Welcome back to my blog, where I talk about being an illustrator and a researcher. Where to begin with the research??

Now that we’ve covered some aspects of illustration-as-research, let’s talk about how to actually get started. And before I do that, I want to quickly talk about the benefits I’ve received from doing a PhD.

The sad reality about a PhD is that it doesn’t guarantee a job at the end, as academia is tight and stable jobs (and universities that can support it) are few and far between. This is the general consensus at the time of writing.

Then why do a PhD?

I will share what I think I’ve gathered from the experience. Yes – I managed to secure a good job from it, and I am aware that I am speaking from a privileged position. But even when I was in the midst of doing the PhD and even when I was in fixed time contract, I was so happy to have done my PhD.

The biggest benefit I received is the ability to pinpoint and articulate to explain what I was thinking and learn how to evidence my claims. I am sure that I was already this type of person – one who seeks to analyse and decipher deeper meanings than conventionally provided. But I didn’t quite have the words in my head to actually share what I was noticing. I always felt like I was dancing around a message instead of getting to the point. But by the time I’ve read countless journal articles (I referenced about 300 articles, and far more readings were done that never made it to the final thesis), I could see how others were talking about the topic and how I could adapt to it. This was like memorising words but more intensely and practically – it turns out, one needs to be a whizz at thesaurus and various metaphors to be able to stretch ‘this is what I think’ in 50,000 words!

Reading all these articles also means that I was exposing myself to the kinds of thought, knowledge and discussion that are at the forefront of my interest. Some sided with my opinion with a very convincing and knowledgeable structure, some added to my interest with other sources of knowledge, and some had broken down my opinion by proving that I had some underlying assumptions. It was wholesome and humbling to see that my meagre intuitions were being carefully considered and discussed.  To me, it wasn’t important whether I was right – it was far more important to expand and learn. And I could do it in bucketful!!

Anyhow, back to the main topic – so where to start? A good place to start is to establish a strong grounding. As the main driver of any research quest is to know the research gap it aims to fill.

How does one find the gap, one might ask? The most assured way is to start reading around the topic. Browse through libraries and bookstores, but also make sure to check out Google Scholar to see what the energy is like in that field. The first challenge is to read, read and read (actually, that’s a LOT of what the PhD journey is like!) and get a feeling for what’s hot, what’s already been covered and what’s missing.

I didn’t read any books about doing a PhD to do my research, so I am not suggesting anything here. But I will come back if there are books that cross my radar!

If one is interested in illustration research specifically, it’s a good idea to check out Illustration Research Methods or any of the Bloomsbury books about research that I mentioned in previous posts. If you want to know more about illustration and its historical significance, check out History of Illustration. If you’d like to read about a deeper consideration of what illustration is, check out Andrzej’s On Illustration.

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On a closing note, one may be tempted to use AI-assisted programmes. At the time of writing, services like Anara and Research Rabbit are popular. I agree that they are great programmes to start with. But I have found two issues with both that may remain prevalent over the years. First is that both provide too widely. These services are able to pull out any papers that have even a hint of similarity to their prompt. There are millions and billions of articles in the world, and one person has a limit as to what they can consume and consider. Library catalogues or Google Scholar have, in my opinion, a better filtering system that searches for the topic’s relevance as well as the influence of a paper. The second issue is that they won’t be able to find the research gap that you are specifically interested in. To be fair to the AIs, I would even argue that no one else besides yourself can find the gap that you want to fill. The gap that is identified is as telling of the person who found it as what the gap itself is. Knowledge creation under a PhD is very much a human endeavour.

So read, read and read more. Look for examples of PhD journeys in the field. Look at lots of stories. Take note of what you respond to. Make a list of what resonates. The answer is probably dangling in front of you, and it takes a mountain of reading to finally reach it with your own hands.