Chloe Isteed Illustration

The photo booth we made for our Spitalfields Illustrated event was really successful. It was fun to make, and was popular, particularly the handmade cacti props! I uploaded a few photos of it onto our Instagram account (@spitalfieldsillustrated) which I was running. The acting Dean of Camberwell, Amanda Jenkins, saw our photo booth on our Instagram, and contacted us to see if we were interested in making another one for the private view of the Camberwell degree show. This showed us that social media can be a way to get commissions, if you post good quality photos.  Three of us agreed to take on the challenge to make a whole new photo booth with only two days to complete it in. It was a big task, but we had so much fun making it! From the last photo booth, we all understood our strengths, and this made it so much quicker when making the second one. Naomi is really good at making 3d things quickly, and so she made the flamingo and the palm tree. Yuzhen i...

When making the photo booth props, we were very resourceful. We only had one afternoon to make the cacti, and so the four of us worked really well together to get it done in time. We needed to finish the cacti to make sure that they could dry before we painted them the next day. We used the cardboard that was already in our workroom, and were able to use some leftover pieces of work (such as parts of a costume from the author project) to create the shapes we needed. The gum tape was a really effective way to strengthen the structures, and smooth the surface ready for painting.  The next day, we painted the backdrop and the cacti. The backdrop was made for us by the security at the market, which was extremely helpful! I really enjoyed painting on a large scale, as it was something I hadn't done for a long time. Yuzhen and I painted the backdrop, whilst the others painted the cacti using spray paint. Once painted, it was really nice to see...

When deciding what work to produce for the Spitalfields shop, I looked at my sketchbook from that project. I made the decision not to finish making my zine for this show, as I felt that I didn't have enough time to complete it to the standard I wanted it to be. However, I may continue to work on it and produce one during the summer. From previous experiences of selling work, I have found that lino prints, and small things such as postcards, stickers and badges sell quite well. I wanted to do some screen prints, however the print workshop was shut due to the degree show, and so we had to look at other methods of reproducing our work. We decided to do some riso printing, using Housework Press. I volunteered to coordinate our print order, which meant that I checked everyone's files, helped to check the booklet and sent off the order. I really enjoyed organising this, and I would definitely like to use Housework Press again for riso printing.  I ...