Please ignore the colossal pile of shit I am about to write. It is late and I have to write an essay for tomorrow. It will not sound good.

This unit has taught me a lot about the different types of illustration in which I could choose to specialise. We were required to complete a series of three mini-projects. Each of these concentrated on a different aspect of illustration: narrative, editorial and reportage.

As a whole, these three projects have taught me to plan my actions and manage my time effectively. Never before have I created a timetable for my own individual work-based activities during a course. I think this timetable definitely helped me to be more organised and keep on track with my projects. My time management skills improved more towards the end of the unit as I am steadily getting back into the swing of working again after the long summer holidays. Saying that, if I were to do these mini-projects again, I would aim to follow my timetable a bit more closely, as although I used to tell me what I needed to do, I didn't stick to the dates specified well enough.

The editorial brief was the first, and in my opinion, the least enjoyable mini-project. One of the problems I faced with this project is that I didn't find any of the articles we were asked to illustrate to be particularly interesting. I had little inspiration for this project and I feel the standard of my outcome was effected by this. If I want to do editorial illustration in future I will have to accept that I won't find everything I have to illustrate particularly interesting.

One thing I learnt from this project is to use colour more effectively. When I looked at my boring black and white outcome amongst everyone else's colourful pictures I began to realise how important it was to make your work stand out. Mine was not eye catching enough. After realising this I went back to my final piece and added a colourful background and some highlights with watercolour. I think this made the image look much better.

The second of the three projects was the reportage brief. I enjoyed this project since I like location drawing. I felt my sketchbook work was of a much better standard than my final piece for this project. The brief was very open so we could do whatever we wanted. I chose to write a poem and illustrate it. I didn't feel my poem was particularly good. My English skills are not particularly strong, so choosing to do a written piece probably wasn't a good idea. At least it gave me a chance to branch out and try something new, even if it didn't go to plan.

As I have said, one thing I did enjoy about this project was the location drawing. I managed to develop a new looser, more free style of drawing which I will definitely use again. I enjoyed using continuous line, as it is quick and not too precise, but still looks interesting and sometimes quite abstract. I managed to fill up my sketchbook quite quickly using continuous line. I think this unit in particular helped me to improve my work, as drawing from life is always good practice. The fact I tried to push myself by getting out of my comfort zone helped too. I attempted to draw architecture, whereas before I would shy away from it.

The last project we had to do was on narrative. We were given a number of Greek myths to read and we had to choose the one we most wanted to illustrate. I chose the story of Narcissus. I picked out the three most important things that happen in the story and drew them. I feel my supporting work for this project was not up to standard. I planned on visiting the Victoria and Albert Museum and drawing the statues of male bodies but I couldn't afford it. This made me rather down-heartened and as a result I became less enthusiastic about my sketchbook work. On the whole, I don't mind my final illustrations for this project. We were told to make our drawings suitable for both a young and old audience. I think my brightly coloured pictures will appeal to children as well as being sophisticated enough to appeal to an older audience.

On the whole I could have done more supporting sketchbook work for all of my projects. I prefer to visualise my final artwork in my head and put it straight down onto paper. This is a bad thing since I don't know whether my image will actually look good until I've completed it. I need to learn to plan out my work in my sketchbook first. This is something I will think about in future.

Another thing I will do next time is more research. I find looking at other artists work particularly inspiring and influential on my work. Inspiration is something I was lacking on the editorial brief and I feel more artist research could have helped me with that. On the plus side, I managed to use both books and the internet for this project, which is something which I don't usually manage.