Hopes, Fears and Opportunities Mk. II

     In the five months it's been since the first post on the topic, very little has changed in terms of the nature of my hopes and fears: I still hope to succeed in accomplishing what I want and fear the opposite.
     Opportunities however are cut from a different cloth; they are the pathway between the two and just like any pathway, we decide the course that we take.

     As I mentioned in the last of these posts, the briefs I have had recently have been self-directed. These opportunities, together with the revelation that I am not one for the world of freelance illustration, have meant that I could steer my work in the direction I do want to take: the path toward becoming a tattooer.

     My work has been influenced by the world of tattoo for a long time (a quick scroll through these pages gives testament to that) however, for an equally long time I have been trying to ram my tattoo shaped work into an illustration shaped hole.

     The two are equally concerned with imagery and it's production of course, but the avenues and audiences relevant to each are very different, and it happens that I am far more interested in the bespoke, one-off production of images that comes with proper hand-made tattooing than the mass, multimedia reproduction that often comes with freelance illustration.
     With this in mind, it's fairly obvious what I hope to do after I graduate. I'm not yet entirely sure of the steps available to me to take, but steps will be taken nonetheless.

Hopes, Fears and Opportunities.

     During my first two years at uni I got a real mix of briefs that I either could not relate to at all, or eventually found myself being surprisingly interested in. So this year I'm planning to make sure I find an angle to approach each brief, in a way that will definitely interest me and fit with the way I work. In other words; pick briefs that are challenging in terms of the ideas and subject matter involved, rather than because I have to attempt to produce work in a way that is uncharacteristic of my personal work: I enjoy making work in the way I want to make work, and there's no sense in disregarding that.

     Taking this into account, my fears are fairly obvious: If the above issues were not addressed (and I became stuck in the monotony of trying to churn out work that I don't take pride in producing in order to jump through a divergent succession of hoops that are established by a client on a high horse) I feel it is unsettlingly likely that I will lose interest in what I've enjoyed my whole life, turn my back on the dream of making images for a living and become the real world equivalent of Seymour Skinner; moving back home with mother and living there until I'm in my late 40's.

     As luck would have it however, this year I have several opportunities to steer myself in the direction of the path I do wish to take: I have more than one self-directed brief I can take advantage of to make work I'm personally interested in, as well as a couple of portfolio visits on which I can meet and receive advice from enwisened and like-minded individuals.

"One day I'll be a beautiful butterfly!" - Heimlich, A Bug's Life.