Hannah F.B. illustration and other thoughts

students

2012-02-08T13:08:00.000Z

It's been a little busy lately so I apologise for a lack of posts! You may remember that some time ago I posted an extract from my student living guide that I wrote for my good friend Lily (which you can read here). I had intended to publish more of it on my blog, but subsequently forgot all about it until recently, so today I wanted to share a little more of it with you. Today, I'll be sharing with you one of my student-friendly recipes (there's no haute cuisine in this book I'm afraid) and also my 'kitchen cleanliness' survival guide. I apologise if these recipes sound a little patronising, but I wanted to make them easy to follow for my student friends!

Spaghetti with meatballs for ~~dummies~~ lovely students

"Ordinarily, I would view using pre-rolled meatballs as pretty lazy, but because this is a student recipe (and sometimes we like to be lazy) I would recommend getting your hands on some pre-rolled meatballs. You can usually buy these quite easily from most supermarkets. Spaghetti is a nice variation from having a lot of that student classic, penne pasta.
With this recipe I’ll try to advise a method that caters for one person - if you have some pasta sauce around, use half a jar, if not there is always the option of using some home made pasta sauce with a can of tomatoes, a bit of olive oil and some garlic. But we are feeling lazy, remember?
If you can only buy a bigger pack of meatballs from the supermarket than you need you can always keep them frozen and take a few out of the pack and defrost as needed.

Ingredients
Enough spaghetti for one person (to measure this, hold the pasta between your thumb and index finger, it should be about the size of a 10p piece – if it looks a bit small, remember that it’ll get bigger when you cook it but if you’re feeling hungry just ignore me and bung in a bit more. If your eyes were bigger than your stomach you can always keep it in the fridge.)
Pinch of salt
5 or 6 meatballs
A small white onion
Half a jar of pasta sauce/batch of home made sauce
Garlic bread to serve

1. Grab enough meatballs for your meal from the freezer and make sure they are defrosted.
2. Chop up your onion into small pieces.
3. Fill and boil the kettle. Pour the water into a pan and get it onto the hob on a medium heat. Get the water boiling and put in a little salt. Turn down the heat a little and lower in the spaghetti, and still holding the top gently push it into the water until it starts to bend. Using a wooden spoon or spatula (not your hands dear, nobody wants burnt fingers) try and push the rest of the spaghetti down into the water so that it’s all covered. Turn the water down to a simmer.
3. Put a frying pan or wok on the hob on a fairly high heat. Pop the meatballs in and get them frying. Once the meatballs are nearly nice and brown, drain off most of the excess fat and then put the onions into the pan with the meatballs to finish frying.
4. Remember that spaghetti you put in earlier? Check on its progress – you can test this by taking a piece of spaghetti and biting through it – if there’s still a white dot in the middle of the strand it needs a bit more time. Have a little rant to yourself about how annoying it is to pick up a single strand of spaghetti without it slipping off the spoon.
5. When the onions are a little bit brown, take the frying pan/wok off the heat. By now your spaghetti ought to be done too.
6. Drain the spaghetti and put it back in the pan. Mix in your choice of sauce and put it back on the heat to warm it through. Keep it moving, remember – burnt on spaghetti is hard to wash off a pan especially when you don’t have a dishwasher!
7. Stir in the meatballs and onions, and take off the heat. Serve it with a bit of garlic bread if you're feeling fancy."

Keeping tidy (or how to stay calm when the kitchen is filthy)

"Oh, kitchens. In student houses they tend to be a haven of joy and filth in equal measure.

Our second year house was particularly notorious for its messy kitchen, it's never easy when flatmates enjoy adventurous meals and do not enjoy cleaning. Oh fun. Here are a few tips to help you keep your head and your friends whilst not being infected by your own house:

• Before you start cooking a meal, make sure you have a clean kitchen. If you can’t be bothered to do this (or you have too much work to do, of course) at least make sure you have a big enough clean bit of work surface to put all your stuff on in amongst the monumental piles of other people’s dishes.

• People will eventually do things in their own time, even my flatmates did their dishes eventually. If the same mess is in the kitchen for an excessive amount of time, it’s better to talk to your flatmates about it than to let your annoyance fester – trust me! If you have anger bubbling away it will tend to come out in a more destructive way. It’s not worth falling out over.

• This might sound a little patronising and not very fun, but if someone spills a really sticky drink whilst playing whatever drinking game is en vogue in student world it’s best to give it a quick wipe before you go out and get hammered as it will be pretty nasty to tackle the next day with your surface spray, a sponge and a stinking hangover. (not that I am condoning this behaviour in any way, naturally).

• Don’t let stuff rot in your fridge. If you have made things with half a jar of sauce or half a tin of tomatoes make sure you use them! Not only is it annoying and wasteful to have to throw lots of stuff out because you forgot about it, it’s not nice to have things festering especially if you are sharing a fridge. If you are sharing a fridge and something is rotting away that isn't yours - i.e. if it’s green and it’s not meant to be green - then throw it away! I'm sure they wouldn’t mind (unless they’re doing some kind of strange mould science degree in which case you might want to ask them not to keep their assignments in your communal fridge!).

• Before you make a meal make sure you have a clean pan to cook in and a clean plate to eat from. Also, make sure you have a clean knife and fork. Sounds silly, right? Not necessarily - I couldn’t tell you how many times my lovely meal had to sit going cold for ten minutes while I played the 'search the abyss for a fork' game, and sometimes I had to wander into the living room to find one to wash from three days ago! (It wasn’t that filthy, promise).

• If you are cooking with mince or something that has a lot of fat in it, don’t be tempted to pour hot fat down the sink! Pour it into an empty jar or tin can (not something made of plastic as that will melt) and throw it in the bin when it has cooled down instead, as if the fat solidifies in the u-bend you’ve got yourself a blocked sink, and you don’t want to give yourself another reason not to do the washing up now do you?

• If using a grill pan line the bottom of it with foil – trust me, it’s much easier to scrunch that up and throw it away than it is to spend hours scrubbing a year’s worth of collective fat out of it the day before you move out. (I know this personally, sigh.)

• Every few months or so, if you have your own personal cupboard with food in have a quick check in there that nothing is going off. I didn’t think to do this for quite some time, and I had accumulated a few half full boxes of cereal that I had decided I didn’t like any more (I know, reckless right...).

• The most important thing is, if the kitchen is filthy and you just can’t bear to look at the dishes anymore, don’t go storming in there like a crazy person and doing it all on your own - it's not fair on you. If nobody is around and you really can’t face it, then do it, but it shouldn’t be left to one person to do. It’s a hard situation to deal with - living with so many people, you must respect the way that they choose to live. If they are messy they won’t be easily changed – but equally, they must respect that you want to live cleanly. Compromise is the key to not falling out with each other. (I am assuming here that you want to live cleanly - if you feel like being a little bit of a pig then by all means do it, but prepare to eat out of some unusual receptacles on the way.).

wreckage

2012-01-09T22:02:00.001Z

Today I am posting to quickly share with you a sideline project I have started - it's all based on Keri Smith's Wreck This Journal, a project designed to stimulate creative tomfoolery and thinking outside the box (or in this case book!)

I've started another blog (don't worry I won't neglect you!) called Wreck This Journey, as a place to document my creative processes in the journal without having to fill this blog with photos of me throwing a book around my town! I launched the blog today, and I hope to keep it fairly active with its antics.

In regards to this blog, I hope to get some exciting new work up here very soon, keep your eyes peeled! :)

veal

2012-01-04T12:28:00.003Z

A couple of months ago I posted about a piece I did for a collaborative project called 'The Big Skull Collab' (which you can read here), a new initiative by illustrator James Fenwick. Well I'm excited to reveal that the project has progressed and the images from the collaboration have now been put together to create Veal - an online creative zine!
It was so great to get the opportunity to get my work involved in this project and get seen alongside some other great illustrators (my good friend Natasha Aldred also has her skull piece in the zine).

You can view the zine here (my piece is on page 10, and Natasha's is on page 20!). I look forward to working on further collabs. Here's a reminder of my piece.

final

2011-12-31T18:13:00.001Z

So it's the last day of 2011, and the new year is on the horizon. It's been an amazing and dull year simultaneously, with my graduation happening and then... not a lot else. Next year it's time to get me some serious move on, and get myself back into working and hopefully starting to forge myself a decent career.

For now, as a final goodbye to 2011, I thought I'd share with you the labels I did for my Christmas presents. It's a combination of my favourite things - victorian type, painting with gouache and food! These were printed on sticky paper and put onto gift bags.

The truffles I made were all eaten too quickly for me to take a good photo, but I can now reveal their lovely fillings as everyone has received their gifts. The first two fillings were taken from Hope & Greenwood's recipe book and I gave them some festive names.

Happy New Year to all my readers and I will see you in 2012!

R + J

2011-12-26T16:49:00.003Z

A late Merry Christmas to you all! And a happy Boxing Day to my Brit readers. Today I wanted to share with you a gift I made for my friend Lily (the recipient of my home made Hogwarts letter) for her Christmas present. She adores the works of Shakespeare and I happen to know that this was one of her favourite quotes - "Did my heart love 'till now? Forswear it, sight! For I ne'er saw true beauty 'till this night" from Romeo and Juliet. I have also wanted to do a typographical poster for some time, so this seemed like the perfect opportunity. I wanted to keep it a mix of my typical favourite victorian style typography (which in this case I designed from scratch) and a calligraphy style type. I also included a surface pattern behind (the one I blogged before Christmas) and I chose roses as they are also referenced in the play (a rose by any other name, you know the line!)

I gave Lily the blue and white version of the print, which was only a print thanks to my great fellow illustrator friend Kat who kindly let me use her A3 printer! (She is simply fabulous, her blog is here check her out). The pink version of the poster below however still doesn't have a home, though I might put it into my portfolio if nobody takes a shine to it soon. Hope you like it guys!

(and here's a sample of the type up close)

patterns

2011-12-08T16:40:00.000Z

Good afternoon! I've been working hard on a little secret project today but I wanted to share a little bit of surface pattern I was working on too. I do love drawing flowers so I drew a few roses from some photos I took a few years ago and put them together. I adore my dip pen today!

truffles

2011-12-07T16:04:00.001Z

Today I've been doing a little bit of painting pictures of food (no change there then) ready for some of my Christmas gifts. I had a go at making truffles (sorry if you are getting these and your surprise is spoilt) so I needed some images of them for the... I suppose you'd call it a chocolate menu? The fillings guide!

I found that making chocolates from scratch was actually pretty fun and not as insanely hard as I thought. I made a traditional style ganache truffle as well as two others with unique fillings.

The recipes for the unusual fillings were from a book by the rather fabulous Hope & Greenwood that my brother got for me for my birthday last year, and beside the sumptuous recipes the actual writing in there is worth buying the book for alone - a very witty style that kept me entertained whilst endlessly dipping chocolates! You can find the book here (it also features some fantastic photography and lovely fifties style illustrations. It's basically the kind of book I would design if I were a publisher!)

Here's some sneak previews of the actual chocolates - don't look, friends! The stars I used on the white truffles are Dr Oetker and you can get them from most good supermarkets or online here. I got the edible red glitter from a specialist baking shop in my local town but I found some online here if you'd like to experiment!

I won't tell you what's in these - I shall save that until after Christmas!

Update: Now that Christmas is over I can share with you the finished 'choccy menu', complete with details of the chocolate fillings...

quizlet

2011-12-06T23:19:00.001Z

Just a quick one today to share a poster design with you all that I worked on this evening. My dad is running the local pub charity quiz in a few weeks and wanted a little advertising so I thought I would step in! I have been feeling very Christmassy of late and got a little bit excited searching for typefaces, as I had to get this done quite fast and didn't have time to draw out my own font for a change! The festive type I used here is from this website though it's not entirely the same as the designer intended as I did edit out parts of the original type design. The candlelit background is some collage paper that I scanned in, I think it might be by papermania. Overall I was going for the whole Tom Smith's crackers victorian postcard style aesthetic. Hope you like it!

Angel

2011-12-05T22:50:00.001Z

Tomorrow I am off to paint my third mural, and so I thought I would share with you some photos of the second one I did a few months ago. This is my interpretation of my customer's request to have 'an angel flying above a magical garden'. She had a look at some books and liked Pre-Raphealite styles (good taste that girl) so I opted for quite a traditional looking angel, and went for yellows and golds to offset the lilac walls. The garden is a mixture of different flowers, and I put in some bunny ears in the lower right corner as she loves rabbits. Tomorrow I'm doing a smaller piece (this one is about 12ft wide in total) which will be butterflies and a big flower. I'm quite enjoying this as a sideline of work, though so far I have only done girl's paintings, can't imagine what'll happen when I start doing paintings for boys!

Shall post some pictures tomorrow.

festive

2011-12-01T21:58:00.001Z

Hello everyone! Happy December to you all, hope you have all started your festive countdowns with chocolate today in the same way I have!

Just managed to get some last minute entries into a competition I found through the magic of twitter. The Design Museum and the House of Illustration have collaborated and are looking for festive illustrations to light up their "Sparkle the Dark Up" event, which will be projected onto the side of the building in all their festive glory! So I decided to put together some of my festive packaging images into some entries. To look at some of the other entries get over to their flickr page.

hello! #5

2011-11-27T17:50:00.001Z

Hello! Another quick telephone post to brighten up your Sundays. I saw in a magazine last week that telephones are everywhere in interior design supposedly - looks like I accidentally hit a trend! Soon I plan on making some of these little phones available as postcards or greetings - please comment or get in touch if you think that's a good idea or something you'd be interested in!

This little baby has a kind of 40s Gatsby kinda kick. Enjoy.

hello! #4

2011-11-17T21:37:00.000Z

I thought that I might as well post this seeing as I had finished it. My fourth lovely telephone. This time I went for a lovely retro Trimphone in an elegant khaki style green. Complete with matching wallpaper. Lovely.

hello! #3

2011-11-17T17:42:00.001Z

I thought my last blog post was uncharacteristically wordy so I wanted to publish some more illustration.

So here it is: a third little illustration for my mini series of telephones. This time I opted for an old fashioned edwardian-ish phone complete with eau de nile colour and gold coloured finishings. Fancy.

Pre-Raphaelites - Manchester Gallery & Lady Lever Gallery

2011-11-16T16:09:00.001Z

Yesterday I went on a Pre-Raphaelite tour of the north - Manchester Art Gallery and Lady Lever gallery at Port Sunlight. It was a fantastic (though long!) day and I ended up getting much more out of the day than I had expected! Here's my potted review of the galleries...

The first stop was Manchester, for the Manchester Art Gallery and in particular their exhibition "Ford Madox Brown - Pre-Raphaelite Pioneer". I had no idea how central the gallery was when we drove through to the heart of the city, and it is a very impressive sight even though it is stuck in amongst more modern buildings.

Their permanent collection of Pre-Raphaelites is an impressive one, displaying some of the finest examples of the movement ranging from The Light of the World by William Holman Hunt to Arthur Hughes' Ophelia. These paintings are definitely worth visiting and seeing face to face, as the vibrancy of colour used particularly by Hunt must be seen to be believed.

The Light of the World by William Holman Hunt. You can see here why you need to see it in the flesh -this does it no justice!

Arthur Hughes' Ophelia. This also has a lovely frame that is worth seeing (!)

I was only just getting over the brilliance of the collection in the room I was in, only to go through and see an even more impressive selection. I had not anticipated walking into a room and being met by Waterhouse's Hylas and the Nymphs, as well as Rossetti's The Bower Meadow - it was a fantastic surprise! These two images are two of my all-time favourite paintings, and it was amazing to see them in the flesh, particularly to appreciate the level of detail that goes into the works. (If you like me are a fan of Waterhouse's Nymphs and Rossetti in general, similar paintings including Dante's Dream by Rossetti and Narcissus by Waterhouse are at the Walker Gallery in Liverpool).

The Bower Meadow by Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Hylas and the Nymphs by John William Waterhouse

We then went to look at the main event exhibition, devoted to the artist Ford Madox Brown. It was a fascinating exhibit (appropriately sponsored by Farrow & Ball, which for some reason entertained me greatly when glancing around at the muted exhibition wall colours) and had an impressive collection of his pieces including the astoundingly detailed piece Work, painted between 1852-63. The painting is supported by a collection of preliminary sketches and roughs which really help the viewer to understand the painstaking work that goes into such an elaborate painting. Also in this exhibition were sketches from other famous paintings, designs for stained glass windows produced alongside William Morriss and a number of other famous works including Pretty Baa Lambs and The Last of England.

I myself wasn't as impressed with the Ford Madox Brown exhibition as others, not because it was an unsatisfactory exhibit at all, but because I had seen one or two of the works before. As a Birmingham girl, I have visited the BM&AG (Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery) many times, which is where many of the pieces for the exhibit had been borrowed from, so it felt a little familiar at times. However, this doesn't take away the impact that pieces like Work and The Last of England have on the viewer, and it made me even more enthusiastic about enjoying the pieces that were not from the BM&AG including the window designs, family sketches (his sketches of his sons as babies are amazing, don't walk past them they're right in the corner!) and Brown's entry to a commission competition to paint a patriotic mural in London.

The Last of England by Ford Madox Brown

Work by Ford Madox Brown

The Manchester Gallery also houses a fine collection of paintings by one of Manchester's pioneer artists, L.S. Lowry, as well as collections of paintings from the 17th and 18th centuries, including works by renowned artists Gainsborough, Reynolds and Stubbs.

Our next stop was a little drive to Port Sunlight, the purpose built village that housed the factories and workers of the Sunlight Soap company. Inside this spectacular village is housed the Lady Lever Gallery, a memorial gallery to the wife of William Hesketh Lever, founder of the Sunlight Soap company. This gallery houses another collection of PreRaphaelite painting, which is arguably even more impressive than those in Manchester. There was one painting in particular I knew that was here, which I had determined to see ever since first seeing a copy of it in print - The Scapegoat, by Holman Hunt.

I was not disappointed. On entry to the first room, it is just to the right and has all the dazzling impact I had expected. Ok, so it's a painting of a goat, but still! It's what is behind the goat that I am interested in - the amazing colours of the far eastern landscape that were so truthfully captured by Hunt, and the incredible attention to detail.

The Scapegoat by William Holman Hunt. This definitely needs to be viewed in the flesh, just look at his little face... but seriously, this does it no justice!

After this initial viewing I thought it wouldn't get much better, and for a while it didn't - Bubbles is on the wall in the area to the right of The Scapegoat, an image that is impressive but that I am not overly fond of. However, in the room on the opposite side of the building there are so many of my favourite paintings it was hard to decide which one to stare at for the longest! Rosetti's The Blessed Damozel needs to be visited in person just so that you can behold the incredible frame it is housed in; The Beguiling of Merlin by Edward Burne Jones is so beautiful that no print image can truly do it justice; equally The Tree of Forgiveness by Edward Burne Jones is quite breathtaking; and the attention to detail in May Morning on Magdalen Tower by Holman Hunt, a painting I had not even seen in print before, was incredibly rich and full of bright light.

The Blessed Damozel by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, a work that was completed in sync with this poem also by DG Rossetti.

The Beguiling of Merlin by Edward Burne Jones

The Tree of Forgiveness by Edward Burne Jones. It is worth going to gallery to read the beautiful story behind this painting alone, let alone to see it in real life.

May Morning on Magdalen Tower by William Holman Hunt

By this point I was all Pre-Raphaelited out - it truly was a brilliant collection. Also housed in the gallery are (what I would call less interesting but equally awe-inspiring) other collections, including a small collection of pieces by Reynolds, an entire collection of pottery by Josiah Wedgwood including an imposing Wedgwood fireplace, and a large collection of (apparently historically important) Greek urns.

All in all, I did not go home disappointed, and I highly recommend a visit to these galleries if like me you are a Pre-Raphaelite fan. I also feel it is worth mentioning that both of the art galleries are free entry, so even if you are a bit poor like I am at the moment you can be inspired by art.

Manchester Art Gallery is open Tuesday - Sunday, 10am - 5pm. Free entry.
"Ford Madox Brown - Pre-Raphaelite Pioneer" runs until 29th January 2021 and entry is £8. (Free to under 18s).
The Lady Lever Gallery is open daily, 10am - 5pm. Free entry.

(Copyright of images to their respective galleries and owners, of course, as they are clearly not mine!)

hello! #2

2011-11-13T22:33:00.001Z

Second instalment of my new mini series of illustrations. I really did enjoy drawing this Hamburger phone.

hello!

2011-11-13T19:36:00.001Z

Just a quick post to share one of the things I have been working on recently. I have always loved drawing little random objects, and since one of my meetings in New York when I was advised that this is one of my strong points, I decided to stick with it. I've started working on a short series of spot illustrations (can you guess the theme?) and this is the first in the set. I might use these for a more constructive purpose in the future but for now...

hello!

festive

2011-11-03T16:43:00.001Z

Hand drawn Christmas holly themed typography

Continuing on the theme of being way too prepared for Christmas, I wanted to share with you a little of the work I've been doing on my own gifts ready for the big festive season. I designed a Christmas-themed font for all of the different elements of my gifts, and have been busy designing labels for different things just to give my gifts a more personal edge. I can never get away from my love of Typography so this was the perfect chance to get some festive designs ready.

(Anyone reading this who I will be giving the following gift to - I hope this doesn't spoil the fun when you receive yours! it tastes good, trust me I've tried it!)

Handmade Mincemeat in personalised jars

This year I decided to make my own mincemeat, as I have often wondered if it would be really that difficult. Turns out it's not, at all! I opted for our national treasure Delia Smith's recipe which can be found here. Then I simply customised the jars with Christmassy fabric, print out labels and festive ribbon.

Skull

2011-11-02T16:58:00.001Z

Recently I have been working on a submission for 'The Big Skull Collab' over at this blog. I found out about the project through twitter (of which mine you can follow here should you want to) from the good people at Illustration Rally who shared the link a few weeks ago. I sent my entry in yesterday and so I thought I would share it with you here (hoping I'm not sharing it with you too early!). The skull itself was illustrated by James Fenwick, the illustrator who started the collaboration, and the rest was all me - I wanted to go with the whole candy-land gingerbread theme I have been painting recently (you may notice a recognisable gingerbread man has snuck his way into this piece) as I found that it had been inspiring me. It's kind of crazy and a little bit overwhelming but I wanted it to be crazy detailed! and I think it'll be pretty different to all the other entries. If you are interested in submitting something for this collaboration there is still 9 days left before it closes and you can get more information from the Dead Fuzz blog.

Will continue with this theme for another few projects hopefully, and I will soon be starting something type-based that will hopefully be very exciting, so keep your eyes peeled!

*edit 9th Nov* Just a quick addition to this post - if you'd like to see my fabulous friend Natasha Aldred's submission to this competition go here, it's a wonderful blog!

gingerbread

2011-10-15T22:14:00.001+01:00

Ok, ok, I know. It's not 'the C word' *ahem*Christmas*ahem* for another ten weeks or so. However, I have been dabbling in a little early Christmas spirit as I have been designing for parts of my personalised presents that I will be giving out to family and friends this year. I have been having fun with paint again (hooray!) and going back to my old favourite of food. These paintings were so much fun, I particularly loved doing the gingerbread house. I also designed the snowflake pattern in the background of these images. I got the colour scheme of the pattern from something I did last year for the They Draw and Cook holiday recipe contest.

I hope to go back to painting food for some of my promo material that I will be working on next, so watch this space! Maybe in a few days I will post some slightly more appropriate seasonal material and do a pumpkin or something? who knows.

Gingerbread men and candy canes. yuuum.

Gingerbread house - I hope the one I make this year looks this good...

quotes

2011-10-11T11:53:00.001+01:00

Hello again. I am posting today because I made a to do list, and when making this list I realised that I still haven't posted a photo of my page in the UCF Book of Illustrated Quotes and Sayings. So here goes! I purchased my copy from our final degree show private view, but you can get yours if you would like one from Amazon here once they are back in stock. All the illustrators that are in here can be seen on the Agency website. Not only is it a great collection of illustration it would help toward the students that are currently studying there to make their book. Ok, plug over.

I'm also working on various projects relating to Christmas (early argh) but you will get to see some of them very soon hopefully. I'm off to cross the first thing off my list!

wightwick

2011-10-10T16:57:00.000+01:00

Just a quick post today. Been busy buzzing around to London and back last week so I couldn't post, hopefully some exciting promo stuff inspired by that trip coming up soon. But in the meantime, today I was working on another chalkboard design, this time for the 'malthouse' tearoom at Wightwick Manor in Wolverhampton, an amazing mid 19th Century mock-Tudor building that was once home to the enterprising Mander family. If you, like me, love Pre-Raphaelite art and the Arts and Crafts movement, it's definitely worth a visit as they have loads of amazing William Morris patterns and a few pretty incredible drawings by Rossetti.

Wightwick Manor, Wolverhampton

Anyway, the tearoom there was in need of a large display board for the wall so I offered my type skills for the job. I kept the main body of the type as close to the National Trust's standard font as I could by hand, but the main title was inspired by an old book I once got from the Falmouth uni library about Victorian typefaces. It'll be up there in the tearoom some time this week I believe!

survival

2011-09-23T19:36:00.000+01:00

Recently I have been working on a booklet as a gift for my friend (illustrated above!) who has just moved into her first student house. The main reason I wanted to write this booklet for her was that I was aware she was moving into a house with seven other people, something which I experienced during my second year of university. I remembered how hard it could be to live in a normal sized house but with so many people and I wanted to share the knowledge I had gained from this experience.

I also knew that, as she admitted herself, she wasn't the greatest culinary whizz, so I also included several recipes and useful tips to get her started. To make the book special I decided to do some quick, light hearted little spot illustrations to brighten up the pages.

After presenting her with the book yesterday I have decided now that it's no longer a secret to share a little extract with you all - and the section I have chosen to share is the list of useful utensils you'll need in your student kitchen. I hope any fresh students that are reading this find it useful, and I also hope that any not so fresh students agree from their own experience that my advice is informative!

Useful stuff to have in your kitchen

"In a student kitchen there only needs to be a few utensilsto make your life easier. I start this list with one piece of advice – unlessyour flatmates are wonderful and all use their own personal plate, make sureyou have one clean plate before you cook as there is nothing worse than havingto wash a plate to eat from when your lovely meal is all ready and going cold. Thefollowing bits of kit will make it easier to make my recipes as well as othersimple staple meals.

A wok - Thisis the perfect pan for a student kitchen. Not only is a good wok useful forfrying things such as onions or mince, it can also be used as a pan so thateverything you do can all be in one pot – and that means less washing up!

A good knife – if you’re cooking meals from scratch it’sa good idea to have one good knife to chop all your vegetables and meat –though don’t forget to clean it before and after washing chicken.

A chopping board – for all that chopping of course.If you can get a plastic one that would be good – but a wooden one is perfectlyfine, just make sure you wash it quickly after chopping chicken.

A colander – good for draining your endless meals ofpasta! You can also use a sieve for this if you don’t have a colander. A colander also makes a brilliant robot hat for those freshers parties.

A measuring jug – how else are you going to makegravy my darling?

A good can opener – for the days when you want toignore my recipes and get out a can of beans and miniature sausages.

A potato peeler – for that yummy mashed potato thatwe all know and love.

A slotted spoon – good for serving your peas andgetting pasta out of the pan to check if it’s done.

A cheese grater – because buying pre-grated cheese issimply on the unacceptable side of laziness.

Other useful things that are fairly obvious are – a goodwooden spoon, a decent set of cutlery, a mixing bowl, a spare bowl (so you canput the leftovers in the fridge for the next day) and if you don’t have a wok Irecommend a decent saucepan and a good frying pan."

Hope you enjoyed my little snapshot of my booklet, I might post a recipe from it in the next few days.

bakery

2011-09-22T13:35:00.000+01:00

It's been a bit of a large break in between blogs at the moment as I have been working on lots of different things. Today though, I can reveal something I have been cooking up 'Willy Wonka' style for my friend Amber's 18th birthday. A few months ago, she found an image of a rainbow cake and asked me if I thought it was possible to make - so I decided to make one for her birthday. I settled on a brilliant recipe from a blog called The Whisk Kid, whose recipe was not only fantastically written and easy to follow, but the photographs were to die for! So much so that it made me want to be a food photographer for a long time after I read this recipe...

Anyway, I managed to get some Sugarflair gel food colouring from a brilliant local shop called Angel Cake (which you can also get online at places like this) and after two days of mixing with six separate wooden spoons and icing with a massive spatula, I arrived at the cake. Here's a few pictures of my progress (sorry for the quality, ridiculously bright cake batter and camera lenses don't mix!)

Part of the mixing process - it's a good job our kitchen is heavily overstocked when it comes to bowls and wooden spoons!

The finished cake - I opted for a lilac buttercream over a white crumb coating to hide the cake's gloriously colourful centre.

The offcuts of the trimming process demonstrate how bright the final product was!

I presented the cake to her this morning in a custom cakebox, with a logo on the lid that I designed myself (above) so that she has something of the epic cake to keep once she has eaten it all. I even managed to sneak a piece of cake for myself and managed to get a couple of better quality photos for you.

Happy 18th Birthday Amber!

feminine

2011-08-28T13:15:00.000+01:00

These are my final entries that I posted to the Tigerprint feminine photography competition last week. Unfortunately I didn't win (I don't think my images were pink enough perhaps!) and so I thought I would share them with you here. They are running another competition at the moment to call for floral photos. Taking photos of flowers is something I tend to do quite a lot for some reason so I hope I'm in with a better chance for the next one!

Seeing as I think I'll be kind of bored/lonely over the next few months I am also going to be working on some more personal projects and hopefully working on getting some freelance illustration work. Gotta keep entering those competitions though!

teatime

2011-08-15T00:25:00.001+01:00

Today I was working on a photoshoot for a competition brief based on femininity that I found through twitter. I had a few ideas for different shoots, and these photos are the ones that didn't make the cut (I'll share the ones that did once the competition closes!). The idea behind these was a 1950s retro feminine feel, through the cups and saucers and my mother's newly acquired 1957 Kenwood Chef mixer - oh is she proud of it! I really enjoyed doing this shoot today, I've always enjoyed still life photography and it kind of made me want to join a props department! Enjoy the photos, shall upload more soon.

playtime

2011-08-12T12:35:00.001+01:00

Here's a bit of fun I have been working on partly to entertain myself and partly to send to the hand drawn typography rally at the Illustration Rally blog. I went ahead and sent it over but now I'm not sure I should have right away, hoping they don't think I am presumptuous! Anyway, I had a bit of time to work on this as I lost out on the job I was hoping to get last week (sad). But, I have found a few competitions and open submissions I can enter so it's looking pretty good. Enjoy the playtime lettering!

play

2011-08-06T17:44:00.000+01:00

A small sample from the project I'm currently working on. More to come!

Lanhydrock

2011-08-04T23:00:00.000+01:00

So it's been a little busy recently - have been up and down and across the country on trips to Ogmore-by-sea, Falmouth and Brighton so it's been rather quiet on the illustration front. I recently uploaded some old photos from my camera that I forgot about (whoops) so this blog will contain a few of those instead.

British bluebells coating Lanhydrock's grounds

The bluebells covering the forest floor

A wider view of the grounds

One of my favourite National Trust houses here in the UK is Lanhydrock, a stunning house with a rich history. It's particularly stunning in Spring, as many of its acres are bathed in bluebells at this time, which is what inspired me to take these photos when I was there in April of this year. I highly recommend a visit to this property, especially during the Spring and Summer months.

A short blog this time as I have a few projects lined up, but in the hope of not jinxing them I shall update when I have more certain news.

Potter

2011-07-21T18:59:00.000+01:00

Just a quick post to share these new images! I assume most of you know about that little phenomenon Harry Potter that has taken over the world this past week. In the spirit of creating some new illuminated letters I decided to create some Harry Potter themed images, each letter representing the Hogwarts house - each letter includes the house animal, colours and the associated item. Hope you enjoy!

Type

2011-07-10T15:54:00.002+01:00

So I managed to get some more of my illuminated letters of Fairytales done this weekend, and I focused on Rapunzel and Little Red Riding Hood. I thought I would present them in a slightly different way, so here they are - hope you like them. I think Rapunzel is my favourite, due to the big sun behind her! I will be working on the Harry Potter themed ones soon, as this week is looking rather busy! Hoping to update my website some time in the future as well if I can sort out my hosting.

happy

2011-07-08T19:22:00.003+01:00

So I have a few things to share today! Firstly, on Wednesday I went to the amazing New Designers show in Angel, London. My work was (and still is until tomorrow night) on show at the University College Falmouth stands (VC9+10) among some of the best new graduate work in the UK. It was a fantastic experience to meet other new graduates and interesting people in the industry, in particular illustrators who have been working already for a year and have become successful. The show is open until the end of tomorrow so if you are in Angel you should definitely go and have a look!

At the show I also spoke to the person behind the unique website ArtsThread, a place for new graduates to put up a small selection of their portfolio in order to connect with commissioning business and people in the industry. It was a great chat and the site is a fantastic opportunity, you can view my ArtsThread portfolio here.

The image above is something I prepared for the ArtsThread portfolio to showcase my typographic skills, something which I will be posting about again soon hopefully! I've nearly finished sorting my life out back home now, so I will definitely be getting some new work on the blog. I may also be embarking on the Tigerprints Gifted competition which launched at New Designers this week - keep your eye out!

100

2011-07-04T19:27:00.002+01:00

So welcome to my 100th blog post, how exciting. I moved back to the midlands on Thursday and it's been a seriously hectic few days. Just posting to show a few chalkboard menus I designed for some events we recently had at home, firstly for a French themed party and secondly for a meal at my mum's self initiated ladies' club, Fluff.

Hoping my French was accurate enough!

alphabet

2011-06-23T21:24:00.002+01:00

I have been working on a few things to improve my skill at hand rendered lettering. I have decided to create a small selection of letters based on children's stories, this one being Hansel and Gretel, in the victorian illuminated type style. I hope to create many more of these, and I'm also hoping to create some in celebration of one of my favourite books, Harry Potter. More to come of these letters soon!

lapse

2011-06-23T20:59:00.008+01:00

So it's been a month since I last posted, and I have lots of things to report. Firstly, I have put up my degree show and have finished all of my work! Our results came out on Tuesday and I got a 2:1, which I am really happy with. It hasn't quite sunk in that I will be leaving Falmouth this time next week, ready to join the wider world. It was also my birthday yesterday and I had a brilliant day thanks to my fab flatmates.

This amazing cake was lovingly made for me by my flatmates - Despite the appearance of it (and my cards actually) I was actually 22, not 7!

Another brilliant opportunity I had this week was to work with Natasha, a friend and colleague graduating from UCF this year from my course. She is an aspiring illustrator and photographer, and we decided to have an impromptu photoshoot around the theme of mimes. This is me posing on her bathroom floor! This was a really fun shoot and it was a great way of getting ourselves inspired to do more creative things with the freedom of this small amount of time left at university. Natasha has a brilliant website and for more of her photography you can visit her Facebook Fan page.

return

2011-05-23T23:53:00.006+01:00

Got back from New York City on Saturday evening! It was a tiresome and amazing experience. It felt so strange to see the city that is depicted in so many films and television programmes, it's almost odd to see that the city is even real. It's like visiting a place you saw in a dream and finding out that it's real. Cheesy right?

My highlights were: the Harry Potter exhibition in Discovery Times Square; John Leguizamo's one-man show Ghetto Klown at the Lyceum theatre (I LOVE him and it was hilarious); the NYC ballet performing Don Quixote; going to Serendipity3 for hot chocolate and cheesecake; and standing in the middle of Times Square looking at all of the skyscrapers. I have found a selection of the best of my 285 photos that I took while I was there, still need to scan in my disposable camera photos. (I got a fair few pictures of Coney Island on my disposable too, a place which I found haunting and really very depressing, the colourfulness seemed ironic somehow).

fisheye photos of Times Square

The most amazing café in New York! I highly reccommend it.

Skyscrapers behind Rockerfeller Center

fisheye of Rockerfeller and surrounding buildings

Fisheye of Rockerfeller Center (it was so tall that I had to use this filter to even get it in the frame)

The surprisingly amazing view from the window on the 11th floor at our hostel (westside YMCA)

Yellow cabs line up on Broadway

I really REALLY wanted a croissant in my hand. But I did not have one. Seeing it was enough to make me feel like Audrey herself though.

The street signs fascinate me!

A picture that captures the bustle of Broadway.

cool fire escapes.

More yellow taxis rush around Times Square.

In illustration terms, the feedback I got was... well, it was concise, to the point, and honest. Nobody is perfect. So I have a direction, or at least I think I do, in terms of what I should be doing and what I should ditch(!). I hope that at least for now it can lead me to a half decent end of degree show, and maybe a half decent mark to go with it.

New York, New York

2011-05-15T02:01:00.002+01:00

picture from here

It is 2am, and I am struggling to find things to do. In half an hour I will walk down the hill to the coach - the coach that is taking me to Heathrow, to the plane. That plane will touch down in JFK. I am going to New York.

I am literally hopping - I've got spotify on with Frank Sinatra singing about that big juicy Apple that I am about to bite into.

If you can't tell, I'M EXCITED! MY flatmates have gone to bed so I am singing to myself while I wait. I am looking forward to so many things, I have waited such a long time to go to this place that I am also beyond nervous. I have lots of post cards to write to my jealous but excited-for-me friends! We are going to see some great people in the industry to get some feedback on our portfolios to help us grow and give us a great end to our degree.

I am not however looking forward to the weather that is apparently going to pelt onto the city - hoping that mother nature can sort out the storms! It won't dampen the trip in any way though.

Sorry about the lack of illustration here as I have nothing new since finishing/printing my current portfolio. When I get back (and after I post literally a thousand photos on here) I will be preparing to do my final year show, so I will make sure I share that final experience.

How do you say see you next week in American? oh right

see you next week!

Gatsby

2011-05-10T19:10:00.002+01:00

And finally.

This is the last piece to go into my illustration portfolio all ready for our New York trip. This is a cover design for The Great Gatsby. I recently listened to the book on audiobook, read by Frank Muller, whose voice was so lovely to listen to and suited the story perfectly. I wanted to do the cover for this book particularly after hearing Fitzgerald's detailed descriptions of the characters, particularly Daisy whom I have represented on the cover itself. I did the whole book jacket for my portfolio, but I decided just to show the front here. I surprised myself with this one, because it doesn't stylistically match most of my portfolio but I think the pattern behind the skyline really helps to tie it in.

I'm getting excited about New York on Sunday, it's a little strange to think I will be there for a whole week, it still hasn't yet sunk in!

cover

2011-05-08T20:38:00.003+01:00

Just in the process of finishing a book cover for The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde. Struggling a bit really. The concept here is that the title itself and the frame within it are slowly decaying to represent Dorian's fall and inevitable destruction. Would love to hear what you think!

old

2011-05-07T12:10:00.002+01:00

Over the last few days I have been tweaking some of my old project work to get it looking a bit more presentable for my portfolio. This is the oldest piece that will be going in, it's a prospective poster design I did for the Edinburgh book festival. Originally it was just on a white background with some hand drawn type for the info as well as the letters themselves, but I decided to put in some set type to make it look a little more professional. Hoping it's good enough to go in the folder - I am off to get it printed some time this week so that it's ready to take to New York. Exciting!

cards

2011-05-04T19:07:00.004+01:00

I did a few designs for some business cards last night, and put in an order from moo.com. I am quite happy with them, I feel like they are reflecting where I'm at with my work at the moment, but I only ordered 50 just in case I feel like I have better things to show in the future. The informative side of the card (top image) was definitely a good exercise as it improved my non existent skills in using adobe illustrator!

packaging

2011-05-04T19:00:00.004+01:00

I decided to be a little more self-indulgent for my most recent project, in order to get something a little more personal into my portfolio ready for our New York visit in two weeks. This time I chose to do some packaging for traditional sweets. I used the themes of Victoriana and old-fashioned fairgrounds to evoke the feeling of old style sweet shops, and the fairground imagery hopefully brings to mind colourful innocence and fun. These images are intended to be labels that would sit on the front of candy-striped boxes, with the nutrition (!) information on the back. I'd love to hear what you think!

quote

2011-04-27T15:39:00.002+01:00

just uploading a section of my completed quote (this is for you hannah!). I'm actually surprised at how pleased I am with it, I got worried that it was totally not going to work and that I would hate it but I quite like how it's turned out. I think I've managed to bring together the important bits of how I work so that it shows me off well in the book.

2011-04-26T23:00:00.001+01:00

so near yet so far. must finish this!

tea

2011-04-24T20:06:00.003+01:00

Just a couple of the bits from my quote illustration, slowly trying to paint the separate pieces and build it all with the collage bits. Tricky!

Shakespeare

2011-04-23T22:46:00.001+01:00

Happy Birth (and death) day William Shakespeare.

typography

2011-04-22T16:42:00.004+01:00

Thought I would share with you some of the typography I have done for projects throughout my time at Falmouth. I always seem to get positive feedback on the way I hand draw my type and so I have put together a little list of my favourite ones. I have an idea for a type based illustration involving Shakespeare too so I hope this list can inspire me for that.

The type I draw is usually influenced by heavily decorated Victorian typefaces, and some of the 're-imaginings' here are directly from Victorian type. Others have more of a handwriting/script feel.

Close up of the Magic Garden font I designed for this poster

Victorian style type for my recipe at TheyDrawandCook

Reinterpretation of a Victorian font for a project about baking history

Handwriting style font I used for a poster

Handwriting with ink and capitals with light graffiti

Stencilled type for a poster for the Don't Panic Norwegian Wood competition

Traced ink type for an editorial for my good friend Camilla

Illuminated letters for a book festival poster

A victorian style font for a prospective map of the Black Country Living Museum

Type I created for my auction artwork

garden

2011-04-21T19:24:00.004+01:00

It's been all about the gardens recently in my life - not only have I been out enjoying this gloriously warm, early summer sunshine but there's also been a bit of green in my work!

My mother is organising a trip to the Magic Garden in Wolverhampton for her and her ladies' club. This private garden in Wolverhampton is a glittering retreat from the city. The garden is part of the National Gardens scheme which aims to make money for charity by opening special gardens to the public.

The poster above is intended just to advertise the particular event my mother is organising, as there are many dates the garden is open for the public to see. I decided it would be a good opportunity to design my own typeface, and the hand drawn lettering incorporates stars and flowers in order to match the arch around the image. It took me a while to decide which set type to use but I decided a simple garamond wouldn't detract too much from the main typeface. The quote underneath the date is from the main description on their website; a lovely poetic quote that matches the feel of the gardens.

inspiration

2011-04-11T18:33:00.005+01:00

I started work on my quote today! How exciting. I cracked open the paint and tried out one of the main focuses of the image, the cake stand. I hope to do some of the other elements in different mediums, but I haven't quite worked it out yet. I quite like how this has turned out, especially the sandwiches.

In a few days I'll be doing a bit of self arranged life drawing with one of my friends in order to get some pose studies done for a mural. A family friend has asked me to design a mural incorporating angels for her daughter's bedroom wall, so I'll be putting my friend in a floaty dress and getting her to pose, Burne Jones style! Will update with some of the drawings soon.

Speaking of Burne Jones, I went to a wonderful exhibition the other day at the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, which was all about Pre-Raphaelite drawings. They had a fantastic collection of pieces from the main brotherhood as well as later members, with some beautiful early work from the days when the founding members attended the Royal Academy. My particular favourites were the Moxon Tennyson they had on display, showing Holman Hunt's The Lady of Shalott, a portrait of Fanny Cornforth by Rossetti, and some of Millais' life drawings. They also had one of the more breathtaking images by William Holman Hunt, The Finding Of The Saviour In The Temple. It was wonderful to see the painting in real life as the colours are truly vivid, particularly the robe that Christ is wearing.

The Finding Of The Saviour In The Temple (1854 - 1865), William Holman Hunt

Fanny Cornforth (1868), Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Seeing these images really inspired me to get back into drawing from life which is why I am particularly excited about my session on Thursday. In the rest of the museum they had a great collection of work by other Pre-Raphaelites, from Ford Madox Brown to Edward Burne Jones. I loved it!

Downton Poster

2011-04-07T18:12:00.005+01:00

Here is the finished Downton lecture poster. I was struggling with a background colour but I feel that the text and the colours I have chosen sit nicely on the cream colour. Would love some feedback on this if you have any.

(I will point out that obviously the photo of the Abbey in the poster is not mine, this is just a college project and credit goes to whoever took that photo, but the rest of it is all my work so please don't reproduce this without permission.)

Experiments

2011-04-07T15:58:00.003+01:00

I've been working on my Downton Abbey lecture poster today, and for some reason I decided to colour it using photoshop. Well, the colours themselves were hand made and then I've been sort of digitally cutting it out. This little bit is obviously of a phone, modelled from the lovely phone downstairs in our bar. I would love to know if anyone thinks this is looking any good? It's hard to work without feedback! Finished poster coming soon.

home

2011-03-30T22:33:00.005+01:00

On Monday, I journeyed the five hours it takes to get back to the Midlands for our Easter break. I packed my sketchbook (though I'm yet to open it) ready for an easter full of illustrating and hopefully a good set of images to get into my portfolio. Another job while I'm here was to get hold of some of my life drawings to put onto my website sketchbook page. I'm still deciding which ones to go on there, but here's a few examples of the ones I was considering. I had to take photos of them with my compact camera which is why some of them aren't great quality. (Just to warn you some of the drawings are female nudes so if you are not comfortable with this don't scroll down!)

sketchbook

2011-03-24T13:59:00.002Z

Just a quick one to show you some of the sketching I have been doing for experimentation for my Downton poster. Have been trying to represent some of the characters, without being particularly detailed. I think it's working so far!

Lady Mary

Carson

Dowager Duchess

Anna

wordy

2011-03-22T19:27:00.004Z

Seeing as I don't have much new stuff to show for myself, I thought I would show you another six I did. I really should send those soon! I'm not sure if I want to use this one yet, I just enjoyed drawing it. It was inspired by this font, which as I look back at it now doesn't actually include numbers. I guess this is what it would look like! I really liked using brown ink for this, but for the victorian type style I have used in the other sixes I may use a bit of photoshop magic and change them to a nice tealy colour or maybe a dark red.

At the moment I am doing a poster project for a lecture about the amazing Downton Abbey which is happening at the Du Maurier festival in May. I thought I would have a go at doing some prospective event posters that were a bit different, as I thought the original posters will probably include photography. I have been playing around on photoshop with silhouettes, and this is what that came out like :

I thought that through using some kind of patterns and things I could reflect the status of the people. Not sure if that's going to work yet. I am getting my excitement back a little bit, but I am finishing for Easter this friday. I MUST WORK AT EASTER! Might have to get that tattooed on my head!

realise

2011-03-18T14:00:00.004Z

Russell Brand sketch for quote idea

The two Ronnies

This week has been interesting. I've come to a bit of a realisation about my work, and I think that I needed this week to really get it. I have been designing my illustration for the quotes book that I mentioned last week, and the week started with an idea about portraits and type that involved comedians. These few sketches are some of the prep that I did for that piece, but yesterday I realised it wasn't necessarily saying enough about me as an illustrator, so the idea has now changed completely!

This is a section of the new idea for the quotes book, which is a lot more 'me' really, as it will give me a chance to use my hand rendered type as well as be about a subject I enjoy. The quote itself is still undecided, I have a few to choose from which is good. Easter is going to hopefully give me an opportunity to get loads of work generated. Feel like I have a positive end to an otherwise difficult week.

sixes

2011-03-13T18:05:00.004Z

Have been a busy bee recently, but now that my children's book project is mostly out of the way I am getting on with designing 6's and an illustrated quote for the UCF Illustrated book of quotes and sayings. Every year our course publishes an illustration annual comprising of illustrated quotes from every student, which is in its 6th year. We've been asked to design some sixes for the end papers and to come up with an illustration for the inside which will serve to promote us to the people who receive the book. I've been working on a variety of sixes, the above being one that relates to the cakes on the homepage of my website, www.hannahfbrown.co.uk. I have also worked on some other ones, which are still in the editing stage! This one is meant to be made of icing (although I have heard comments such as alien intestines and old chewing gum!) but I hope it looks as its meant to!

Apart from all of this work it's been a nice relaxed weekend, the biggest highlight so far being the epic victory our England team made in the six nations rugby this afternoon! Now, I have not been a rugby fan for long, but I really am starting to get into the whole game and I am excited to see whether England can go for a grand slam next week!

This highlight may be trumped later, because not only is my favourite man Trevor Eve back on my screen tonight, it is also the last episode in the series of Being Human. It has been my sunday night staple for 7 weeks now, and I have been warned by many a TV reviewing site to keep a hanky close by as it's set to be a sad one! Simply cannot wait. In amongst all this great TV I hope to get something useful done, I promise!

interiors

2011-03-05T19:07:00.005Z

Today I spent a little time taking some photos for my flatmate who is doing a journalistic piece about finishing touches to home interiors. I offered up a few of my own pieces and also offered my illustration hand to do some hand rendered typography for the first page (see my rough mock up above). I simply found some suitable set types and traced them to the spacing and size that I wanted with some tracing paper. Have used these fonts on some book jackets I did as uni projects and I thought they went really well together, which is why I chose to use them again here. The rest was a little more photoshop magic. I really enjoyed the quality of the photos I got so I thought I would share a few with you. The piece will be in Millie's brilliant blog soon and you can see that here.

Table with my scrapbook laid open on it

lots of little touches to complete the look

I really enjoyed making some hand lettering today, and I hope do some type like this for my children's book (obviously I intend to make it a little more child friendly though!) See back here soon for some progress on that front.

practise

2011-03-04T16:58:00.003Z

I wanted to share a few more artwork experiments for the upcoming children's book project I am working on. It's been hard to get to this stage as this style isn't one I settled upon quickly, it's taken a bit of work to loosen the work up. But at the same time I don't want to abandon the painting style I use, it does feel a bit like I have too many things happening. Hope to update my website with these experimentations and artworks soon.

It's been an interesting week, a bit of a journey through these artworks, it's been getting a bit stressful but I think once I can see them with the text and everything on them it'll look a bit more complete. Also have been looking forward to getting started on an illustration for the uni's illustration annual which is based around quotes and sayings. Got some good quotes in mind for it, have been drawing inspiration from a few of my favourite films and hopefully the outcome will be good enough to get in the book.

Feeling a bit odd this week. Doesn't help that I have a giant cold.

happy

2011-02-24T18:05:00.003Z

Today was my formative assessment at uni, and we had to present the work that we've been doing since october to a group of second years. I was pretty nervous about it and I am sure my face went a lovely shade of ruby, but I think I got through it ok. It was nice to see the work of other third years who I don't usually get to see but at the same time it was nice to have some familiar faces to calm me down! I remember being in the presentations in second year and thinking, man, I am not looking forward to doing that! and now that it's over I feel so relieved. Another hurdle over!

Currently I am working on a children's book - that's right, a children's book- they're chipping the ice from the gates of hell as we speak! Joking aside though, as much as I was afraid to even go near a children's book, when my aunt asked me to illustrate her story it was such a lovely story I really believed it needed to be done and today I feel like I'm going to do it some justice. I've been working on it for about three weeks and I have a couple of dummy books and huge pages of colour studies, and I think it's going in a good direction! Might even enter it into macmillan if I am confident about it.

Here are a few character studies I have done for the main protagonist, Daisy. I used lots of different materials and tried to be quite free as I was told to loosen up, and I think it's working.

Daisy doing a bit of ballet.

Time to play pirates!

Overall I'm feeling quite good about illustration at the moment. I am also very excited about our New York trip that's coming up after Easter! I am mentioning this now because I found out yesterday that there is to be an exhibition of the late great Alexander McQueen's couture in May, and it's going to be held at the Met in New York when I am going to be there! Which makes the trip a million times more exciting, can't wait to go. (The BBC have done a great slideshow of some of the pieces that'll be featured, check it out here)

Shall post up some more colour studies and maybe some page layouts soon. And I might also treat you with one of my 6's, more news on that later!

Birthday

2011-02-19T16:59:00.003Z

Just a few photos of the cake I made for my flatmate's 21st birthday last week. The heart shaped mould was in the valentine's themed offers at Lidl last week so I'm not sure if they will still have them, but they were much cheaper than the usual so if you fancy one go see if they have any left! The rose decorations and pink glitter were from Asda and the candles were from the delectable Trago Mills!

Millie will also have a little piece about her birthday on her blog here.

New Portfolio website!

2011-02-18T18:08:00.002Z

Hello everyone! Well the wait is finally over (!) and my portfolio website is finally online for everyone to see. There is a page dedicated to artworks and a page which is sketchbook and visual studies stuff, some of which I have posted on here before. I will probably try to update it maybe once every six weeks or so seeing as I am still creating artworks for uni, and maybe more frequently if I get lucky and manage to get some commissions! I somehow managed to build it all myself through photoshop and dreamweaver with the help of one of my tutors at uni who was brilliant. I wanted to give people a good impression of my work on the homepage which is why I decided to incorporate two of my favourite things - cupcakes and vintage typography.

Hope you like it!

www.hannahfbrown.co.uk

Hogwarts

2011-02-16T15:47:00.005Z

So - about that Harry Potter themed birthday present I mentioned last week. I can now reveal it, as it is the recipient's birthday today and I won't ruin the surprise. Happy Birthday Lily!

I handcrafted a Harry Potter Hogwarts acceptance letter for a special treat for Lily's birthday. I will mention that she is 19 - might not be best to do this for a child and get the hopes up of an 11 year old and have them realise they can't actually go to Hogwarts. Who am I kidding, of course they can.

Anyway, I got some tan coloured Murano paper and cut it up into a4 sized pages. I then used my desktop printer just to put the Hogwarts crest at the top of each page, and wrote out the letter word for word from the book (my friend would have pointed out any mistakes if I had not done this!) in a lovely emerald green acrylic ink using a dip pen. I also printed out a Hogwarts Express train ticket and popped it all inside a cardboard envelope. I wrote out her address in the style of the letter that Harry gets in the movie version, and then put another Hogwarts crest on the back with the words "owl post" in script. I finished it off with a sealed wax stamp. It's safe to say that she loved it!

Hogwarts letter page 1. I signed Minerva's name with black ink instead of green for a bit of authenticity!

Owl post with a Hogwarts crest which I found simply through weheartit here

I added this train ticket to the envelope too. Again, probably not so good to give this to a child that may believe in it all too much...

Hogwarts crest printed through my normal everyday desktop printer, with hand written school name underneath.

This was such a fun present to make, and I really felt like it was going to mean something to her. She definitely loved it and she told me she's going to frame it for the wall. It took me around two hours to finish the letter fully, so it didn't exactly take much of my time either - a great gift idea I thought! I also made one for my flatmate as it was her birthday last week, will put some photos of her birthday cake in the next post.

competition

2011-02-13T15:10:00.005Z

Just a quick update to say that I have just uploaded an entry into the design competition over at Don't Panic Magazine to design a poster for the film Norwegian Wood, which is hitting cinemas nationwide in a few week's time.

There are some other really fantastic entries on the site so I have some stiff competition, but I hope that people like the 60s style of my poster. If you would like to vote click here. Thankyou!

sketches

2011-02-07T16:37:00.005Z

Today was a bit of a milestone in the progress of my degree. I went into town today and got my final copies of my dissertation bound and ready to hand in - yippee! At a rather large 8497 words I am glad to say it's finally over, all done and ready for marking. Though the annoying thing is I don't find out what I got until I actually get my results in June, but there we go. The finishing of said dissertation means that from now on 100% of my time can be dedicated to studio work, which should fully enable me to come up with some great stuff. In theory.

Currently I am still working on my personal website, which will be linked from here in a few weeks when it goes live (Very exciting) and will also link back to this blog. (and will also link to my twitter, very linked up indeed). I have included here a few sketches that will be appearing in the sketchbook part of my web site just so you have something to look at. These were some drawings I did in second year as part of research for various projects.

Also today I wandered around Falmouth looking for some last minute Birthday preparations for a couple of important people, trust them to all have birthdays in the same month! As I was looking for some sticky back plastic (all will be revealed in the future!) I wandered through WHSmith past something rather beautiful on the shelf. Through a bit of internet research I found that these new Harry Potter book covers are aimed at bringing the books to an audience that did not grow up with them.

They really caught my eye as truly brilliant book covers, this one for the Prisoner of Azkaban being my favourite (click here for the illustrator's website, some beautiful stuff on there). I love the simplicity of the design as well as the colours she has chosen to use. I also love the way that, if you have read the books already, you know exactly what the illustration is referencing, and at the same time if you haven't read them it creates a lovely sense of visual intrigue.

I adore these covers and it would make me buy them again even though I have read all the books to death!

Also this week I have been very busy creating a birthday surprise for one of my friends - photos of which will go up next week as I don't want to ruin the surprise!

Progress

2011-01-24T18:54:00.006Z

Happy New Year!

I'd love to say that there's been SO much happening that I simply haven't had a single moment to stop and rest to write this, but that would be a rather large lie. I've had a fabulous bit of time off, enjoying the Christmas break and a particularly retro New Year party, and now I'm back in Falmouth. To be fair, the Falmouth bit has involved quite a lot of work and not much time, but there we go.

Firstly, I'll tell you a bit about New Year. We had a 1940s themed VE Day party for our New Year and strangely despite our house being late Victorian it really worked in the setting. We had the Union Jack flags flying and the Vera Lynn songs playing - I managed to come across this great website called the Keep Calm O-Matic, a website that lets you generate your own Keep Calm and Carry On, so you too can have the now infamous poster in either its original or your own doctored form. I added a few of my sneaky reworkings taped up around the bar for the party - here's an example.

I also dolled myself up in the 1940s style. Most guests opted for the soldier look, the land girl look or one or two had bandages round their heads! We even had a Winston Churchill (luckily nobody decided to be Hitler, though it would have made for some interesting little skits with Churchill). I opted for the sort of, I was Betty Grable in a former life look. I had a real fur (thanks mum) stole draped over my shoulders with a little ditzy blouse and a roll in my fringe.

ANYWAY. I realise this is at the moment kind of my illustration/life/rambling blog, but on its way soon is going to be my own self-promotional fully-devoted-to-illustration website. News of it will be posted here, and the site will link back to this blog, but as of then my serious work illustrations can all be seen in the portfolio section of the site. This may mean that this blog becomes a bit more personal (not that it isn't already ha) and the true illustrations will be on the website. Exciting news!

But seeing as I don't actually have my website yet, I have a little bit of work to show here. Recently I read a book called The Ice Cream Girls by Dorothy Koomson, a wonderful novel in my humble opinion, but I (apparently along with other reviewers I have read online) thought the cover wasn't quite right, so for one of my uni projects decided to have a go at re-doing it. I have cropped in to the image that I have used, not showing the full image as it might give the concept away - you can see the full image on my website soon!

As for the rest of my time, it's mostly taken up with lovely dissertation work. And by lovely I mean confusing, sinfully boring and a whole lot more complicated than I originally thought.

feature

2010-12-24T22:24:00.002Z

Just a quick hello to say thankyou to They Draw and Cook for featuring my recipe on today's blog :) you can see my recipe for mince pies here. Merry Christmas to everyone, have a wonderful day :)

crafty

2010-12-22T15:09:00.008Z

Let it Snow

Well, if you are living in Britain and are not living under a rock, you may have noticed that it's snowing. A lot. And when it snows in Britain, everything has to stop - trains, planes, roads, deliveries, the works. Which means I have plenty of time to go taking pictures of the snow and getting on with lots of crafty projects to keep me occupied! The bulk of the white stuff came on Saturday, which is when I took the previous picture. It's a photo of our front path covered in its blanket of ice white snow, which looks rather festive. Lovely to look at, not so lovely to go walking in.. might be time to invest in some new wellies I think.

My mother has been as crafty as me of late, and she has delightfully fashioned a heart-shaped Christmas wreath for our front door which is entwined with Christmas berries, spices and fairy lights.

Mum's festive door wreath

I have also been making gift bags this week - I got hold of some cheap brown paper bags from home bargains and decorated them with illustrations of Christmassy characters such as snowmen and reindeer, and added some shiny curly ribbons and luggage tags. These are for the children of family friends, and will be filled with luscious Gingerbread and chocolate goodies (when I have finished making them!) I also made one or two for my best friends to hold their Christmas presents, I think these bags would be just as fun for adults as they are for children.

Selection of festive characters - Reindeer, Snowmen, Gingerbread men, Robins and Christmas Trees.

All personalised with each child's name on a label, which says Merry Christmas on the reverse

Festive Snowman

Yesterday I had a go at some little chocolatey fairy cakes to match the gift bags. Each one is a simple chocolate fudge cupcake, decorated with snowmen and crisp sugar on some melted milk chocolate. I had great fun picking the decorations and the cases from our collection of pretty treats!

Sweet chocolatey treats

So it really has been a crafty few days. I ventured out into the winter wonderland and picked up some materials to make my boyfriend a birthday present (birthdays in January, the present buying doesn't stop!) and so that will be under construction in the next few days. Soon it'll be Christmas day, and I intend to sit back, perhaps with my Nightmare Before Christmas DVD on (how traditional) and maybe eat many Mince Pies. I am still waiting to see if my recipe for mince pies gets featured on the They Draw and Cook blog, fingers crossed it gets on there soon!

New Design

2010-12-14T18:03:00.003Z

Just a quick post to say that my blog has a new design, and I would love any feedback or comments if anyone has any ideas about it. I adore hand rendered type and I hope to continue using it in my work, so I felt that it would be appropriate for me to use it in my banner. I also hope to put up some more drawing over the holidays if I get any time.

I am going home tomorrow for Christmas (yay!) which means my daily chalk will most likely become a daily drawing every day, bit of a change! I'm looking forward to having some amazing Christmas cheer and get some last minute presents bought when I go shopping with my mum. I also look forward to family time and some lovely gravy :D post when I get home!

catch-up

2010-12-12T16:58:00.008Z

Recently for some reason I've been unable to upload photos so I haven't done a post in a little while, so here's a little selection of stuff.

I finished my first term of third year on Friday, the last winter term I will ever do in education, unless I do an MA of course. Pretty scary stuff! Have been working on a project based on the subject of burlesque and I have been painting, may put up a little thumbnail from that. And I also recently photographed a painting of Dolly Parton that I did in the first year of uni that I just never got around to blogging about. That painting is based on a self-portrait by Frida Kahlo, we had to do a sort of mimicking transcription of a painting for that lesson, so it was Dolly with Kittens rather than Frida with Monkeys.

A thumbnail from the burlesque piece

"Self-Portrait with Cats" Dolly Parton painting

Yesterday was our little uni Christmas dinner, and me and my flatmate cooked up a lovely meal. It was a momentous occasion for me as it was the first time I truly mastered how to prepare proper gravy to my mom's recipe - really thick, gorgeously gloopy leek gravy. It made me so happy, I was very proud of myself! The lunch tasted amazing and we had a brilliant day. My Christmas presents included some amazing blingtastic earrings, a Katy Perry poster (I love her) and the amazing game Jet Set Radio Future that I used to play as a kid with my brother, brought back many memories. I also got an amazing fisheye filter for my nikon D40 from my amazing boyfriend Chris :) here's a few photos I got with it yesterday. (they showcase our deliciously tacky christmas decs quite nicely!)

Our Christmas lunch table, complete with mini Gingerbread Albert cottage and decorative centrepiece that resembles a unicorn horn

Bustylicious tree ornaments

Will probably be posting again soon as I have now got nothing much to do until I go home on Saturday, many random fisheye photos may follow.

crackle

2010-12-01T23:47:00.003Z

Also forgot to mention the amaazing thing I got from Superdrug in Falmouth today! I saw this nail polish in what I think was Look magazine a few weeks ago, and it's a black nail polish that cracks into a pattern when you paint it over the colour underneath. It's by my all time favourite nail polish guru Barry M, and you can have a closer look at the product info here.

christmas

2010-12-01T23:38:00.005Z

the tree

lovely busty ladies from TK Maxx

A view of Hedwig and the tree

Fiona the fairy and Philip the horse

beautiful glittery candles from Trago Mills

As you can probably tell, it's christmas at my house! There's never been a more creep-chic tree as ours. We have been making a small collection of decorations for the past three years, since we came to uni. The first was Fiona (the fairy on top of the tree), which I made out of felt and tissue paper in the first year of uni.

The second year brought with it the neon blue lights (seriously not fetching but they are bright and fun) and the lovely being that is philip. The horrid christmas pony courtesy of Millie Delacoe (whose amazing journalism/lifestyle blog you can view here, which will probably include more pics of the tree) and his name is Philip. We tried putting him near the door but the boys wouldn't let us, so with Fiona he now rides.

This year, we went a little overboard with ornaments. The busty christmas ladies are from a lovely amazing shop known as TK Maxx and the candles, golden swan and creepy christmas hat stars are all from the most amazing christmas heaven in all of Falmouth, Trago Mills.

Very excited to get to christmas now - I entered the They Draw and Cook holiday recipe contest last week with a recipe for mince pies (aha! which is why I cooked them last week...) and I can't wait to see if they put my recipe on their website. very exciting!

Angel

2010-11-23T16:59:00.004Z

So this week, on top of all the other work I am trying to do, I have squeezed in a few hours to create an artwork to contribute to an art auction that is happening at my university. Because of the recent government spending cuts, our tutors are concerned that we won't be able to get enough funding to create out yearly 'Quotes' book, a promotional anthology of the class's work. So we are putting on an auction of student and tutor work to try to raise money for it in the event that funding gets cut completely. So you'll be pleased to know there's some artwork here! Yay! I don't see why I can't show it before the auction, hell, if you really like it come to Falmouth and bid for it!

This blog post is for my good friend Miss G who really ought to get on with signing up to twitter. :) and maybe blogger too. I hope this colours your day of dissertation work! Now to get on with my own...

festive

2010-11-21T22:03:00.005Z

I realise it's still a good few weeks 'til Christmas... but I have been practising a few recipes to get myself in the little festive mood :) I hope to perfect this recipe by the time we go home. Today, I learnt how to make shortcrust pastry. To many people that may seem like a silly thing to declare as most people probably know how to, I simply haven't made it before so it was a first attempt. It really was amazingly easy, I'll never know why my mom has always said it's difficult. My flatmate Millie and I invested in some gorgeous little alphabet cookie cutters from Aldi last week in the hope that it will make some great concoctions, and I decided to use them to create some themed pastry tops for my mince pies. Got some good little photos of these bad boys - I see a ready-made Christmas card on the horizon!

Been attempting to get to grips with my dissertation this week, I have actually started putting finger to key and writing something down! I hope to have a good quality first draft to get feedback on, and eventually I will get quotes and some good references in there. It's getting tricky to juggle stuff around! As a result some of my studio work has been suffering a little (hence the lack of evidence of drawing on this blog) but I hope the photos of the pies is enough visual stimulation for now. I hope to get some awesome stuff on the go as sooon as possible - it may be all quiet on the western front for some time.

Titanic

2010-11-13T22:40:00.008Z

I was looking through my pictures and I realised I haven't yet blogged about a particular experience I had over summer.

In a town close to my home, Netherton, an iconic piece of engineering was built 100 years ago, the anchor for RMS Titanic. If you haven't been living under a rock, you will have seen the recent tv series on Channel 4, Titanic: The Mission. A team of engineers made it their mission to remake parts of the Titanic, and bring home the memories of 100 years ago, of the time when Britain really did rule the world in making things. For the programme about Netherton's anchor, the team recast the gigantic structure and brought it home to the people of Netherton. I went along that day to see the 20 shire horses proudly pull it to its new home, right in the middle of the town. It was so wonderful to see so many people celebrating their heritage, I always think it's a shame that we just don't make many things in Britain relative to 100 years ago. I managed to get a few pictures of the anchor, as well as the 20 horses (which in the end had to be replaced with a tractor to pull the 15 tonne anchor - hot day in august plus roundabouts in Dudley equals bad planning!)

Luke Perry, one of the four presenters from the series.

I think the anchor is currently at the Black Country Living Museum, but will soon be rehomed in Netherton, back where it all began. To read a bit more about it, the BBC published a short note about it here.

In other news (!) I hope to get some proper drawing up here again soon, I am embarking on several projects at once so it's all very much in the early stages. Watch this space for some Nigella loving and maybe some Christmas related fittle!

Super 8

2010-11-04T16:48:00.001Z

I really do love charity shops. I just wandered through town today, browsing for nothing in particular, when I came across a Halina Super 8mm film camera. I honestly have no idea how to use it, where I will get a cartridge from or even if you can still process the film.. but it was so cheap that I thought I needed to get it just so I could have a closer look without standing in the shop for hours! I also got myself a little Christmas cook book as ebay so kindly informed me that it's only 51 days away. Pretty scary stuff. Going to post up some of the pictures from that book soon probably, there's some amazingly disgusting things in there. Gotta love st.michael's in the 80s!

Freud

2010-11-03T14:54:00.005Z

Hallowe'en has been and gone for another year, and this year I decided it was geeky reference time - Harry Potter style. So, for a lack of a ginger wig and quidditch robes I opted for the amazing Bellatrix LeStrange. I found an image of a dark mark tattoo and copied it onto my arm with a fineliner (don't try this at home!) and it looked kind of cool. Shame it's still there slightly!

Along with this on my left arm I had my friend Hannah (hi Hannah, I know you're stalking my blog, get one!) write "I heart Voldemort" on my arm just to make it clear what I was from. Lots of people said our costumes were pretty convincing although the only other accessories I had were a 75p vampire cape from Asda which broke as the night went on and a rather large branch from my back yard, whittled nicely into a wand. All in all a fairly successful costume.

I've been getting into reading for my dissertation this week, mostly centred around Freud and psychoanalysis. It's been pretty heavy reading entire chapters on the Oedipus complex, but it will all be worth it in the end, even though right now it seems kind of irrelevant.

The Daily Chalk is also going steady, it has been rather difficult getting camera settings right now that it's getting so dark so early. Darkness will be a benefit tonight though as there is a fireworks display down at the beach so maybe that slight pyrotechnical interlude will brighten up my week! Back to the sketchbook tomorrow though and maybe a bit of real inspiration..

geek

2010-10-18T23:11:00.006+01:00

Just a brief one today. It is my brother's birthday tomorrow and over the weekend I designed him a card, which he received in the post today so I can put it on here without ruining the surprise! The style I have used on this card isn't one I use in my studio practise. I wish I could because it is so much fun but I just think I would get laughed right out of the course, and I would probably be pressured to digitally colour it or something. Eugh, not my strong point. Anyway, the subject is a little geeky I'm afraid, so here's a brief explanation (if you care!) - Mohinder Suresh is a scientist in the tv show Heroes, which we (my brother and I) have been catching up on over summer. His name fits rather well into a certain summer smash hit by one Katy Perry... (lyrics provided by my lovely brother...)

Speaking of Katy Perry, I was over the moon on Saturday morning when my flatmate managed to secure us two tickets to her show in Birmingham! Some musical and candyland delights to look forward to. Which puts it into perspective that before then I will have one completed dissertation under my belt. It's gonna be a tough few months of brain exercise.

progression

2010-10-16T15:58:00.005+01:00

So it's been two weeks since I officially became a third year. Scary stuff. It's started quite well, I've already completed a project and I am embarking on research for my big dissertation that will become 20% of my final grade. I have included a few things from my sketchbook from this first project I did, an example of some typography that I designed and a sketch of a cemetery angel that I did in preparation for an idea which in the end I didn't go through with, but I enjoyed the sketching nevertheless.

I am getting excited about some new project ideas and some potential collaboration with my flatmate who does journalism, so hopefully there will be some good stuff on the go, watch this space! I also designed a birthday card for my brother yesterday, which I will be putting up on Tuesday so that he gets to see it before anyone else! I'm surprisingly proud of it and I wish I could get away with drawing like that for uni, I just doubt anyone would take me seriously if I did. The card involves a certain character from a tv show that my brother and I have recently gotten back into watching, and it's a shame that its run finally came to and end recently. Amazing writing.

My Daily Chalk blog has been going quite well for the last two weeks, luckily it hasn't become a chore yet and I am still enjoying coming up with a new thing to draw every morning, though one night I did nearly forget and had to rush to get a picture of it before it got wiped off the board!

Had my second anniversary with Chris too last weekend, I remember writing on here about the same thing last year which is quite scary. It's quite amazing to think that I have managed to keep this blog going for a whole year despite it's trivial nature, but I kind of feel it has helped me get myself a little more organised.

Look out for the birthday card in the next post - and maybe even some spelling mistakes... (maybe I should change my blog title..)

beginnings

2010-10-03T12:33:00.004+01:00

It's the final day of my summer, and oh what a long, long summer it has been. 16 weeks of healing, being at home, relaxing with my family and not being at all as productive as was necessary. It's now time to get going - I have to have a dissertation synopsis for the 22nd october and I also have to have some serious work on the go too. It's time to re-evaluate, and hopefully get something good going.

As it is the end of summer, my favourite time is coming - a/w 2010 on the high street! I have never really talked about fashion in this blog before, but I guess my blog is becoming a lot more general recently because I haven't had many drawings or spelling mistakes to report.. might be time for a new blog title soon perhaps. Anyway, about the season. I have been feasting my eyes on fur-lined boots, thick tights, plaid shorts, fur coats (which luckily my style-conscious mother kept for me from their first appearance in the 80s) and many other autumnal lovelies. Of course, my eye is as far as these beauties reach thanks to my shameful bank balance, but there is a certain festival beginning with C and ending in hristmas coming up so maybe I will get lucky.

In actual drawing related news, I have a new blog - yippee! It's called the Daily Chalk, and the idea is simple - a new drawing on our lovely kitchen chalk board every day. Nothing fancy, nothing that aims for artistic merit to rival Rembrandt or anything like that, just some simple fun drawings to keep myself going. I've been having a few problems with editing the layout at the moment but it's looking presentable, and it's only meant to be a bit of fun anyway. I hope to be able to update it every day, if not to put on each drawing at the end of the week or something. I will hopefully have some new stuff to show you on here soon too, but for now enjoy some random drawings and visions of cosy fashion.

birthday

2010-09-30T18:12:00.006+01:00

So here I am back in Falmouth. Time for a new term, some new work (hopefully a feast for your eyes too!) and my final year of being a student. Hopefully it will be a good one!

Before I left home, it was my friend Amber's 17th birthday, and as a birthday treat I decided that in the tradition of now two years I would make her a birthday cake. This was my first time decorating a cake using rolled icing, so it was an interesting task but I think I pulled it off. It really did taste like a proper child's birthday cake, the exact effect I wanted! I had decided to decorate it with piped decorations and to add a personal touch I made alphabet biscuits spelling out her name and age, a recipe I got from Nigella Lawson's book, How To Be A Domestic Goddess. I finished it off with Dolly Mixtures, Marshmallows and of course Seventeen Candles. Here she is with the candles lit...

And the finished product!

On actual drawing terms, I had an idea today. In our new kitchen in our new house, we have a chalkboard on our door. I have started drawing random things on it, and so I may start a blog of chalkboard drawings. Nothing serious and particularly taxing in terms of drawing excellence, but I thought it might be kind of fun. Watch this space!

words

2010-09-15T18:34:00.006+01:00

I have no new pictures again today. Sad times. But I just wanted to post something, so maybe I will find some kind of visual compliment to my post.

I have realised it is time to get serious. I need to sort out my stupid projects and my stupid dissertation and everything else stupid in my life - it's the doing it that will be tricky. But I have at least come to a decision about what to do on my first project, which is lucky cos I need to post it off tomorrow! I also need to find out what my true style is, and try in some way to stick to it, because otherwise my portfolio is going to be a total mess this time next year. That's if I want it. It's gonna be a big year. Back in Falmouth in less than two weeks now, back on the student bandwagon ready for some library and studio fun!

I think I will fish out more of my work from that same project I mentioned in the last post, as I have a small idea brewing it might become a little relevant soon. :)

food

2010-09-11T16:16:00.004+01:00

I need to stop my pre-occupation with taking pictures of sweet things I think. At least, I need to for now, because I should be thinking of a project to kick off my final year in Falmouth! I'm thinking I need something short, quick turnover to get me in the drawing mood again. So, I have nothing new to show you for the moment, the main reason being I have been holding my camera instead of a pencil. Another slight issue is that my printer/scanner is in Falmouth too, so even if I drew something I wouldn't be able to show a good copy. For now, here is a little snippet from one of my projects I did in second year, all about... you guessed it, food! It was a few speculative artworks/page layouts for a book that would be a recipe book and a book about the history of baking. This image is from a page about Queen Victoria, and her namesake the Victoria Sponge.

creepy

2010-09-07T21:11:00.004+01:00

I love creepy things. Saw this at an amusement arcade in Clevedon, Devon, and had to take a picture.

2010-08-26T15:44:00.008+01:00

I have changed my mind. I want to be a food photographer. At least I do for now after making these little fellows...

I got the recipe for these from the Hummingbird Bakery book. They were the spiciest gingerbread men I had ever made, but their dark colour made for a brilliant contrast with the bright white icing (which was very hard to pipe, hence their slightly manic expressions). They were a lot of fun to make but even more fun to photograph, so here's a selection of images from the process -

Lots of flour everywhere

gingerbread

2010-08-26T14:32:00.003+01:00

I think this poor fellow's expression speaks for itself. My icing is not great, I did hope for some celebrity gingerbread but this pretty much sums up how much harder icing with a piping bag is than it looks.

I need to do some work. Sigh.

shakespeare

2010-08-08T19:53:00.005+01:00

Another example of some work I did for uni. These images are intended for two book covers for the plays Romeo and Juliet and A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare. A different approach for me, I printed colours onto paper and cut them into these scenes. I then lit them and took photographs of them for the final product. I have barely picked up a pencil this summer and really need to get it into my head that I'm going into my final year of uni soon!

quilt

2010-07-31T18:39:00.005+01:00

Today, after many days of not doing a lot, I decided to do something a little creative. There was a bag of scrap bits of fabric lurking under my desk, so now they are all happily sewn together in the form a lovely patchwork quilt. :) I have never done this before, and so far I only have the front, but once I have some stuffing and a backpiece it will all be finished in a wonderful feast for the eyes!

I put my hairbrush there in the corner so you can see how big it is, it's about 120cm square (ish!)

After my slightly wonky sewing I think I have a good little quilt. It's a bit skewiff in places but it's going to look fab in my room in Falmouth once it's finished :)

poster

2010-07-26T18:15:00.004+01:00

I realised that I talked about a poster I did for uni work in an earlier blog and then never posted the finished product, so here it is. Now that I have finished the year I can share it with you :)

soundtracks

2010-07-22T17:38:00.020+01:00

For my birthday, I got two tickets (for me and my mum) to go and see the Sound of Music on-stage at the Birmingham Hippodrome. Apart from being irrationally excited about this, it got me thinking about movies and their soundtracks. Recently I've been more interested in listening to soundtracks than I have artist's albums, I guess they just remind me of the film and they are usually good to sing along to. So seeing as I haven't posted in a while, I thought I would give you a few examples of my favourites, old and new. Maybe it'll inspire you to listen, maybe you will think "oh what terrible taste!"

1. The Sound of Music

Despite how old fashioned or cheesy people might say this is, I think this film is wonderful. Julie Andrews has a beautiful voice, and the songs have become classics. My favourite things, ironically, is my favourite song from this soundtrack, and I think it sounds particularly good when played on a proper record player.

2. Cabaret

I first watched this film when I was part of film club, a recommended extra curricular activity while I was doing my A level in film studies. I love the way that the club is shown, and how beautiful the costumes are! Again, another leading lady with a wonderful voice, Liza makes the songs her own in every scene for me.

3. Atonement

The reason I have chosen this is because of just one arrangement of music - the way that the tapping of the keys on the typewriter transforms into a dramatic piece of music impresses me every time I watch the movie, almost as much as Kiera's amazing green dress.

4. The Twilight Saga - New Moon

This soundtrack is one that I can listen to without really thinking about the fact that the music featured on a film. The songs sound fantastic individually, as well as heard together on the album. The scene in which the camera pans around Bella stands out in my mind as a perfect song choice, with the simple and haunting melody provided by Lykke Li.

5. Footloose

Kevin Bacon, dancing. I think that's all that really needs to be said!

6. Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory

In my world, Tim Burton's assassination of this story does not exist. So here I am referring to the original motion picture from 1971, with the wonderful Gene Wilder inviting us to look around and view paradise in his magical chocolate factory. This movie struck a chord with me when I was a child but it was not until I was older that I really appreciated some of the music in it - particularly Verruca Salt's wonderfully bratty song "I want it now".

7. Amelie

The music in this film is simply brilliant. It has such life and such character, which perfectly reflects Amelie herself who is played perfectly by Audrey Tautou. Listening to this music relaxes me, and whenever I put it on I always become more inspired by the world around me.

8. Moulin Rouge

I. Love. Ewan. McGregor. Before seeing this film, I did not - it was his rendition of Your Song, a song I had also previously disliked, that suddenly made me realise that I did infact have a place in my heart for him! In particular, Elephant Love Medley is in my most played list on iTunes, which goes to show what a wonderful song I think it is. I think the way that the song has been put together with lyrics from many well known rock and pop classics is absolute genius, and gives the piece a unique dynamism.

9. Sweeney Todd (The Demon Barber of Fleet Street)

Who knew Johnny Depp could sing? Along with Helene Bonham Carter andJamie Campbell Bower they provide a wonderful soundtrack to this classic horror musical. I will forgive you for this one, Tim.

10. Adventureland

Rock me amadeus!

(images found on Google image search)

scrapbook

2010-07-05T13:24:00.005+01:00

First image was an experiment for my White Fawn illustrations which I didn't get to finish because of my operation. The other two are from my scrapbook, images from magazines.

laparoscopic appendectomy

2010-07-05T12:18:00.005+01:00

Well well well. Welly Welly Welly. Wellity Wellity Wellity.

it has been a LONG time!

As you may have gathered from the technical sounding blog post title, I had something technical sounding happen to me at the start of June. On the Saturday I was feeling a little off and in some pain, just thought, ah well, muscles or something. By the Sunday morning I was on my way to the Surgical Receiving Unit at the RCH ready to have my stupid turgid appendix removed. Yippee! Sunday night at around 10pm I was wheeled off to surgery and by Monday afternoon I was back home. Tuesday saw me zooming back to the midlands with my mom and all my stuff in tow, ready for some recovery.

So here I am, four weeks later, feeling pretty good. I can safely say I will never ever have unnecessary surgery after having experienced very necessary surgery and its aftercare! I am so grateful to the hospital that they got me in there and sorted me out so quickly, and I also couldn't be more grateful to my boyfriend who forced me to phone the doctor - he may have just saved my life.

So since then it's been recovery and stuff, but in between times I have turned into an adult - Yes, 21 years of age, how old am I. (21. yes, I know riight). I had a fabulous day, and a fabulous evening meal with my extended family. An unplanned journey home turned out to be a blessing in disguise as I got to spend my birthday with everyone here instead of in my student house trying not to catch something.

In illustration terms I really haven't had the chance to do anything in between birthday celebrations and recovering from my operation, although I have had the chance to take a few photos. My nextdoor neighbour has recently rescued a Jackdaw that flew down from our roof but didn't make it with the others, and is now trying to train it and get it back to a good condition for flying away. I got to take some photos of him, so I will put them on here too. I also have a few pages from my scrapbook that I was going to upload before my operation so I will probably do those in a new post save me doing them here :)

For now enjoy this whimsical bird. Yay

Candy

2010-05-19T17:11:00.005+01:00

Ohh how I am going to miss visual studies. It's one of the few times when I actually enjoy the work I do because I know it doesn't have to be anything and it just.. is. This is what I did in my final lesson and I really love painting like this, I kind of want to use it in my work but I don't really know what to do with it!

For my final project of second year (aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhh) I'm going to illustrate a fairytale called The White Fawn, it's full of princesses and diamond encrusted palaces and fairies and fawns and .. crabs weirdly. It's really trippy and it's gonna be fun, hopefully I'll combine the style I used in my collages with the paintings and create something really mad. Maybe I'll even be able to draw a fawn after it!

I've also recently been loving a website that I found on stumble called WeHeartIt, which is basically an online scrapbook of photos, illustrations and pretty much any visual material from websites in a collection. Each user has their own "heart" that they fill with images that are inspiring to them - my heart is here - I have images of my own hearted onto here too so there's more fun there.

Next week is my final week in the second year studio, and then another two weeks and I will be finished. Scary! But exciting. Looking forward to my 21st in June and eventually having a summer, bring it on.

complete

2010-05-16T19:13:00.008+01:00

Oh yeahh. One essay - finished. One regret - I totally should have saved that subject for my dissertation next year, because as it turns out I only managed to get half of the information I wanted to discuss into the finished essay! gutted.

Because I've been working on that and my last project has been mainly photographic, I haven't really got much to show for my drawing at the moment, so I have been delving into my old drawings that I did many years ago that are still saved onto my laptop. This should be interesting!

I did these two in the summer before my foundation year, just some line drawings of random things. It's strange looking at old work. How it has changed!

Not much else is happening really, looking forward to summer now, not long left in the second year. Scary.

plethora

2010-05-13T20:14:00.010+01:00

Today I have been striving to avoid writing my essay. Yes, the very same essay I was meant to be doing when I last updated nearly a week ago. This morning I've been working on my uni work, a poster for an arts and literature festival, there's a picture of me at the bottom of this blog constructing my prop for the photo for that poster. I used an old book and I sort of collaged and drew onto it. I then put my hand drawn type into it on photoshop.

This afternoon I did a bit of my favourite thing - charity shopping. I'm always on the hunt for Jackie annuals from the 1970's so I always check out the kid's book shelves. Today I didn't manage to find Jackie, but I did find someone called Diana, a similar style annual, from 1978. It's got similar comic stories, and beauty tips, it's so retro and it feels warped to read the style of it today. The moon shaped illustration is from Diana, and I thought it was really beautiful so I wanted to share it with you! I don't know who did it but all credit to them, obviously. The picture of the celebrity stamps is also from Diana, see if you can name all of those 70's faces!

I also found an annual from 1995 on that shelf - Barbie! This annual would have come out when I was 6 when I was just getting into playing with Barbies so looking at it really made me reminiss. The photos and illustrations in there are totally awful in hindsight, but back then man were they cool. I was surprised to see that the crosswords weren't done. Magic

After that I went for a walk with Chris and we took our cameras, and I did a few close up shots of the may flowers - see the snowdrops at the start. The photos are all a bit mixed up sorry!

Diana annual 1978

Barbie Annual 1995

Celebrity St-armps - Diana Annual, 1978

So there we have it. No drawing! I'll get some stuff up soon. I really should do my work. Damn.

sunday

2010-05-09T11:44:00.006+01:00

So here I am. It's Sunday, it's about time I did my essay. It's time I find other things to do. Here's a new blog entry! Yahoo.

Well. First thing really is the same thing that everyone else is talking about. I recently started becoming interested in what is happening to this country, and the people that are meant to be running it. As I write we still have no government because the men are still in 'talks' to decide. All I can say is, don't do it Nick! Hopefully on Monday after these discussions we will actually have a decent parliament and something good will happen. I was amazed to see that my local constituency in the Midlands had gone to the blue side, after a long tradition of Labour support, but it was quite interesting to look at the map and see the red blob that is Birmingham and Dudley floating in a sea of blue.

Enough of this folly. You want pictures right? Here is a sample of my work from my LAST EVER visual studies! Sob! I am going to miss it greatly, as it is the only time I can piss around and cut and stick without it meaning anything. And my tutor is awesome because anything anyone ever does is always "ooh beautiful" and it makes you feel great! I got the materials for these images from various sources; from old etchings, an old newspaper article (the cat), old issues of vogue (the angel face), my own photos (the cupcake) and lots of collage paper textures. I really enjoy working like this and hope to employ this style when I take on my next project. I'm happy with these too because they look great once re-printed from the originals.

Lovely. Next thing I'm going to do is hopefully a fairytale, haven't picked one yet though. It's a bit scary knowing there is only about four weeks left of my time in the second year studio, third year is a scary prospect - hopefully they'll let me have a go at it.

Oss

2010-05-04T21:40:00.004+01:00

It's been a few days. Sorry!

Over the weekend I went to the mayday festival in Padstow. I have been going for many years, we discovered the festival when I was just one year old and our family has been going ever since. This year I had the privilege of having a good camera so that I could capture some photos of the 'Oss. My dad has always been the one to take pictures but this year I got my camera out! The festival celebrates the first day of summer, and the locals are very serious about their celebrations. It has a unique atmosphere, and I always feel privileged to witness the day every year. The drums and the music stay with you for days afterwards.

hungry

2010-04-21T19:05:00.004+01:00

I have finally put scissor to magazine and done something creative! yippee! why is it that every time I have visual studies I like what I produce more in those lessons than what I do for my actual work. I should really re-evaluate what I am doing... but for now I can relish in what I have done. Kind of.

Next stop book jackets for me at uni - Shakespeare called out to me and I had to answer. I'm thinking paper theatres and crazy photographs so far, and I hope spending time with my foundation friendlies last week in bourneymouth has inspired me to be a bit more out there. It was my friend's 21st and we had fun times with barbecues and very chocolatey gateaux, and I have realised how good it is to be around arty people because it really influences you.

I also passed up the opportunity to buy an old polaroid camera the other day and now I'm kind of regretting it - I thought the film cost would outweigh the novelty value but now I am not so sure! maybe luck will come to me and the camera will be sitting there waiting for me when I go back to the car boot. For now I will be content with the 3ft barbie doll I got, now named Brian.

forgetful

2010-04-03T23:57:00.003+01:00

I forgot.

I love the new Doctor.

I hate to turn my back on David Tennant, but after watching Matt Smith's first turn as the Doctor, I am so glad he totally outdid the expectations I had. And as for Amy Pond, isn't she beautiful!

discovery

2010-04-03T22:45:00.007+01:00

I apologise in advance for the first bit of drivel. If you like pictures, scroll down and forget this bit! (Or look up and enjoy my new banner... if that's what it is meant to be called?) I'll mark the start and end of it so you can skip it how nice of me.

look away now

I never intended this blog to get personal, but I came across something a few hours ago that surprised me, something that was written to me that I have only just read. I won't post a link to it, they know who they are, I reckon.
Things at the start of this year got messy, and I didn't know how to handle them - but I know now that things in the past are unchangeable, doesn't matter how petty and insignificant or huge they might be, life is as it is in the end.

To make it clear, I'm not looking for resolution here, I just want to say this. I hate to read things that I know are intended for me when the person writing doesn't feel like they can tell me, and by writing this obviously I am doing the same, but there isn't much else I can do with this information at this point. At first I felt a little cheated and hurt, but now I realise that it's simply just happened now. It's history. Everyone wonders what ever happened to those people you lost contact with at some point in your lives, but sometimes life sees an improvement without those people, on both sides. There are some people from my past that I truly miss, and it's my responsibility to get back in touch with them, and there are those that I left behind because I had to. For my sanity.

This is by no means a personal attack, however. I am about to do something totally lame and terrible, yet strangely apt - I just watched the video to a Destiny's Child song, and those words they sang are just right for this, so I'm going to quote them. Laaaaame!

"I'm wishin' you the best,
Pray that you are blessed,
Much success, no stress, and loads of happiness,
(I'm better than that)..."

read again now

Back to important things. New banner - hope you like it, it's stuck together bits of other illustrations because it's all I have at the moment!
I have re-discovered tweeting as well, still don't fully understand it but I think I am getting there, someone might be interested!

For those of you that think this blog is full of too many words at the moment, here are some pictures, hooray! I made a birthday cake for a friend of mine who turned 21 at the end of last month, and I got creative with the decorations...

I scoured Kidderminster for that Giraffe. £4.75 they wanted, in Early Learning! Christ! Eventually I found a bag of assorted jungle animals in BM, with awesome faces. For £1.99. Awesome. Someones getting an elephant cake next.

I can't remember if I posted a picture of Millie's birthday cake.. oh well seeing as I am putting cakey images up here I might as well rekindle the joy with food! I realised recently that when I have a camera in my hand I love taking pictures of animals, plants and food. I have probably said this before and I stand by it, they are just better behaved than people! Maybe one day I will be able to control a perfect portrait shoot. But, here's a cake in the mean time.

parrots

2010-04-03T01:18:00.005+01:00

there has been a lot going on but I am far too tired to recount it all right now - I will post again soon so I can really go through! For now, here are some photos I took at the Botanical Gardens in Birmingham. In these particular ones I focused on birds, namely macaws and budgerigars, but I do have many of the plants which I might put up tomorrow. I do think these birds are rather beautiful, especially the one that squawked "ello children!" at us.

four

2010-03-14T21:43:00.002Z

repulsion number four - my iPod is broken. it works but it cannot be clicked.

damn.

some work coming soon.. :) hate not having a laptop