Graphic Guru

Today I had my first meeting with my Graphic Guru for the year, Ben Jones. His role is generally just to answer any questions I might have about direction with my work, what it’s like making the transition from the course to the real world and any other guidance I might need.

I found that it was very easy to talk to Ben, and the 20-30 minute session went really fluently. I thought it would be best to start with him looking at some of my recent work, so I showed him three recent projects I’ve been working on and my “Monkey” piece. He loved the fact that I’d put some of my finished, the book title pages, in context. I pretty much started the conversation by putting a downer on every piece I showed him, saying what I’d not considered, and trying to justify it. However, he didn’t think that way at all, and helped me look at the strengths in the work. He said that he liked my drawing, and could tell that I enjoyed it, and after going through my desk found some old planning pieces from an earlier project. He told me that it would be good to experiment with work like this more, and after I told him I was into comics he suggested how I could develop a style like that.

After looking at all that he showed me some illustrators that I’d be interested in as our works are similar, and told me it would be a good exercise to take their pieces, deconstruct them and see how its made again. He also showed me his work, which I thought was very good, and as his forte is widely print, I showed him some old print work, which he seemed impressed by.

He then gave me advice on my portfolio. He pretty much read me straight away though, and said that if I’m still not confident with my portfolio don’t bother finding people to show it to as they’ll see through it straight away and it wouldn’t sell very well. For now my advice is to continue my drawing until I’m at a stage where I can happily show it off!

I’m glad I got the chance to speak to Ben today because I feel that it was good to have someone from an outsiders point of view look at my work, and the fact that he was supportive throughout the session means that I wont be worried about asking him for advice in the future!


Click here to have a look at Ben's work!