphics was all done on the computer and mainly about making posters, and that Fine Art was all about installations. As I got more informed, I knew that what I thought wasn’t actually completely true, but it’s hard to change your mind about something once it’s already made up. I now know differently, but only because the boundaries between different artistic practices are changing, blurring. My idea of illustration now is just image making. Which is such a broad term, it can include anything. It took me a while to get over my mindset, and now I’m in a position where I can try and get people to overcome theirs about what they think illustration, or maybe art in general, is, by challenging preconceptions and conventions and questioning the rules. As I said earlier though, boundaries are changing, and I think this is enabling people to be more receptive to new ideas. With regards with work for clients I think that although on one hand people may want you to repeat yourself because they’ve seen work you’ve done for someone else and want the same, I also think with the ever expending crossovers and blurring between separate artistic practices, clients want something that will make them stand out, and so it’s up to you as the artist to create something new.

Managing a creative environment

It is important to surround yourself with things that inspire you when you’re working. If you get stuck then you can just look up find creative inspiration. It’s also comforting to be surrounded by the things you like. It all helps to keep the area as free of stress as possible. Someone else can’t create it for you though, it has to be personal as it’s YOUR environment. It undoubtedly becomes a reflection of what you are like, not just as an artist, but as a person. Mine for example contains numerous English editions of a Japanese magazine as well as some originals, piles of art books, soft toys, gig tickets, graphics novels and manga, films, Momiji dolls, and photos of my friends. I like being surrounded by things I find interesting and that make me happy, and that way it makes me happier about my work. In order to keep up that mentality though you have to keep the environment tidy, which isn’t my strongest point. Sometimes when I need to find things it’s like looking for a needle in a haystack. That said, when I do eventually tidy and see my clean desk it just makes me want to work on it.