From the Start to Now: Vanja Vukelic

From the Start to Now: Studying Vanja Vukelic

I think from the very beginning when I first chose Vanja Vukelic to be my artist that I would study, I had a creative epiphany. I felt like this was the kind of artist I had been looking for, and I fell in love with her work. I love illustrations and I love the themes within her work and the types of ways she conveys them. However, my first board did not show how excited I was to work on this artist and create my own work with inspiration from her. We then started working in our sketchbooks and although a lot of it is me experimenting with the kind of themes she explores and experimenting with the designs in her pieces, I think my drawing has improved massively. I had never been fond of drawing in pencil or fineliner due to the fact that I had nothing to motivate me to practice with both, but this was the perfect time to study something I loved and also improve my drawing skills. 

These images above are from when I cut out the main body of the image and I held up the piece of paper against different art that was created by other students; the canvas' and work were placed on the walls in the studio. I thought the colours looked really nice in the gap where the female body is meant to be, promoting some colour into the page and is definitely something I could look at creating in the future. This was one of the ways I have experimented with Vukelic's work, other than looking into the themes and reoccurring patterns in her work. I have also created some of my own illustrations, inspired by Vukelic. 

(insert picture of own illustrations)

Furthermore, I feel like I can definitely continue with working on Vukelic's work and improving my own skills at the same time, especially with drawing and thinking outside the box as sometimes I am stuck in the GCSE mindset of copying. I would really like to create something like in the images above and I can see myself creating huge illustrations, even though I don't like working on big scales, but I will try and get better at that. I have done larger illustrations on my second and most recent artist presentation board, which is pictured below. 

Although I love the ideas and creativity I had while I was making this presentation board, I'm still unhappy with how it looks and the layout. The good things I have done with this presentation board is that I have worked and have drawn images on a larger scale than I am used to. In this presentation board, I have included photocopies from my sketchbook, which shows 2 original drawings I have created inspired by Vukelic, and how I have looked into the reoccurring drawings and themes that she looks at and draws. I then drew flowers with pencil and pro-marker to make the presentation board look more visual and colourful, of which the flowers also link well into Vukelic's work. I included information about the trips I went on as well, of which I showed pictures from the handbook I picked up and Lush and also pictures from the pet shop I visited (I added the pictures in the space underneath the first flower after I took this picture). Overall, I think it looks better and more visually expressive than my last presentation board on Vukelic, but I feel like I ran out of room very quickly due to the large drawing and title. I found and thought of things I could have added after I had almost finished the board and so I wasn't sure of how to fit them on. 

In addition, these two images are from when I cut up Vukelic's work and created my own collage out of her drawings. I really like what I created and could look at drawing my own illustrations from what I make in the collage.