inspiration

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!

crafty

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!

Angel

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...

lapse

so you can probably tell I'm no good at sticking to things. The only thing I've really managed to stick at is drawing and my relationship, both of which I have a soulful of passion for, and even then my passion for drawing sometimes wanes.

But I have seen a fair few awesome blogs again recently and it's given me another jolt to start writing this again. Plus the fact that I have to fulfil the cliché of having a new year's resolution - hey it's a bit late coming but I did it.

New year, new projects, new horizons. Currently embarking on an informational illustration project revolving around cakes (shockingly) and it's getting me involved with photography more. I recently purchased a Nikon D40 and I am rather in love with it, I'm still learning the subtlety of controlling the settings but I think I'm getting there.

also, I've been reading a lot of film magazines recently and I have become very excited about a number of films that will be hitting screens in 2010, namely -

• Up In The Air
• Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows I
• Eclipse
• Food, Inc.
• Alice in Wonderland
• The Prince of Persia
• Precious

and there are loads of others. If I get to see all of them I'll let you know how good they are. But for now, here I am back on blogger, and hopefully won't lapse for three months again. enjoy

cupcake

Since I have been back at uni I have been hankering for some baking, I really do miss making cupcakes. Since buying a new cookery book over summer, I really got into baking and I made loads and loads of things so I just thought I would post a few photos of my creations from over summer, and hopefully in the future if I manage to make something special in our oven I will get a snap of it for you.