The day the brief was assigned.

Date: 25th.September.2011
Time: 2:00 am.

Knowing that I have passed my 1st year in the Art and Design Academy of John Moores University is moderately traumatizing me. Personally, I don’t even recall how I actually managed to create artworks for every brief that in the end got me a PASS. The grades were better off in the first semester of my 1st year than that of second semester, and the reasons behind are well-aware. To be honest, procastination did take over most of my time when I should have spent it productively in looking for, at the minimum, voluntary jobs and learning new skills based on digital painting and animating. 

Being a second year student means more responsibility towards my time management, the potential of prioritizing my duties and works. This semester we have 4 different modules which are categorized as the followings: ”Digital, Media and Craft”, ”Approaches to Research”, ”Personal Development” and ”Illustration 1”. Each of the modules offers very unique and distinctive project briefs with a range of lectures and workshops. From the very 1st date of my attendance, I have come to realized how precious and valuable this upcoming year is going to be. With all the unexpected and slightly complicated brief we have been assigned, Mr. Time has seemingly become more intangible to me and is implicitly denoting its importance by setting me up in a game called ”catch me if you can”.

When the game has set up, I started to reorganized my sketchbooks, documents files I have been hoarding (which I have planned to organized ages ago), I have read all the modules carefully and underlined everything that’s got to be wary of. I research on the recommended books from the module handbook and tried to have a go on them, but since I am not very keen in reading books it’s kinda hard from the start but practise and enthusiasm makes perfect as the saying goes.

Since this year we have been assigned to do live projects, team projects and work replacements, My friend and I have set up my journey on looking for voluntary jobs initially based on artistic festivals such as the upcoming event ”AND Festival” (Abandon Normal Devices), we went straight to FACT and asked if they were still available places for us, and yes they did. On 23rd September, we attended the induction for the AND Festival and were told what our main duties were and filled in forms for available volunteering times as well as making decisions of which exhibition to assist. The main organizer gave a detailed and interesting speech of the history of AND along with what the festival offer to the audiences, there were quite a lot of volunteers and I felt happy that I joined in for the first time with my friends from university. This great opportunity has priviledged me with different aspects for example the chance to interact and get to know more about my friends who study with me in the same course, the experience of having to take care of artworks and helping artists to set up installations, actually being a part of the festival and taking on great responsibility despite the fact that is unpaid job I am still very excited and anxious about it. Hopefully, it would be great experience and looking forward to learn new things.

In addition to that, I have applied for volunteering for British Heart Foundation and Oxfam as an alternative way of helping people in need as well as gaining working experience and have new encounters. I am going to attend a short induction on Wednesday, 29th of September, in British Heart Foundation and hopefully get a response from Oxfam and work on Sundays. 

Another thing that I have come across is the use of sketchbooks. Since I have 4 modules to cope with this semester, and some of them are quite long-term, automatically I thought of having 1 designated sketchbook for each module, but the thought of ‘maybe’ not being able to completely fill it before this semester ends is very heart-breaking as it is not recommendable to use for a different module making us seems unorganized, also I, or I believe most artists do, loathe wasting paper and not being able to diligently finish sketchbooks filling up with good drawings/sketches. With prior experience that I had while studying business foundation year, I have decided to use fill-pads and ring binders as a designated sketchbook for 2 modules (Approaches to Research and Professional Development), what I mean is that every time I work on those two modules I will solely carry my fill-pads and write down my notes/works/research/sketches/ on them and later then reorganized them into their designated ring binders. What’s more, it will be very convenient and easy to amend the pages if they are in the wrong order or if there are informations that should be stick together. Regarding the other 2 modules (Digital, Media and Craft and Illustration 1) I will use a sketchbook. In that case, it will be environmentally-friendly and not-heart-breaking-for-artists.  

I think this is most of my self-reflection for this week and the entire 1st year. Time is precious, we have to learn to appreciate every second we have, and after watching the amazing Making Of Mononoke (can be found on youtube), I have made my biggest commitment.