The second portfolio review was carried out in-person with Illustrator Megan Thomas (http://www.megan-thomas.com/) who was assigned to me to give advice and help about the course and my work. She kindly wrote up some feedback after the review session, which is as follows:
As I mentioned to you on tuesday, I feel your watercolour work is definitely your strongest out of your illustrations. The marks, particularly on the baby raven piece, are very nice. I'd suggest playing around with the medium even more and let the watercolour take control for you. You can get some really interesting textures and marks out of watercolours if you really let the medium do what it wants. I'd recommend trying techniques such was painting on wet paper, painting on dry paper, wet/dry brush and using things like salt (to absorb) and wire brush (to add texture), etc. There are a lot of books out there that have pages and pages full of watercolour techniques for you to explore. They're such a versatile medium. I think playing around more with your solid washes, such as the background on the raven/banner image would be beneficial, I especially thing wetting your paper first and really letting the paint flow in it's own way would really add a lot to the piece without distracting from the strong silhouette of the banner and bird.
I think your ink/biro drawings have a lot of potential. I'd recommend trying ink and nibs to vary the line making a bit more. I think with the faces, you don't need to add so many lines, such as the lines around the womans mouth, unless they're very character specific and tell the story of the character. Maybe try bigger strokes (if you end up using nibs and ink) for the shadows and make your lines more varied. If you keep using biro, maybe try making your hatching and lines more varied - more or less pen pressure, finer hatching, etc.
I know when you're still finding your way of working it can be time consuming to play with different media but it's worth it in the long run.
A note on your gouache pieces - more of a comment on composition than the medium (as we already discussed this on tuesday) - on your skull and rose piece, watch your shadows. It appears your light source is coming from top left but your rose shadow is casting towards the skull and your skull in the field needs more depth around the skull to show it's sitting within vegetation and the fact the moon appears behind it. This also applies to the trees. I don't know if the lacking depth of field in the skull/field piece is the cause, but scale is also an issue. I know sometimes scale can be skewered for the sake of creativity but I think it just looks out of place on this image. Just things to be careful with, because they can really make or break a piece.
Thanks again for the advice!
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