The Final Workshop of the Challenge!

Today the final workshop took place. 

Ami arrived and we set up the table and equipment ready for the arrival of the first student which was Melissa.

Here's how it went with Melissa

First I ran her through all the tools that she would need to use on Photoshop. Then I showed her from my notebook my own *how to remember photoshop drawings*. I requested that she copied them down too so it would help her. Then she started to colour her character using photoshop with me overseeing. She did need help occasionally from me which I gave but other than that she was really good. Melissa grasped the use of the tools quickly.

Next up was Callum

Callum arrived about half an hour later than Melissa, as planned. This worked really well and the timing was just about right. I repeated the steps above with Callum. Callum didn't need that much tuition with using the  basic photoshop tools as he had previous experience. However, there were still things he didn't know how to do so I was able to demonstrate and guide him. Callum did really well.

Amber

The last student should have been Amber, my sister, but instead of carrying out this final step on the same day with Amber, I decided to make other use of my time with having Ami (my mentor) here to plan the final stages of the challenge.  Amber will do this last part under my leadership on another day.

One to One Session Amber

At just 8 years old, Amber is the youngest of my students. She also happens to be my sister! Perhaps this is an extra challenge for me when teaching one of my siblings.

Amber, like me is a very keen artist. Drawing characters is not new for her at all. She spends much of her time drawing various girls and Monster High Characters. This time around she created an Ice Queen who wears Polar Bear Slippers and likes ice-cream and hot chocolate. 

We undertook this workshop from the sofa! 

Positives

Followed my instructions well. Seemed very focused on her tasks. Although Amber is the youngest of my students, her character is definitely the most elaborately drawn and was probably the hardest to outline. However, she did very well to complete it.

Negatives

Didn't seem to enjoy it. Needed some help completing some of the tasks. Was rather slow and took a few attempts to fully complete the tasks.

Here's what Amber had to say:

"I liked to outline my drawing because I liked using the pen. I didn't like rubbing out the pencil because it takes ages!"

One to One with Melissa

Had my One to One workshop with my first student, Melissa. This session was about outlining her character in pen and then being set homework to colour scheme her character.

Melissa has created a character with the same name as herself. She is basically an ice girl with special ice and water powers.

Positives

She seemed to really enjoy it. She paid attention and followed my instruction. We finished in a good time. I could focus and so could she so everything was nice and simple instead of confusingly rushing back and forth between others.

Negatives

There weren't really any. Everything was nice and simple and rather fun.

Here's what Melissa had to say:

"I liked doing the pen and the rubbing out. My character looks a lot better now. Summer did very good at showing me how to rub out the pencil lines. It was a very useful lesson"

New Plan for Workshops

On reflection, I decided it would be better to continue on with individual workshops. The big workshop went well but didn't work as efficiently and effectively as it could have done so am moving to Plan B.

I plan to hold one to one sessions with each of the students. Hopefully, students will be less distracted and I will be able to give focus to their individual needs.

In these sessions we will be learning to outline the drawings that they created in the first workshop and then I will set them some homework in readiness for the last session which will be a group session again.

1:1 Workshop Plan

• Welcome them to the workshop and explain what we will be doing.

• Demonstrate what they are going to do

• Get them to do it themselves and give them help if needed

• Assign them homework

• Questions and Answers

• Ask them to write some more  feedback

Arts Leadership Workshop 1

OK so I ran my first workshop ever today as part of my Arts Award. I survived!

Table of Equipment and Resources

Me before they arrived

Starting out, introduction to the workshop

Interested student!

Me explaining and showing them my work

Helping and teaching

 

Student Drawing

Mid workshop, more teaching and biscuits!

Positives

Everyone seemed to enjoy it. They all said they really enjoyed the drawing part of the workshop. The kids seemed keen to learn and did as I instructed them to. They all completed the tasks nicely so we could move on to the next task. With just 3 kids to teach it wasn't too noisy and they sat there patiently which was very good. They all gave good and bad feedback to the workshop and they made some great characters following my instruction. They were very good throughout the workshop in general.

Writing Feedback for me

Negatives

The workshop didn't go exactly according to plan at all really. First we all sat down and I immediately didn't have a clue what to say and I just rather awkwardly said hello. I had to keep looking over at Ami for help and looking at the book for guidance. I didn't really get into the flow of speaking either, people kept talking over me or asking me things while I was trying to tell them something.

Another big problem was, there was only me and Ami so I had to go back and forth between 2 kids while she dealt with one which was hard enough.

This was my first workshop so a big learning curve for me. Flexibility and adaptability are going to be necessary to move forward with the workshops and to counter the negatives I have decided to carry out single tutoring sessions for the next phase.

Overall Review & Reflection of Silver Arts Award Challenge Unit 1

Actually, I don't like this writing part of the award. I find it extremely frustrating. Sometimes it can be fun but I feel like it cramps my creativity. Creating the comic was the fun part.

Challenge Review and Reflection

The challenge to create my own comic overall was amazing and I enjoyed it even during those times when I was tired or something felt repetitive. I feel like I have achieved something and my hard work will gain me something I really want in life.

There were many hard challenges and problems while making the comic but there were some super easy things that I could just do without thinking. Sometimes I needed help with drawing the body shapes because it is a naturally challenging thing to do and also times where I required help with scenery colour schemes and characters. Easier parts were thinking of names and creating the storyline; I love to use my imagination to create things so found this came easily as well as being lots of fun. However, there were way bigger difficulties like when I pressed the wrong button and it would enter something wrong or delete something out! Luckily Ami was there to help and I got there in the end and can now solve most things out on my own.  

All of it, of course, was great fun and I had many good times going round to Ami’s just sitting on her sofa listening to some music while making the comic. Attending Ami’s sessions was great because it wasn't always serious, in fact it hardly was! It was a fun casual thing where we could talk and have a little chat and have a laugh at funny things we said or did on accident. I realise that I work better in a creative, relaxed and informal setting.

Ami helped teach me about Photoshop by showing me all the different tools which I wrote down in my book with little doodles beside them so I could always look back so it could help me remember what they were and then from there I just kept practising.

Overall, I have learned many skills during my time working towards the silver arts award challenge. I can now apply these skills to many things as well as continue to create more Manga comics and drawings. My Photoshop skills are now improved and I can use it more efficiently and can create better drawings and images and could even make a sequal to my comic. I have already been showing my Mum how to use Photoshop for her business. 

I have learned more drawing techniques which I believe have made me a better drawer and has helped me create and understand more about illustration. I have even learnt about Manga, Anime and more of the Japanese culture because the comic was based on Manga which is something I already love and have been trying to improve on. With all these skills on board I can now go away and make my own artworks and stories and maybe get a job in later life like a manga illustrator. With my comic finished and also many other drawings I have created I can put it into a portfolio which could help me get a job in the future in an area which I enjoy.

To compliment my Arts Challenge, I went on several outings; Hyper Japan, a Japanese Festival; Under The Spotlight; most epically, I went to Comic-Con in London! You can read all the reviews of these events by clicking on the highlighted text. 

In addition to my trips out, I have even learnt some Japanese words but mostly song lyrics as I love to sing. First I listen to the first sentence of the song while reading the Japanese pronunciation lyrics and have a try at saying one word at a time. Then I try and sing it all myself with and then without the music and seeing if it matches and then I keep at it until I match the pronunciation and lyrics. There are probably better methods to learning lyrics of Japanese songs but I prefer to imitate as it also helps me with my acting if I have to be a certain character.

To conclude, I am very proud and happy that I have made my own comic and am so happy that it's finally all made after many sessions of hard work, I hope that with it I will receive a Silver Arts Award after all my effort

Working with Ami

My time working with Ami has been really fun and enjoyable mostly because it was just so casual and relaxed. If we got something wrong we could just laugh about it and fix it and if we pronounced something wrong we would just make a joke about it. We also got to have some music on and I got to choose sometimes. Often I would come in and Ami would be finishing her lunch as she is only half done with it.

It's not all fun and games though because it took a lot of work making the comic. We had sessions almost every week for about 1 and a half hours. There were sessions that had longer gaps in between and this was hard as I had to get my mind back on to the project. 

I had to learn to remember the Photoshop tools and how to use them. Eventually I got the hang of it and now can do most things easily by myself. Though Ami was doing the teaching I taught her some stuff about anime and manga too.

I asked her these questions as part of my research into her career.

Q1: When did you first start your Career?

In my final year of Uni we did a project called 1st destination which was all about designing and making up business cards and thinking about what kind of thing we wanted to do when we graduated. It was probably then that I first thought about starting my own business. In 2007, a year after graduating I officially registred MiaMai and started trading under that name.

Q2: What inspired you to make and design clothes and art?

I've always been arty. Originally I thought I wanted to do photograhy but naturally moved into Art and fashion. I liked that I could move between the two transferring my illustrations onto clothes and illustrating my designes. I was inspired to create my own designs and loved the idea of creating something that someone fell in love with or that just made them smile and feel good about themselves

Q3: Do you enjoy your work?

Yes I love what I do. I love that being the boss of my own company I can do exactly what I want to do. I understand that I am very fortunate to be able to make a living doing something that I love!

Q4: Were you encouraged to pursue what you love/loved?

Yes my family and friends were always very supportive of me following my creative dreams. I also received encouragement from Uni both from my tutors but also the enterprise unit. I entered a competition in my final year which was all about supporting young entrepreneurs. I actually won the design category so received some business mentoring too which really helped in the beginning.

Q5: What's your favourite part about your job?

I like making and creating so just the process of being creative is probably my favourite thing. I also like being able to see things through from initial design to the final photo shoot.

Q6: How many working hours do you work?

I work part time at a craft organisation called Making Space so I fit Mia Mai into the other days of the week. I don't have set hours. I just work when I want to/can do.

Q7: Who is your inspiration?

Ah good question. Art wise my favourite artist is Audrey Kawasaki, a Japanese artist who's work is just beautiful. I also really like the illustrations of Angelique Houtcamp - she's a Dutch tattoo artist who does very traditional but awesome artwork. Fashion wise I have always admired the late Alexander McQueen. I went to see the show Savage Beauty last year and it was a huge inspiration!

Q8: What's your favourite thing to make/draw?

At the moment I'm really enjoying making lingerie. I went on a professional master class last year and got utterly inspired. I still have more to learn but that's what I'm concentrating on at the moment.

Q9: What item sells the best?

Probably my prints because they are very reasonably cheap. People love paying £10 to have something they love on their wall and I'm able to produce them very cheaply so I still make a good profit.

Q10: Is there anything else career wise you’d like to achieve?

I'd love to get my lingerie to a stage where I could sell it in boutiques etc. I also really like the idea of trying my hand at tattooing (especially as its a huge inspiration of mine). I have bought a machine but not yet tried something out!

My Own Career Aspirations

Personally, I’d like to be an Anime and Manga illustrator. Creating and designing characters is something I already love doing and I do a lot of this in my spare time. Getting to the point where I will be able to do this as a job takes a lot of work so hopefully at the end of this all I can do the thing I love for a living. To start I have practiced drawing my own characters and am slowly growing better at it.

I have started trying to draw characters from animes and such. I started to learn how to colour in and edit my drawings digitally with Ami so now I do that too. I even made a dress with Ami which turned out amazingly and I am very proud of it.

I have been doing this silver arts award and I have already got my bronze arts award. I have also been building up a portfolio of my drawings and artwork so I one day can show it to maybe an arts college or some kind of arty job that I would like to do.

Hopefully getting this silver arts award on top of my bronze will go some way to helping my career path. 

Here are some of my drawings.

Career Pathways

As part of the challenge I have to think about possible career pathways. I've chosen Illustration as the overall job as that is the part I am most interested in. 

Being an Illustrator is a job and set of skills that could be applied to a large variety of industries. Here are a few of examples of the different industries and routes I think one could take with it.


You could be a fashion illustrator, drawing and creating outfits for models.
    

• You can Illustrate your own ideas and see if any fashion brands likes them.   
• You can Illustrate other people's ideas for them
• You could Illustrate jewelry
• You can Illustrate patterns out for materials
• You can Illustrate clothe magazine covers

 

You could be a comic/manga/book illustrator, using your imagination to draw pictures.

• You can Illustrate characters
• You can Illustrate  the scenes and background
• You can Illustrate  the props
• You can Illustrate the covers
• You can even Illustrate your own characters/backgrounds/props and covers and sell them to people

You can be an advertisement illustrator, creating colourful, eye catching ads.

• You can Illustrate the background
• You can Illustrate the object of which is being advertised
• You can Illustrate the font for the text
• You can Illustrate the animation
• You can Illustrate posters

You can be a business illustrator,  

• You can Illustrate the logo’s
• You can Illustrate the business website designs
• You can Illustrate the a short cartoon on the business and what they do
• You can Illustrate new business ideas

Bringing it all together

Back at Ami's today to start pulling the comic together to send to the printer. 

It's taken a really long time to get to this point with some big gaps in between sessions but after a lot of effort I'm very very close to finishing the comic. On reflection, I think if I were to do this again I would ensure that there were no big gaps in between sessions.

The very big things are done, so just lots of tweaking and bits to add such as some words today. We made some last minute changes and moved things around a bit. We went through page by page in a systematic order to ensure that I had everything covered.

I've felt very tired with this now and I just really wanted to get it finished. I felt really relieved when we had got everything covered and happy. It's now ready to go to a Printer. 

I also have some homework relating to the Silver Arts Award Challenge. Unfortunately, the comic isn't the only part of the challenge. I now have to think about possible routes forward should I want to pursue a career in illustration.

Colour Scenes

Another chunk of time has passed in between sessions. This time because we've been away, but it's good that I can pick up this Arts Award Challenge as and when.

Today we were scanning in the scenes that I have illustrated using Ami's printer and we loaded them up one by one onto Photoshop. We used Photoshop to colour them in which was fun because I got to decide the colour of things.

After every scene was finished, we gave them page numbers and named them. Then we ticked them off on the rough scene layout in the scrapbook so we knew where we had got to.

The more I did, the better I got. Things are progressing well.

I got to draw Cats!

A month has gone by since my last session with Ami mainly because I have been busy rehearsing and had my show at Saddler's Wells and also I've been unwell. I have been watching Anime's at home and practising my drawings as I like to spend my time doing this anyway.

It was pretty hard getting back into the flow of things today but we managed to finish the scene work.

I got to draw Cats! One of my favourite things in the whole world. Loads of little Kawaii cats. Definitely my favourite part of the lesson. I also drew side view characters which was quite hard so Ami helped me with getting the face shape right. I got to draw an evil teacher!

Whilst I was busily illustrating out various objects and scenes, Ami was being my assistant and colouring in the scenes on Photoshop. It's a lot of work for one person. I liked having an assistant!

Illustration of Scenes

Really great session at Ami's house. I was doing some of the teaching as Ami said she learned lots about Anime and Manga from me! Just for the record, Anime is film and animated series whereas Manga is the drawing in comics and graphic novels. She said to my mum when she came to collect me that I could easily create a novel in the future based around my characters but I'll just go with getting this comic completed first.

Anyway, back to what I did today. I started drawing the scenes out properly referring back to my sketched notes in my scrapbook. One of the scenes contains two background characters so I didn't want to take up too much time making them look perfect and giving them details so they came out rather derpy. 

I also drew three hands and part of an arm and four doors. 

My favourite part of drawing was the doors because they belonged to the girls so I got to decorate them according to their personalities.

It was hard to get the shape right so I used a ruler for some things but it was really fun. The hands were super difficult. I had to get some help from Ami and I had to mimick the hand movements myself or get Ami to do it so I could try and copy off of it.

At this stage, although the comic is hard work, I do think it's going well. I'm continuously learning new skills and practising existing skills. 

Script Writing

Today's session was all about trying to come up with a script.

I tried to make the scripting for the characters so it would match their personalities. I also tried to make it a bit funny without it being too complicated.

On reflection, the fact that I go to Drama school and already know quite a bit about scripts it made it easier to come up with the scripting for the comic. This was just another way to apply what I already know about scrips. Having a basic storyline also helped.

Under The Spotlight

It's been a few weeks since I worked on my Silver Arts Award mainly because my twin brother and I turned 13 and we had a Center Parcs holiday plus rehearsals for my upcoming performance at Sadlers Wells have been keeping me pre-occupied.

Anyway, Ami and I resumed our sessions but for something different but also as part of the challenge, we went to an Arts Exhibition called Under The Spotlight.

It was local to where we live and basically a collection of work from 40 artists who live in Portsmouth.

I enjoyed seeing all the different art works. Some of them really inspired me. There was one of a Pizza that really stood out.

Anyway, after the exhibition we returned to Ami's house and I wrote up some notes of the event in my scrapbook.

My scrapbook is basically my evidence of all the parts of my Silver Arts Award. It's not like this blog. The spelling has no spell check! I'm not great at spelling but that's because I'm probably dyslexic. I haven't been diagnosed but a screening at 7 years old suggested that I was. It's not only my spelling that is affected but I am easily distracted particularly if it's noisy. So working with Ami is easier than being in a classroom and Ami is able to help me with spelling and to get me back on track when my mind wanders.

The scrapbook is full of pictures taken at the exhibition. I also recorded an audio of me reviewing the art works and giving my opinion.

Under The Spotlight Pages in my scrapbook

Comic Front Cover

Time to piece all the bits and bobs together to make the Comic front cover.

First of all I took the Kawaii Doodles then I put the characters over the top and placed them around figuring out which way would look best.

Then I took the Font and decided where I wanted that to go.

After some edits and tweaks the front cover was made. Sounds simple but it wasn't. There was a lot of fiddling around to get it right.

Can't give you a picture, its still top secret.

I can tell you it was quite difficult trying to get it all together but I'm happy with the end result and think the time spent on it was worth it.

Comic Background Creation

A week later and another session with Ami. We're on a roll. For those of you who don't know, I am home educated and if it weren't for home education, I probably wouldn't be following this opportunity at all.

Middle of the day, working with a local Artist. I get to wear what I want and we listen to music whilst we're working - that wouldn't happen in school!!! For me, feeling relaxed and not under pressure is a better way of working.

Today was all about starting background creation. I decided that I would like to have a Japanese Kawaii doodle type background and for it to reflect each of the characters.

Each character has their own Kawaii doodle background and then the main comic background I wanted to merge all of the individual character backgrounds. Are you with me?

Basically, I spent my time doodling.

Here I am Doodling! 

Back on to photoshop to scan my doodles in, colour them and create a repeating background pattern.

I really enjoyed doodling and colouring in, that was an easy and relaxing part of the session. I like doodling in general so yeah that was fun. New skills came from using photoshop as I learned to blend and repeat for the pattern.

Everything went to plan. Really happy with my doodles and happy that I learned some new skills.