Gillian Blease is a Artist/illustrator from Manchester who does allot of editorial and work for newspapers most notably the Guardian and also illustrations for books, she began working towards a career as an artist studying fine art in Newcastle and working at the Whitworth gallery, after moving too London to work as an artist but after a year came back to Manchester after finding working in London wasn't working as planned.
After returning too Manchester she took a typing course at stockport college and a foundation course at Manchester and this is where her career in illustration began when she realized that as the courses went on found herself using less art based techniques like drawing, which is something i can relate too as i noticed the same after always working for in a fine art based environment in school and college and then moving away from this during a foundation course and after starting on my multimedia course working for the most part on computers and not really doing much traditional art which is something that i try too do more off now.
She says her work is influenced by japan and Japanese culture after taking a trip there, space is something very important in her work and is something that attracts her to pieces as she says that space creates tension in a piece and this is something i find to be true in a composition because placing images in a certain way on a peice effect its balance and overall impact and the feeling it gives off.
Her work is very simple, it has a collage look too it and is built up of simple shapes too create images in a simple form, also composition is very important in her peices and is clearly thought about to have the most impact when placing such simple images on a page, colour is also simple using limited colours but overall it has a great look and shows how well the ideas are thought out for her work too give the message with minimal images.
one thing i founf intersting about her is a method she used to make early peices when not working for a client she would cut newspaper articles and create images to go with the storys, so giving herself practice briefs, which i think is a good idea because it develops a way to work so you wont be overwhelmed when starting too work for clients. and this has clearly worked very well for her as it developed a style that worked well for the jobs she has had for example making images for a cooking column she would use the recipies to create the images too go with the text and these columns would require 150 images a year so her technique worked well with these jobs that required multiple images over short periods.The thing i found too be the most usefull about her lecture was about her approach to work and working with clients as some off the issues raised were things i had not thought about, one of the things she mentioned was getting her dream job for a company she always wanted to work for and took it above other jobs and it tunred out to be a bad project that had already been completely planned out and she had very little input into the final peice and so had missed out on other projects that had been more rewarding, so this shows to not just choose a job because of the company and too do some research into available work if you have choices. also other aspects towards work are too not be to precious about work because off time given on a brief and how many briefs you may have at one time and also she talked about having finished pieces that she was very pleased with only too have companys reject them for the fact that viewers may not understand them so you have to take into consideration wether your target audience will understand your message.
