SNOW DAY!!

This was last week, but still, good fun.

My Garden 

This boy had just made a snow angel, it was almost cliche, first snowy morning and he was running about loving it.

Snowmen, no matter how small.. are a winter snow essential. 

Portraiture Workshop

There were a series of workshops we could choose to take part in last week, I chose to do a portraiture one and below are my outcomes. I did quite a few but I was happiest with my second attempt. We were only allowed to use black and white media. The pictures below are in order of creation/completion. 

Stupidly used chalk on the highlighted areas, this just picked up all the pencil marks and ended up far too dark, this aged the subject and made her look a bit bruised. Grim portraiture.

My favourite outcome, pastles I normally suck at using, this turned out alrighty actually.

 

Because pastles had worked out well I thought I would be daring and go for chalks... this as you can see, failed miserably!

Getting tired at this point, wanted to try something fun, fine liner portraiture with over lapping turned out not too badly actually.

By the very end I was sick of people and decided to draw an owl in a hat.... can't wait to colour this one!

Happily, it was a productive workshop, most students only produced one image in the two days, so I was quite pleased with the over all outcomes and I learned from it. I will have to give pastles a try some other time... though I don't fancy taking on colour portraits just yet.

CD of the moment

Sent a CD to my friend, doodled on the front. Theme : Funky Owl and the pussy cat 

It contains all the songs I am currently obsessed with.

Track list : 

✓ The Backseat Arcade Fire

✓ Ever Fallen In Love   The Buzzcocks

✓ She Waits For Me Cinema Bizarre

✓ She Sells Sanctuary The Cult

✓ Down By The Water The Drums

✓ Altered Images - Dont Talk To Me About Love

✓ Fiction Factory - Feels Like Heaven

✓ Find The Colour Feeder

✓ Spaceman      The Killers

✓ You Really Got Me The Kinks

✓ Dog Train Levellers

✓ My Girl Madness

✓ Dream About Me Moby

✓ New Jersey Television Red Light Company

✓ You're My Star Stereophonics

✓ With A Girl Like You The Troggs

✓ Elenore The Turtles

✓ Hitchin' A Ride Vanity Fare

✓ Buddy Holly Weezer

✓ Size of a Cow The Wonderstuff

The Bookworm

I saw an image of this painting and I really liked it. It has no particular social or political message as far as I know, and yet it made me feel something. Perhaps that's just due to the skill in the painting itself, it's very rare for a painting to really make me feel something... except for disgust as most modern art achieves. I hate art to shock, if you aren't skilled enough to create something great, or clever enough to make a comment about the world in which we live, do us all a favour and don't give it a go at all. There are far too many pieces out there which are simply designed to shock, the kind of pieces which are covered in phallic drawings or swear words. It sickens me. This piece puts them all to shame simply due to it's brilliance. Not the greatest piece I have ever seen in my life, but I am quite fond of it. 

A piece by Carl Spitzweg entitled 'The Bookworm' (1850).  In many of Spitzweg's paintings (including this one) he explores human eccentricities, in this case an over enthusiastic love for books. The lighting is brilliant, and wouldn't we all love to have a massive library? I wouldn't mind adding in sliding ladders across the bookcases such as the ones Ikea sells. Then you could do bookcase racing!

Today's Drawings - Bournemouth Town Center

My latest project is location drawing, which means adventuring wherever and sketching whatever, woop woop! Got a call from my good chum Sarah. She suggested going to Bournemouth gardens, so after posting a few ebay items I trekked out to the bus stop and made my bumpy journey to meet her. Drew a few people I saw on the bus...

There were a lot of foreign folk about. I was sat on the floor sketching and a group of students from dubai came over to chat, and get photos with me? Well it was quite funny, though I did make Sarah join, I didn't fancy being the only 'local' they got for their holiday snaps! Also chatted to a man from Holland, I suppose if you're sketching you must not be a weirdo... as people feel free to approach?

Headed to a cafe for hot drinks to revitalise us and sat by the window drawing people, though it didn't last long, I was more concerned with my millionaire shortbread to be honest.

Drew Sarah a few times too on the bus into Kinson territory. She has a very cool hat.

Not such great drawings today, not so keen on the one of Rosie's sofa, still it was good to get some work done, so it actually looks like I have done something!!

Technology CD case project

For my first project doing illustration we had to create a CD cover which included 10 illustrations though I ended up doing quite a few more. We were also encouraged to include as many extra freebies like posters etc. I decided to include a key ring, and stitched illustrations of older technologies. These could then be hung to make bunting, or simply hung up (on a string provided in the book) to create a shabby sort of steam punk atmosphere. I had great fun working on this project, though it ended up a little messier then I would have liked. I embroided the cover by hand, and cut up a book to fit the case and what not.

The front cover with hand embroided penny farthing, old style bicycle lamp and radio microphone

Back of the book, hand embroided fruit machine and kettle

This illustration is to act as a guide, the textile pieces are meant to be hung. This embroidery is of a telegram receiver.

Often in stitch work the back of the piece is just as interesting as the front so I made cut outs within my modified book so both sides of the stitch are visible. This next stitch illustration is of a fruit machine.

I tried to create frames which would suit each of the objects they surrounded. I really enjoyed making up new designs, the black ink did smudge sadly, though the book has a bit of a scruffy aesthetic to it anyway so I don't think this hindered my piece too much.

I made a simple knot button keyring as a 'freebie' to go along with the cd case. 

I had a few other embroideries which I attached into the book, they sit along side tags which can be removed from the book and hung up along side the previous stitch works.

The final pages. The necklace and string to the side can be used to hang up the enclosed tags and stitched illustrations, to create 'bunting'.

The CD is held in place with a watch (sadly it was broken when I bought it)

The cover is of a bridge and the cd itself has drawings of a car and penny farthing, so when the cd is placed in the case the vehicles sort of look like they are passing over the bridge. 

The tea stained illustrated disk.