A definition of illustration as rooted in process is essential. Moving away from illustration as a style and towards Illustration as something we do - the action of illustrating - I think Sinead or Peter said “visualising action” which was great!  This feels a more fitting way of representing what a contemporary illustration practice can be. I find the conversation around illustrations relationship to Fine Art really unhelpful. I wonder if the word ‘Fine’ is the problem, is it entangled with a colonised approach to thinking about art history? Is it the idea of illustration as something critical and rigorous where the cross over becomes murky? 

The commercial question again reduces illustration. If we are thinking through a definition centred on process then we also need to embrace other spaces in which illustration can be practiced and where its value can be celebrated. For me, the student work presented today really encapsulates an approach to illustration that is completely necessary. It is not to take away all of the amazing commercial work/projects but to expand the space of an illustration discipline, celebrating difference!  

My Illustration practice is bound within the process. Focusing on methodology allows me to critically reflect and investigate through making, as I consider illustration to be many acts of doing, showing or questioning something. I operate between studio practice and fieldwork, carrying my research between these spaces as I engage with landscapes both physically and through their representation in literature, film and archival documentaries.

My area of illustration specialism lies within narrative and storytelling, however I'm interested in challenging the parameters of text and image by constructing narratives beyond the page. Through my practice-led-research, I am continuing to explore the spatial potential of narratives as they temporarily occupy and activate a space when being performed or spoken.

Use of Fieldwork in my Illustration practice

My illustration research practice uses fieldwork as a method to unearth narrative potential in landscapes. Site visits allow me to engage closely with my subject, landscapes - however unlike many site specific practices, I occupy sites without an agenda. Instead of going out in search of something specific to capture, for me it is about being present in the landscape itself - being observant and allowing it to speak to me. Simple actions such as walking, sitting, looking, reflecting and writing allow me to contemplate my surroundings and consider its overlooked details. These descriptions and reflections are the material generated onsite and are revisited back in the studio.

Illustration as Process

Within my practice, the act of Illustrating comes from the process. Whether that be in how I engage with landscapes through words, how I read and edit films to retell narratives, or how I assemble text and image off the page. The process is both the investigation and the communication, which enables me to think and show through actions. Therefore as we move beyond thinking about illustration as just a practiced style, and explore it as a series of things we do - it encourages us to find more appropriate methods of communication and inquiry.

Use of Gaps

I provide entry points for my audience to enter the work, inviting them in as participants.As my work explores the human relationship to landscapes, it is important that the audience is positioned in this liminal space between when experiencing the work.  

I’m interested in these gaps as being fragments in which the audience gather and collage their understanding from.  As The Walker in the Landscape exists as a sound piece, it requires the audience to take the narrative and experience it in a location of their choice. As they walk, look and listen, they bridge the gap between what they are seeing and what they are hearing, effectively occupying the role of the Walker and the Narrator in the script.

Coming from a British design education background, Homes in Mobility as well as my other uni projects mostly have an emphasis on illustration as a process — a process of thinking through illustrating. Findings are revealed through the journey of illustrating. While in an agency context, an outcome (for example, a KV art direction) is first proposed to make sure the design idea is accessible to the client catering for business need, afterwards illustration might be processed as a solution. The agencies are fast paced therefore an iterative reflective process can barely be applied. After graduating, I identified a glitch in my practice that the agency work is more or less disconnected from what I’ve been taught for years.

This reminds me of a question raised by an audience during the conference that asks how do you see the commercial side of our work. Surely we need diverse and varied illustration work (eg. academic, commercial, experimenting…), I have no means to argue against this, but want to question how to make our projects more sustainable in the transition between academic and post-uni life.

Unlike many site specific practices, I enter the landscape without objectives or intentions for capturing something specific. For me, it is about being present and perceptive in many landscapes - both the industrially scarred and the seemingly untouched. Simple actions such as walking, sitting, looking, reflecting and writing onsite allow me to contemplate my surroundings and consider its overlooked details.

As my ongoing body of work explores the human relationship to the land, I occupy different positions as I write reflectively on location - whether that be writing from the position of a human, a narrator or from the perspective of the landscape itself. 

By personifying the landscape, it collapses the space between - bringing it closer to our human understanding, experience and consciousness. Each position therefore allows me to witness the site through different lenses as I contemplate the human traces left in the landscape. I consider myself as a witness on site as I generate and gather evidence from reading into what remains. The material and documentation of being on site therefore exists as visual descriptions and metaphors.   

For my illustration-research-practice, the process is the work. The presentation of this therefore lies within the physical ‘showing’ or ‘doing’. My work explores the close human relationship to landscapes, and therefore invites the audience to reconsider their proximity and relationship to the land, by collapsing the space between them. So that the audience experiences this space between, it is important that they are thrust into this space and move around within it. Here, they become active participants in both the storytelling process and how the narrative is presented in space. 

As The Walker in the Landscape exists as a sound piece, it requires the audience to take the narrative and experience it in a location of their choice. As they walk, look and listen, they bridge the gap between what they are seeing and what they are hearing - effectively occupying the role of the Walker and the Narrator in the script. 

My thinking and doing in the landscape has a direct translation into my doing in the studio. As I oscillate between fieldwork and studio practice, my observations and writing on location directly informs how I approach material in the studio. For example, I started to read films as though they were a piece of literature or a physical site themselves - deconstructing, pulling them apart and forensically looking - paying particular attention to the presence, yet silence of the landscape. I became fascinated by how such an intrinsic component of storytelling was always reduced to a muted backdrop. Could the landscape not be both setting and subject of the narrative?. 

With this in mind, I started editing and re-telling sequences by removing the human figure, so I could get closer to the landscape itself. The remaining sequence was told only through the unfolding destruction of the landscape, at the hands of the absent human. I became interested in where we, as humans, positioned ourselves in relation to this destruction?. Could we empathise with the landscape when the space between was taken away?.    

I continued to explore the liminal space between the human and the land, beyond the studio as I went back out on location, responding to sites through this narrative lens as I continued digging for material for my narrative. By carrying my thinking and making between site and studio, my research is continually exposed to different conditions so remains actively responsive. 

As the writing derives directly from being with the landscape, the narrative is told through actions such as walking and sitting, whilst also using varying scale and proximity to create a sense of intimacy within a wide open space. By working in this way, it allows me to explore the spatial potential of narratives as my writing is intended to be performed or experienced in space and not just consumed from the printed page. 

The project Homes in Mobility is initiated by my cultural position as non-binary. I argued that the cultural binary opposition of the East and West has been diluted in a world of mobility. Being a Chinese migrant, compared with Chinese migrants who sailed to the UK 100 years ago who saw and were seen in a strikingly exotic fashion, I surely experienced cultural differences and alienation, however, these glitches never come in a black or white

demarcation. The cultural differences are becoming increasingly ambiguous and fragmented, yet not fully homogenised. Standing on this blurring middle ground, me and my peers from the Chinese diasporas find it difficult to locate ourselves both physically and spiritually. It is a problematic yet typical experience, and not many illustrations capture experiences from this non-binary position. Therefore, this project is initiated in the need for an alternative illustration interpretation on migration.

From this beginning point, as the practice unfolded, my position keeps changing between an illustrator, a researcher and a migrant. Also, as a result of my premise in the non-binary area, I identified how my experiences of migration is inseparable from participants’ experiences, which requires an adjustment on methodology to integrate reflexivity that takes into account my positions.

My illustration practice always starts with an intention that explores the being of people, culture and community, and during the action of illustrating, my own being becomes an important part that requires interrogation.

Stephanie Black (2019) discussed the possibility of positioning practice-led illustration research in the empty columns in figure 1: 

Illustration, with its singular relationship with text (as extension, counterpoint or redirection as discussed by Braund 2011, for example), offers us the possibility of

contributing to a transitional stage between the columns of Figure 1, that is, from

qualitative research to performative paradigm.

(p. 232)

The performative paradigm is defined by Haseman where the practical works can contribute to knowledge (Haseman, 2007, cited in Black, 2014). Black (2019) pointed out the limit on Haseman’s idea as having separated the practical works from written texts. Unlike art being for art’s sake, the role of illustration is to communicate and illuminate an idea as discussed in the History of Illustration (Doyle, Grove and Sherman, 2019, p.35). There is this special image-text relationship in illustration. Therefore, Black (2019, pp.230-246) suggested incorporating images with texts in practice-led thesis to “illuminate new apprehensions”. To be mentioned, the texts and images in my project are not organised in such way, however, I applied it in the practical outcome, where images and texts interact with each other to create meanings as new knowledge is produced.

To further discuss what is illustration research, Black (2019) proposed illustration as research, which are research on, in and for illustration. They were built on Christopher

Frayling’s essays in 1993, which are research for, into and through practice (Frayling, 1993, p.5, cited in Black, 2014). The followings are the meanings of research on, in and for

illustration discussed by Black (2014):

research on illustration:

• Analysis of the finished illustrations;

research in illustration:

• Research is initiated and unfolded in illustration;

• the questions and challenges are informed by the need of illustrating;

• Illustration drives the methodology or the specific method;

research for illustration:

• Black didn’t investigate this part and pointed out it fails to meet the requirement of

academic research which requires new knowledge.

In this project, research in illustration is employed to investigate the process of practice. The research is initiated in my needs of illustrating migrants’ perceptions of homes, and the challenges of reflexivity are identified through illustrating process. The methodology is informed and carried out through illustration.

Therefore, the methodology of this project is derived from my own mixed methods to serve for illustrating purpose. Illustration is both the visual outcome and the method. To acquire personal narratives on homes and migration, semi-structured interview is introduced. During the illustrating process, reflective practice as suggested by Donald Schön (Gray and Malins, 2004) and Black (2014) is adopted to analyse the decisions I made. In this process, I identified the challenges of the etic and emic of my position - it is almost impossible to separate my own experiences of being a migrant from the interviewees’, especially with the

emphasis on the non-binary area. It sometimes stopped me from seeing and affected the efficiency of how illustration communicates. Driven by this need, I further developed an iterative dialogic process for reflexivity （see fig 2）.

One is after the first round of interviews, I brought some of the illustrations back to the interviewees and observed how they engaged with these images to further reflected on what stops me from seeing.

They other part of showing is the final practical outcome of this project. It was primarily designed to be merely images. However, during the dialogic process, I was aware of how illustrations and texts interact with each other to create meanings as new knowledge is produced. Therefore, I further curated materials online by purposely selected and arranged texts and images. I used this process as another round of reflective practice of reprocessing, reorganising and reviewing.

What brings these voices together is how they practice illustration. Collectively, they consider it a process of critical thinking, through reflection and investigative making. As they position themselves somewhere in between the roles of; witness, observer, narrator, translator and visualiser, throughout this article they will explain how these different lenses help them to gather material and engage closely with their subject matter.  

The text is presented in three parts; Illustration as 1.‘Being’, 2.‘Doing’ and 3.‘Showing’. Rather than presenting four singular practices, the article will instead draw upon the inherent links between. By placing methodology at the centre of the discussion, it allows each person to articulate their practice in relation to their many acts of ‘doing’. Underneath each subheading, is a list of key words and methods associated with their collective ways of working. Each practitioner will respond to these prompt words, showing how we might take the same method or tool, but utilise and explore it with different intentions. 

The format of the text reflects that of a Padlet page. This is reflective of their collective experience of postgraduate education, which was held mainly online during the pandemic. The online space provided a meeting place between four different practices, which allowed them to dissect their methodological approaches to the practice of illustration. In pulling their practices apart and observing them in closer detail, the practitioners have started to identify strong links between them. 

The use of instinct and rigour is therefore an essential combination when entering an area of visual research within the field. This can be seen in my first site visit in 2019 in South Wales. My instinct for moving off the path led me to a small area just outside of a power plant and using tools such as a compass on my car steering wheel and my dogs nose I was able to be led to areas of of dense animal habitats. The process of exploring drawing as research in this way meant that I had to strip back my experience of the site and spend time with my process. Collecting animal footprints and sound recordings of bats and moths was where I began to see the world of research and illustration colliding. David Lemm described maps as a form of abstract tools with which we use to navigate the globe (medium.com 2015), highlighting the ethical position we undertake as visual researchers researchers. Historically maps were tailored by cartographers to highlight areas that were wished to be seen and miss out those that were shameful to the state. These maps are still referenced today as evidence and data of city development. This intern is highlighting the ethical role of the illustrator not to influence when using their practice for research.

Artist such as Tim Knowles uses his balloon drawings to provide us not only with aesthetically pleasing visual research but also an insight into weather and land. The data produced cannot be debated or denied and this is what makes it research as well as artwork and illustration. By allowing the globe to map its own work illustrator researchers can provide a honest and pure account of what is there in front of us. 

By producing work that is providing vital information to a wider audience I am creating a practice and has an over arching output of research and information. By re-visiting the site and the materials I am highlighting a narrative that is true and spoken by the land itself. 

Just like David Lemm's approach to The Bothy Residency, I allow myself one starting point (the land) and the rest rely on instinct and what the land can provide me with.

DOING:
We begin to see a sway in the role of the illustrator with 'From Illustration of Evidence: A conversation with Michael Aird', the illustration is becoming undeniable fact. The availability of platforms such as googlemaps is now allowing the illustrator to peak silently into other worlds that we would not have had access too. 

(quickly define being)

Being can be both physically and philosophically. Being somewhere and someone for somewhat reasons, and it is the happenings of ongoingness.

(What is being in illustration?)

Compared with fine art, as widely quoted, Art for art’s sake, illustration is a highly contextual means of visual communication. “what” (subject) and “how” (medium) of an image are not the defining factors - “why”(purpose) determines whether a work of art is illustration or not.(ref, the history of illustration)

Before illustrating, you might have occupied different roles socially and organically. For example, you are the researcher, journalist, and the observer of the nature. These will affect the agency of how you approach illustration with your own conscious or intuitive purposes. During the process of illustrating, you take up space and time, wherein the roles you’ve taken keep changing. Following the changes of decisions you make while illustrating. Afterwards, your work might be exhibited and circulated in a gallery or cyberspace, this is the being of presence but also decided by the being that happens before and after illustrating process.

Therefore, BEING is ongoing and contextual, it is crucial in illustration practice as it serves for not only ”what” and “how”, but more importantly, “why”. 

(Why Being is important in g illustration process?)

All my practice is initiated by the questioning of who am I, what roles I’m taking. For example, in the research project…..

Here will discuss being my work samples.

Being and doing are interlaced in my illustration practice

I started by investing my roles, then I …..

here will be analysis of my work examples

Showing is not only the presentation of illustrations, it is the whole experience of illustration encountering. It happens in and after my illustration practice, not restricted by physical space.

This paragraph will introduce how I create illustration encounters.

Before - context will affect how illustration communicates

during - how I use illustration as interviewing protocols, and how I use is as part of the methodology

after - how I organize them considering accessibility, another process of reflections

(Caitlin)

My practice led research exists somewhere between site and studio. As I am dealing with our human relationship to landscapes, I work primarily with industrially scarred or healing spaces such as quarries - considering them as meeting places between humans and nature.

It is therefore important for me as the illustrator to oscillate across different environments; engaging closely with my subject matter from different vantage points. For example I begin research in the studio before carrying into research on site. 

By working with initially with a range of materials such as films, archival documentaries and texts; I can study how landscapes are represented or cast as metaphorical vehicles in literature. By identifying them as sites in which to observe, interrogate and reconfigure in the studio - I am able to enact this when in a physical location. 

(Yimin)
My intentions do not direct me to a specific location. It is my reflexive reaction to a location that generates my intention. And then it guides me to explore that position and refresh my perspective.

We all have our physical location. But nowadays based on the change in our ways of seeing, an immersive watching experience has the ability to invite us into the world it offers. Our minds can easily shuffle between different places and get exciting experiences. Being an invitee under these conditions, we are a traveller or simply a ghost floating above another world. The experience is provided and predicted. 

We gradually detached from our location. And the detachment seems to be a way of enduring reality. 

So my work intends to get people to reconnect with their surroundings.  Gazing and criticising at the most mundane of urban landscapes in a way that is both visual and interactive.

(Eleanor)

Caitlin talks about the physical location and Yimin the theoretical, I find myself somewhere in-between; concentrating on the hidden.  Taking both these approaches to location in mind I can see multiple appearing. Caitlin's locations live in the physical and the archival, highlighting what was and why was. Yimin uses the mind as a key component to her location, suggesting the location as an untouchable space that only those who enter it can experience, meaning the location is never the same. 

My practice has taken the role of the observer, it does not matter to me what has happened or what my viewers think of the location but more what the location can say for itself. What can it offer me and the viewer to invite us in but as a temporary viewer. 

The location has to have an element of inaccessibility in order for it to provide a hidden narrative. Searching for the location is a physical act of the practitioner but not the viewer. I am privy to its story and will keep the secret. The location itself has three elements, the hidden, the search and the find. All of these have equal value. The searching for the site has its own narrative that is often but not always highlighted in the work. There is no particular way to plan this other than movement and looking. By moving and circling various areas I start to understand the land, when a natural barrier is arrived at then I use that as an invitation. 

The location is more than just site, it is process and unknown and both are equally important to the work as the other. 

(Yuzhen)
Illustration is a highly contextual practice, and its encountering can happen at anytime and anywhere from the act of doing, presenting to viewing. 

Therefore, the location in illustration can imply the physical space wherein the practice is being acted, or the cyber community where the images are circulated, as discussed by Caitlin and Yimin. Additionally, the subject of location does not only speak to the illustrator or viewer, the location itself with things therein also have agency, as pointed out by Eleanor. The fluidity and ongoingness of illustration hence determine the nature of its location.

My illustration practice is more or less rooted in a certain culture and situated on the in-between passage of becomings. For example, in my practice-led project Homes in Mobility, the location plays a crucial part as it questions my being and inquires the interrogation of the practice. It starts with me and my interviewees being Chinese migrants in the UK, I argued that the cultural binary opposition of the East and West has been diluted in a world of mobility. The cultural differences are becoming increasingly ambiguous and fragmented, yet not fully homogenised. Standing on this blurring middle ground, me and my peers from the Chinese diasporas find it difficult to locate ourselves both physically and spiritually. This initial in-between location of culture, identity and of course geographical space triggered my intention to illustrate intuitively.

Intention

(Caitlin)

Unlike many site specific practices, I try to approach being on site with as little agenda or clear intention as possible. I do not navigate spaces with an objective mindset. I am not there to document, collect data or find anything specific. For me, it is about being present and perceptive on site - absorbing, witnessing and drawing connections with my observations made in the studio (where possible). From the visibly scarred to the seemingly untouched landscape, such locations allow me to understand our relationship with landscapes through time - telling stories from with and through landscapes.

(Eleanor)

My intention as a visitor to the land is unknown, however I do approach it with a series of rules for practice that I apply to all site visits. 

- The collaborators must never meet. 
- What is collected must never be manipulated unless stipulated by the illustrator. 
- The work is a collaboration with the land, not a response to the land. 
- The method must not leave a mark on the land. 
- Analysing the collected material and recombine it happens in the studio.
- The process never ends and can be adapted across multiple sites. 
- Experience of the site must be a solo activity. 
- The audience must not visit the site. 
- Nothing is too small or insignificant. 

These rules are vital to my intention towards the land and its inhabitants. I am intending to merely be an observer and researcher, and if I am impacting the site then I am not understanding the true narrative within. Like Caitlin I approach the land with little intention other than to listen and observe, however my intended time tends to be short, the longer I am there the more I am impacting on the land. This means that rather than long extended periods I must adapt and make multiple visits over long periods of time. This allows me to look for signs of change naturally taking place. The intention in my practice is to highlight what happens when we are not there, I therefore must also follow this rule and spend as little time in the location as possible. In order for me to collect my data and record my evidence which will offer an accurate and true portrayal of the land I intend allow myself to visit the site sometimes multiple times a day over a period of weeks and then let it rest for a few months before returning. 

（Yimin)
What Eleanor and Catlin are doing is giving their subject matter the utmost respect and patience, working with them and going back and forth to create dialogue and communication. The difference is that my intention is to use imagination and intervention to conceptually destroy the subject of my observation.

When the pandemic almost shut down and emptied the city. I began to reimagine the uses of structural public facilities and make "manuals" for them as though they are failed to the city. 

When we were facing the ruins that human beings left behind, I put myself in the position of an alien, introducing human inventions in absurd ways.

It begins with naive ideas: I declare bank counters are used for people to shake hands, all street lights are birthday candles, the city's instruction signs are a constant reminder for us to leave this man-made illusion.... during the process, I gradually separated from my location, became an alien to the space that I familiar.

In this way, through critical intentions, I build a connection to an environment that I would normally ignore on a daily basis. On the one hand, I am a fictional outsider, but on the other hand, this new form of relationship is far more intimate than being in it and ignoring it.

My intention makes me consciously exist in the position. It offers me new materials, makes me curious, excites me, and sometimes confuses me, but it makes me act. 

(Yuzhen)
Compared with Caitlin and Eleanor’s intentions that are almost unspeculative and spontaneous, despite my intention of the project is intuitively triggered by my premise in the in-between area, the aim is clear and specific - to offer an alternative illustration interpretations which capture the ambiguity and fluidity of migration experience. In other words, my project is initiated by the need to illustrate. 

During the process, as the illustration unfolds, the intention evolves accordingly and in turns shapes the practice. For example, in the project Homes in Mobility, after I illustrated the first interviewee’s transcript and reflected, I realised how my experiences of migration stopped me from seeing and illustrating, which requires a method to further interrogate why something is taken for granted.On that account the intention changes from merely offering an illustration interpretation to further applying illustration as a reflexive methodology. 

In a word, my intention invariably changes to cater for each project, however, what stays the same is that the research is initiated by the intention to illustrate, and in turns the illustration process sculpts the intention.

Position

(Caitlin)

Within my role as an illustrator, I adopt different roles when exploring a site which bring a series of investigative actions or lenses for me to look through. These roles typically include : observer, reader, investigator, witness, storyteller. Stepping into these roles both in and out of the studio help me to navigate myself primarily through what I can see, feel and imagine. 

Simple actions such as sitting, walking and reflecting within the landscape allows me to take different positions within my writing. Whether that be writing from the position of a human, a narrator or from the perspective of the landscape itself. 

By personifying the landscape, it collapses the space between - bringing it closer to our human understanding, experience and consciousness. Each position therefore allows me to witness the site through different lenses as I contemplate the human traces left in the landscape. As an illustration researcher, I consider myself as a witness on site as I generate and gather evidence from reading into what remains. The material and documentation of being on site therefore exists as visual descriptions and metaphors.   

(Eleanor)

Although using similar methods to Caitlin I am using my practice to widen that space between the land, the researcher and the viewer. I am a witness to the land and its narrative but in order to be just that I have to distance myself from the land at the same time as learning to understand what it has to say. This is a balance that as a practitioner I am still investigating, using methods of data recording I have to study the land closely whilst also being aware that I am an uninvited visitor. 

The land and its residents are my unconscious and unconcenting collaborators. I see myself sometimes as a voice for the land, inviting humans to not look at the land. The land offers me animal footprints, insect sounds, photographic data and rubbings as a way of saying we are here, it is my responsibility to then keep the location hidden and secret. 

My position then becomes a representative to the land, I have to be diplomatic in my approach to recording the site, I am an outsider and it is something that I have to remind myself throughout my research. The position I take back in the studio becomes more invasive as I have the material to examine closely. This is where the importance of the chosen process' become apparent. 

(Yimin)
A position can be a place, a context, a situation, a story, even a period of time. No matter what the specific position, the illustrator's responsibility is not just to create a beautiful layer of skin but a combination of multiple roles. 

Even when we describe our feelings, our words could be incomprehensible to other people. The accurate and subtle feelings an image can deliver must ask the illustrator to have a rigour making process. She/he needs to be a researcher to investigate, to be an editor, a translator to interact with materials. 

This time I landed in a physical location. An urban space trapped in mediocrity and easily abandoned in times of emergency. As a witness to this process, I endowed myself with the role of a bystander, an explorer, and even a destroyer. Besides, I played as a fiction curator and held " A Great Exhibition" to showcase collected human inventions. 

Being a practitioner, I prefer to expand and even challenge my roles as I explore ways to deliver information. Sometimes I'm a carrier of information and sometimes I want to be a bridge. The changing of different roles help me to be positioned. 

(Yuzhen)

Position is the roles held in illustration encounters; it is almost inseparable from location and intention. For example, Caitlin and Eleanor’s position is closely related to the site, and Yimin broaden it beyond geographical location. 

On reflecting my projects, I realized most of them start by questioning who I am and what position I am taking. Before being an illustrator, I might be a student, a migrant, a Chinese, and all these roles informed my illustration practice. As discussed above, the project Homes in Mobility is initiated in the need for an alternative illustration interpretation on migration. From this beginning point, with the ongoing illustration process, my position keeps changing between an illustrator, a researcher and a migrant. Also, as a result of my premise in the non-binary area, I identified how my experiences of migration is inseparable from participants’ experiences, which requires an adjustment on methodology to integrate reflexivity that takes into account my positions.

My illustration practice always starts with an intention that explores the being of people, culture and community, and during the action of illustrating, my own being becomes an important part that requires interrogation.

For example, in my project, being an immigrant, i have instinct reactions towards my interviewees, which can be cultivated by culture and social norms. Later, when I’m illustrating, these cultural “instinct” might affect my illustration decision that I take for granted. As the etic and emic of my positions, it is almost impossible to completely separate my experience from other people or environment, and I never mean to disconnect them. However, it is important to be aware of this “taken for granted” to further ask why and interrogate as a researcher.

To be mentioned, raised by both Eleanore and Yimin, there is this unique and interweaving relationship between illustrator and researcher. In the illustrating process, you might need to observe, document, translate, reflect, display… The role of illustrator is naturally enriched in the possibility of taking multiple roles to research. Therefore, when it comes to illustration research, in our meetings, we almost agree that it is not suitable to use institutional arts and science research methodology to guide our practice, illustration can not only be implemented as one single method of visualising data, for example, but also have its own language and agency to apply as the overall methodology.

(Eleanor)

Process

As both researcher and illustrator, I feel that process is too broader term. The act of exploration is something that crosses all four of our practices. We do not find out site, whether physical, theoretical, or digital without exploration. It is only with instinct that the act of exploration can occur. 

Walking for myself is the first act, then looking and listening to the best of my ability. Caitlin flips this over though with her pre-planning being part of her exploration, then she experiences the site.

The process of 'collecting data' (I put that in inverted commas as I feel there is a better term that I will one day find) holds risks and it is with these risks in mind that I am having to be creative and borrow from other industries methods of mark making and recording that provide evidence of life in these areas of land. Without these process' being borrowed and the function changed I can not ensure that I am not impacting the land I explore.Yimin takes a similar role but her tool is her, and her imagination. My imagination is there to re-define my tools or process'.

(Yimin)
Process

'Doing' is to breathe with the process. 

In our conversation around the illustration process, the four of us kept going back to the concept of 'Thinking through making '.

As I used to be a results-oriented creator, I find the approach of making and exploring the process is liberating for me. Although it is not the only methodology in artistic creation.  Because I no longer need to face the outcomes between good and bad results only and use it as a standard for criticising my work.

Instead, I allow myself to be in a situation of ambiguity. As Nietsche's argument about unknowing, it is more like a state of thought and life.1 I want to accept the possibility of being inspired, changed, and even failed in the unknown process. And these elements are all important sparks of creativity, not repetition.

For El and Caitlin, what they are trying to do is to make the process itself perceivable. The unknown exploration and unexpected outcome are in itself the purpose. Being in the site creates sensory materials and then the feeling also becomes part of raw materials. And Yuzhen's work sees the investigation as the essence of her project, or even to say the ultimate goal means to open the door of the process, which is more intimate, personal, real storytellings that come from individuals.

1. Rachel Jones, On the Value of Not Knowing: Wonder, Beginning Again and Letting Be ( London: Black Dog Publishing, 2013).

(Caitlin)
process + reflection 

My thinking and doing in the landscape has a direct translation into my doing in the studio. This becomes cyclical process of revisiting which allows my research to continually deepen. 

Reflection is therefore a method which underpins and is bound within my entire process as an illustration research practitioner. Whether that be when; I’m out on location reading landscapes through an emotive human lens, writing on site or when I’m in the studio extracting landscapes from archival footage. 

It is the ongoing reflection which enables me to enrich my research - carrying it between environments and through different materials and mediums. It also determines the visual language of my practice. By drawing upon my reflective writing and observations made on site, it impacts how I approach materials - often using them to visually and practically work through ideas and drive my investigation further. Process and reflection therefore go hand in hand as it is what I do with a material which transforms it into an illustrative or communicative device. 

(Yuzhen)
Process+reflection

Similar to Caitlin’s discussion of the paralleling process and reflection. In my practice, I think through illustrating, and these reflections help to adjust and improve the illustration strategies later on.

To further expand with my project Homes in Mobility, as discussed before, to offer alternative illustration interpretation on migration, I started by semi-structured interviews to acquire personal experiences of homes in migration. Then I would code for themes which emerged from the transcripts and illustrate them. During this process, reflective practice as suggested by Donald Schön (Gray and Malins, 2004) and Stephanie Black (2014) is adopted to analyse the decisions I made. The coding and illustrating process are the “reflection-in-action”, and the reflections afterwards are the “reflection-on-action”. 

Fig 1. Graph of the methods

Here I have some of the images I made.

Fig 2 and 3. sketches in thinking-through making process

  

During the thinking-through-illustrating process, I reflected on why I started with the theme of the airport rather than others - it is due to my own conflicted impressions towards the airport. I recalled how I once took 18 flights in one year and how the airport made me anxious. This experience is personal - some of the other interviewees did not feel the same way. This finding demands for a reflexive method that examine my positions in illustrating. Accordingly, autoethnography is added during the reflective practice, also a further step of forwarding the illustration back to the interviewees is applied. Interviews, reflections, illustrations and autoethnography all structured in a dialogic process as below.

Fig 4. Graph of the adjusted methodology

Fig 5. Example of an illustration I bring back to the interviewees, the text on the right is a selection of my autoethnography writing.

This example shows how the illustrating process and reflections shape each other in an evolving dialogue, and this interactive dialogue is transferable in my other projects.

(Yimin)
reflection 

Earlier I discussed the connection between intuition and reflection. And a reflexive approach does not stop at this step, it directly points to practice and action. 

The concept 'reflective practice' is derived from Donald Schön(1983). He emphasized the bridging function of reflection to research and practice.
It is in this iterative process that we think about what we are doing and reshaping action while we are doing it2

This allows me to quickly respond to intuition and reflect on the purpose of my actions and makes creating a cyclic process. For my work, in particular, I usually reflect on mundane objects and urban structures that appear around me and add a layer of imagination to them to make them out of the familiar range. Connecting the urban elements to the subtle human experience, makes them rediscovered. and rediscovery means rethinking. We think about the things we invent as we think about ourselves. 

At first, I didn't know the intention of action. As the rapid actions and reflections accumulated more and more, I was able to analyze the commonality from them and gradually build my practice systematically. 

2. Carole Gray and Julian Malins, Visualizing Research: A Guide to the Research Process in Art and Design, ( Ashgate Publishing, 2004).

For my illustration-research-practice, the process is the work. The presentation therefore lies within the physical ‘showing’ or ‘doing’ rather than being something which is observed or consumed at distance. 

I invite my audience in as participants - allowing them to reconsider their proximity to the land. As my work derives from experiences of being in the landscape and focus' in on our human relationship to landscapes, it is important that the form reflects this. 

For example; presenting my narratives as audio files allows my work to be taken and experienced in a physical space as opposed to a formal exhibition context. By making the walking process part of the storytelling process, it explores the spatial parameters of the text.

This not only allows them to access the text but helps them become an extension of the work. They become active participants in both the storytelling process and how the narrative is presented in space. 

(Eleanor)

Presentation of my work is where it becomes more complicated, it is where I jump between providing a a series of work usually in book form to inform the audience and engage them. At the same time my message is do not visit this site; as enquirers humans want to see and experience what they are excited about. The idea of gaining knowledge is often partnered with the need to know all. I am asking my audience to do the opposite of what I have done. I am asking them to trust me and my findings. 

The work is when stripped back essentially data, it is a series of pieces of information collected and un-edited. Being a research illustrator means that I curate my collected data to inform rather than invite. I invite the audience into the project knowing that they can not immerse themselves. It often appears that there is something not there; that space between audience and site has been created and it is me. Often the studio is the space where the most interesting work is so re-creating that space of thought and reflection acts as a support to the final outcome. They can take away the book but the work is my experience and where I started as the observer they have now taken that place and I am the presenter. It is important here to state that I am not the author of the work, the prints, images and sounds collected were created by the site, the site is the author I am the presenter.

Therefore, the location in illustration can imply the physical space wherein the practice is being acted, or the cyber community where the images are circulated, as discussed by Caitlin and Yimin. Additionally, the subject of location does not only speak to the illustrator or viewer, the location itself with things therein also have agency, as pointed out by Eleanor. The fluidity and ongoingness of illustration hence determine the nature of its location.

My illustration practice is more or less rooted in a certain culture and situated on the in-between passage of becomings. A lot of my interviewees expressed the perceptions of homes in mobility - how homes have become a mobile “non-place”, which requires more ambiguity and fluidity in illustration practice.

My practice led research exists somewhere between site and studio. As I am dealing with our human relationship to landscapes, I work primarily with industrially scarred or healing spaces such as quarries - considering them as meeting places between humans and nature.

It is therefore important for me as the illustrator to oscillate between environments; engaging closely with my subject matter from different vantage points. By working initially with a range of materials such as films, archival documentaries and texts; I study how landscapes are represented or used as metaphorical vehicles in literature.

Unlike many site specific practices, I approach site without an intention to document, collect data or find anything specific. It is about being present and perceptive. I adopt different roles when exploring a site; observer, reader, investigator, witness and storyteller. Stepping into these roles both in and out of the studio help me to navigate myself primarily through what I can see, feel and imagine. Simple actions such as sitting, walking and reflecting within the landscape allow me to take different positions within my writing. Whether that be writing from the position of a human, narrator or the landscape itself - each perspective offers an alternative reading of the land. I speculate and construct narratives by reading into what remains.

(Eleanor)

As a research illustrator my only intention is to widen the space between site and audience. The site and studio act as one but function differently. My practice is formed on the basis of allowing the land to present itself in my absence. By not planning or predicting the site, I am able to stumble upon new information. This lack of control over the site and what is gathered, positions me more as a silent collaborator with the land.

My intention is to highlight the importance of distance when working with re-wilding or re-healing spaces. When present on site, I understand my impact on the activity within that area. I therefore minimise the amount of time I spend physically on site - choosing to make several short visits before physically moving onto 'doing' research. Using the act of walking and exploring without planning or maps I am able to find an area of rich activity, embedded with narratives.

When referring to 'narrative' within my practice-led-research, I am moving away from a human centric idea of narrative by collecting traces of activity in the land. This allows me to build an understanding and record of what is going on and who is present in this space without being present to see it.  At this point I am merely a silent observer waiting for an invitation to explore, allowing activity to resume rather than be interrupted by my presence.

(Yimin)
My practice intends to reconnect with my surroundings. Gazing and criticising at the most mundane of urban landscapes in a way that is both visual and interactive.

We all have our physical position. But does this count as 'Being'? Nowadays based on the change in our ways of seeing, an immersive watching experience has the ability to invite us into the world it offers. Our minds can easily shuffle between different places and get exciting experiences. Being an invitee under these conditions, our role is usually to be a traveller or a ghost floating above another world. The experience is provided and predicted.

We gradually detached from our location. And the detachment seems to be a way of enduring reality.

My project is based on the context that the pandemic almost shut down and emptied the city. It contains a series of imaginations around the uses of structural public facilities and I made "manuals" for them as though they are failed to the city.

When we were facing the ruins that human beings left behind, I put myself in the position of an alien, introducing human inventions in absurd ways.

During the process, I re-build a connection to an environment that I would normally ignore on a daily basis. On the one hand, I am a fictional outsider, but on the other hand, this new form of relationship is far more intimate than being placed in it and ignoring it.

‘Being' is a decision about feeling and seeing. It provides me with raw materials. I decide to stop, perhaps subconsciously, perhaps out of curiosity, perhaps out of confusion. Being in a position is to recognize its connection with myself.

(Yuzhen)
My illustration research interrogates how to use illustration as the reflexive methodology to illustrate Chinese migrants' perceptions of homes. I consider "being" as the position held throughout the research.

"Being" triggers the intention of the research, informs the methodology, and even drives to answer research questions. For example, my practice-led research project Homes in Mobility is inspired by me being a Chinese migrant situated in a non-binary, ambiguous, and in-between cultural area. I argued that compared with Chinese migrants who sailed to the UK 100 years ago who saw and were seen in a strikingly exotic fashion, the cultural binary opposition of the East and West has been diluted in a world of mobility. However, existing illustrations of Chinese ethnic migrants are still predominated by an exaggerated contrast of the East and West in visual representations. Being an illustrator, I hope to offer alternative illustration interpretations which capture the ambiguity and fluidity of migration experiences, which triggers the research question of how Chinese ethnic migrant interviewees perceive homes and how to illustrate their perceptions concerning my non-binary position. 

With the practice unfolding, the positions can nevertheless divert the research journey, requiring further investigations as a researcher. While illustrating, as part of the thinking-through-making process, I identified how my position as a Chinese migrant unconsciously stops me from seeing, thus calling for a reflexive methodology that takes my non-binary position into account. 

Additionally, "being" is always evolving with the interaction of positions. Being a researcher and an illustrator simultaneously, I hope to rethink ontology, epistemology, and methodology in illustration research with its own language. This combined "being" inquires new references on illustration as research.

Reflection is therefore a method which underpins and is bound within my entire process as an illustration research practitioner. Whether that be when; I’m out on location reading landscapes through an emotive human lens, writing on site or when I’m in the studio extracting landscapes from archival footage. 

It is the ongoing reflection which enables me to enrich my research - carrying it between environments and through different materials and mediums. It also determines the visual language of my practice. By drawing upon my reflective writing and observations made on site, it impacts how I approach materials and mediums - often using them to visually and practically work through ideas and drive my investigation further. Process and reflection therefore go hand in hand as it is what I do with a material which transforms it into an illustrative or communicative device. For example using film editing as a storytelling method which enables me to physically extract scenes and alter narrative structures.


(Eleanor)

Process and reflection alternate throughout my research practice. When conducting research on-site, I begin very methodically by adopting a scientific approach - however once back in the studio, the reflection becomes just as important in order to process the information gathered from site. It is only through this that I can establish a direction for the next site visit.

Time also becomes an important factor as the more I reflect on my findings, the more I understand the impact of what I am doing. My borrowed process' allow me to engage with a site even in my absense. I am merely the facilitator- choosing where to place my paper, then leaving. I typically return a day later, observe what tracks have been recorded and the process goes on. The idea of borrowing methodologies first mentioned to me by Leah Fusco in conversation with myself and Caitlin, highlights the need to look for methods outside of illustration. This is what will provide me with the tools to explore the site and begin to converse with it. The process then becomes a un-invited collaboration.

(Yimin)

'Doing' is to breathe with the process.

I allow myself to be in a situation of ambiguity. As Nietsche's argument about unknowing, this is more like a state of thought and life rather than a hole that needs to be filled.1 To accept the possibility of being inspired, changed, and even failed in the process is liberating for me. As these elements are all important sparks of creativity, not repetition.

The concept 'reflective practice' is derived from Donald Schön(1983). He emphasized the bridging function of reflection to research and practice. It is in this iterative process that we think about what we are doing and reshaping action while we are doing it2

The methodology leads me to quickly respond to my intuition around materials and reflect on the purpose of my actions. It makes creating a cyclic process. For my work in particular, I usually reflect on mundane objects that appear around me and add a layer of imagination to them to make them out of the familiar range. Connecting the urban elements to the subtle human experience, makes them rediscovered. Rediscovery means rethinking. We think about the things we invent as we think about ourselves.

At first, I didn't have a very clear understanding of my intentions. As the rapid actions and reflections accumulated more and more, I was able to analyze the commonality from them and gradually build my practice systematically.

(Yuzhen)
The illustration is never a mere image for consumption; Its ongoing process in which text and image interact and clash to make fluid meanings allows the potential of adapting illustration as a multimodal tool for communicating ideas. Moreover, Stephanie Black (2014) discusses the possibility of thinking illustration as research, she proposed illustration in research which describes: 

• Research is initiated and unfolded in illustration;

• the questions and challenges are informed by the need of illustrating;

• Illustration drives the methodology or the specific method;

On this account, my research projects usually explore the unknown subject through illustrating. The themes are informed by my need from being an illustrator. While illustrating, questions and problems occurred, which needs further interrogation as a researcher. I would look for the most suitable tools to fit in my toolbox in the service of research. Essentially the tools might vary according to different projects, however, the skeleton of the toolbox, which is the overall framing methodology, stays the same under the name of illustration as research.

With the example of Homes in Mobility, it was initiated in illustrator’s needs to visualize narratives of homes from Chinese ethnic participants. I applied reflective practice to examine the illustrating process, during which I identified the requirement for reflexivity. I thus designed a dialogic process between interviews, illustrations and autoethnography to examine how my positions change and how that prevents me from seeing. I later argued that this dialogic process facilitates reflexivity rather than a single action, and this ongoing dialogue is the illustration methodology as reflexive.

ongoing                            illustration
//                                                      //
//                  methods                    //
//////////////////////////////////////////

For my illustration-research-practice, the process is the work. The presentation therefore lies within the physical ‘showing’ or ‘doing’ rather than being something which is observed or consumed at distance. 

I invite my audience in as participants - allowing them to reconsider their proximity to the land. As my work derives from experiences of being in the landscape and focus' in on our human relationship to landscapes, it is important that the form reflects this. 

For example; presenting my narratives as audio files allows my work to be taken and experienced in a physical space as opposed to a formal exhibition context. By making the walking process part of the storytelling process, it explores the spatial parameters of the text.

This not only allows them to access the text but helps them become an extension of the work. They become active participants in both the storytelling process and how the narrative is presented in space. 


(Yimin)

I like the word "illustration" and "illustrator" is because of the sense of duration in them. "Illustrate" is a verb, which means there will be a narrator responsible for narrating things to others. It is about a process rather than just the outcome. Although illustration in the mainstream's impression is inclined to picture display mode. I think bringing back the concept of the process might bring a sense of authorship and another perspective of narrating.

Making is a process, and so is showing. What I prefer to do is to create a multi-layered approach that fully knits the entire narrative system. The medium can be diverse. In my project, The Great Exhibition(2021), the website, manuals, and videos complement each other and point to the story I want to tell. 

There is no need to show off the diversity of media in the work, just each subject in my opinion has its most suitable carrier. I like to use everyday things as a medium and find their narrative potential. I use flyers, zoom meeting, advertising, and other elements that are visible on a daily basis. Maybe this is due to my background in graphic design, I know that these visual elements are themselves telling the story to their audience all the time, so they could be played with as media. I want my audience to use mundane elements as clues and step into my story by accident. 

(Eleanor)

Showing is where the role of illustrator comes to the for-front of my practice. The work is on going and therefore this needs to be presented. However in order to highlight this to the audience I draw on imagery and sound. Inviting the viewer to look at the work in quiet contemplation. This mirrors my actions in the studio and in the land. 

These small signs are alone pieces of data or proof of existence however it is the illustration imagery that highlights the importance of the space between humanity and land. The land becomes a sacred and hidden space that I am only privy too and the audience are there to receive the information, they are not collaborators but more an experiencer putting trust in my authorship of the work. Using objects like books to create the narrative helps to isolate the viewer in order to feel that stillness that my images have portrayed. It is a presentation of ideas that viewers should be able to adapt to other areas of land, yet un-explored. Often the studio space is the one site that an audience can be invited too, it mimics my mind, this can be moved and recreated. The only constant in the work presented between projects is the authenticity of colour, scale and presence, the rest is informed by the land itself. 

（Yuzhen）

My practice regards “showing” as “illustration encounters”. Rather than showing A to B, which is a one-directional presentation, illustration encounters happen to anyone at any time in any space providing that illustration is in its presence. The agency of the narrator can shift between anyone/anything within the context, and even the context itself.

To better explain, the happenings of illustration encounters in my research project can be roughly divided into three stages -“before”,“in-between”, and “after”: “Before” doing the research, viewing key illustrators' work such as Chiang Yee's graphic novel and William Kentridge's metaphoric making process have an influence over my practice. Besides, being situated in the in-between passages, the context becomes one of the narrators of the illustration. “In-between” the research actions, I use illustration as a reflective tool, from which I can construct a dialogue between images, interviewees, and myself. Later, I bring the images back to the interviewees or participants to intrigue deeper discussions - the illustration is also the mediation that negotiates my position to the interviewees. “After” the completion of collecting data (both pictorial and textual), I curate materials by purposely selecting and arranging texts and images, arguing the interactions of the text and images can create meanings as new knowledge produced. I used this process as another round of reflective practice of reprocessing, reorganizing and reviewing. These three stages can be repeated cyclically if needed.

Moreover, the circulation of the illustration projects is more than the reproduction of images. No matter through digital media or situated in a physical space, the encounters all trigger sensual experiences. Considering the accessibility of different audiences on different platform, sometimes it is also requested to alter the final circulation to suit for various circumstances. 

What brings these voices together is how they practice illustration. Collectively, they consider it a process of critical thinking, through reflection and investigative making. As they position themselves somewhere in between the roles of; witness, observer, narrator, translator and visualiser, throughout this article they will explain how these different lenses help them to gather material and engage closely with their subject matter.  

The text is presented in three parts; Illustration as 1.‘Being’, 2.‘Doing’ and 3.‘Showing’. Rather than presenting four singular practices, the article will instead draw upon the inherent links between. By placing methodology at the centre of the discussion, it allows each person to articulate their practice in relation to their many acts of ‘doing’. Underneath each subheading, is a list of key words and methods associated with their collective ways of working. Each practitioner will respond to these prompt words, showing how we might take the same method or tool, but utilise and explore it with different intentions. 

The format of the text reflects that of a Padlet page. This is reflective of their collective experience of postgraduate education, which was held mainly online during the pandemic. The online space provided a meeting place between four different practices, which allowed them to dissect their methodological approaches to the practice of illustration. In pulling their practices apart and observing them in closer detail, the practitioners have started to identify strong links between them. 

%20through%20illustration%20TEXT%20ONLY.pdf?sequence=1/. Accessed 01 June 2021.

Gray, C. and Malins, J. (2004), Visualizing Research: A Guide to the Research Process in Art

and Design, Aldershot: Ashgate.

Jones, Rachel (2013), On the Value of Not Knowing: Wonder, Beginning Again and Letting Be, London: Black Dog Publishing.

Gannon, R. and Fauchon, M. (2021),  Illustration Research Methods, London: Bloomsbury Publishing.

Leah Fusco (2020), Understanding the Field, Live event recorded and on padlet, https://padlet.com/understandingthefield/9hxvep40b501n7j2

Yimin’s artworks have received the iJungle Illustration Award, Graduate 360 (top 10 graduates) and were collected in the 3x3 Annual. She has recently been featured by It’s Nice That with an interview.

Yuzhen Cai is an illustrator and researcher based in Shanghai and London. Her mixed cultural background grounded her illustration interests in community and cross-cultural issues. She obtained her BA degree in illustration at the Camberwell College of Arts in 2019, and MRes degree in communication design at the Royal College of Art in 2021.