7 days

The Brief is very open for this final assignment - really it's anything we want it to be, which is causing all sorts of problems for me!!

I started off in my learning log, making all sorts of notes and jotting down ideas - having a bit of a brainstorm.

My first idea was to create an illustration for 7 days of 7 different people who somehow all meet each other, but it turned into a bit of a 'movie' script instead of an illustration!  I also considered doing a 'Bayeux Tapestry' idea of 7 days in my life.. but couldn't quite get going on that one when I went to the sketchbook.  Then I thought it might be more interesting to push my own interest in portraits and how to create a specific atmosphere with colour, medium and content... and try to push myself to do an autobiographical 7 days in which I chose 7 very different moods across a week and tried to portray them...

'The Brief' - a magazine is publishing a series about how 7 different women attempt to create a 'work-life balance' - it's called '7 Days for 7 Women' and you have been comissioned to create a series of personal autobiographical illustrations about a typical week in your life.

First a recorded the ups and downs of a typical week, which I won't bore you with here and then I had another go in the sketchbook with little success.

My first idea was to do self portraits of every mood and create a 'wallpaper' background with small icons that summed up that day. The idea was that this would provide a continuity between the illustrations. However, the thumbnails I did for this were all a bit 'samey' so I decided to allow myself more flexibility of style. I had thought that I wanted just facial expressions, but I now decided to go for full body in some, cropped face in others etc.

This gave me something to work on, the icons are the unifying element, hopefully. However but I feel that overall the feeling was too negative, and as I work each one up I'm beginning to try to put a bit more humour into the drawings, as I am generally able to laugh at  myself a bit more than these drawings suggest!!!

I also did a page of 'icons' to get me going... 

I have approached mood boards in a new way this time. After hearing about online moodboards and decided to try one out. 

http://mydeco.com/rooms/moodboard/

I have created a moodboard for each of the days... and also collected some wallpapers etc that appealed to me. I'm not sure that this would work for every project but for this one, which I want to have a 'home decoration' theme, it is just what I need.