For our contextual research, we were asked to reflect on one talk/presentation and two illustrators/artists. In this post I’ll be reflecting on a talk by Laura Carlin.

One of my favourite aspects of Laura Carlin’s talk on illustration is the random pieces of humour she had added in at random points during her talk. Like, for instance, mentioning/showing an image of Ralph from The Simpsons when talking about different artists work she looks at for inspiration or, when talking about the large piece of fabric she worked on where she combined 2D and 3D materials in reference to one of the ceramic people, saying that you didn’t want to know what she was thinking about. I think she was smart to so effortlessly add in humour to her talk as I feel like humour helps keep an audiences attention during a talk as it lightens up the mood and makes a talk a little more interesting.

Another aspect I like about Laura herself after listening to the talk is that she prefers art/illustrations that don’t give all the information away, that leaves something for the imagination. I like that aspect because I quite like that kind of art as well as that kind of art/illustration allows you to come up with your own story about how what’s happening in the piece came to happen in the first place or leaves you wondering what will or could happen afterwards in that instance of the piece of illustration. I like that Laura creates that kind of allowance of your own imagination in some of the illustrations she herself creates.

There was something Laura said about not liking social media and not being to be on it for long and I can somewhat relate to that as I follow a fair amount of artists on there and I end up falling into the habit of comparing myself to their work and how mine is lacking in comparison. I’m still working on trying to change that mindset.