sketchbook

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

sketches

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!

progression

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..)

scrapbook

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.

Candy

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

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.

sunday

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.

hungry

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.

maps

I'm currently embarking on a project that involves creating an illustrated map. I've never done a map before, and I'm still going through my usual trouble of creating interesting linework and not knowing how to add colour to it, so it should be an interesting journey. I have been experimenting with using pen and ink instead of fineliner at the moment and it seems to be working quite well for me, shame I spilt half of my black ink pot all over my desk at uni the other day though! Here's a page from my sketchbook with some pen and ink experiments..

I also went to the Tate in St. Ives today, and saw their exhibition of Dexter Dalwood's paintings and collages. I'd never heard of Dalwood before, but I enjoyed the way that he used collages as a starting point for his large oil paintings - the way he faithfully reproduces the images, right down to the torn edges and cut pieces of paper was visually stunning. I also found the back stories of each piece quite interesting, particularly the series of interior paintings that represented events in popular history.

Soon I will be starting another blog - a film review blog - which will include illustrations and my own writing. I'm not really expecting a big readership but it'll make a good hobby and a good project in the meantime.

people

Since completing my information project, I have been home to research for a new project that started this week. In that week I had the pleasure of surprising my best friend on her eighteenth birthday with a visit, which was an absolute delight. She had been begging me to come home and I managed to convince her that I couldn't come no matter what happened, so to see her face when I appeared standing behind her was a wonderful thing - I even made her burst into tears! Her appreciation at the mere fact I was there made me realise how much I appreciate her and miss her while I am here, and made me think about friends. I'm the kind of person who doesn't need hundreds of friends and cherishes the ones that are closest to me, and they are all so different that I feel lucky to know them all. Oh, cheese, please.

Moving on. For the past two weeks I have been scanning fashion magazines and it is safe to say I am quite obsessed with floral patterns at the moment, particularly roses and big colours. It is the only trend I will be following however, as I can't see myself in yellow or sportswear or modern army gear somehow! Since learning of the tragic death of one of my favourite designers, Alexander McQueen, a couple of weeks ago, it has made me question what is going on in fashion and I hope there are people like him graduating so that we have fresh and unusual pieces coming back into the world soon.

Finally, some pictures, yipeee. I have scanned a couple of spreads from my reportage sketchbook that I keep for my course at uni, I admit I am not very good at keeping it so these are some of the better spreads. Enjoy!

face

Haven't blogged in a short while, because I haven't had much work to be posting on here, but soon I'm going to start looking into making christmas cards for people so I might just have a few exciting things to look at!

It's also been a while since I spotted a really good spelling mistake, so for now all I have to show is a painting of a face I did. Enjoy.

Crayon

I forgot to actually add text to my last blog, so here we go. We have been experimenting with expressive faces in our visual studies sessions at uni over the past two weeks, and the previous image is one of these examples. I used fineliner for the image in the last blog, and for the next image in this blog I used gouache paint for the face and Crayola wax crayons for the hair. I love experimenting with new combinations of materials and I'm really getting into using gouache paint.




Life outside of my studio has been just so, nothing too exciting happening but it's life isn't it. Seen a few friends, done a few errands, same old same. Watched the movie Year One with my flatmates the other day, which was mediocre, but Michael Cera who I love had some brilliant one liners, made me happy.



Another thing I haven't mentioned in this blog yet, seeing as it is called thoughts and observations, is something I like to observe all the time - spelling. It's become a little bit of an obsession for me, which is probably bad considering my boyfriend is dyslexic, but I keep wanting to correct bad spelling that I see all over the place. Here's a few examples.



A category label on a shelf in my university library, in the section refering to folklore...

"399 - Customs & Folk Law"



A sign in my university cafe...

"Hot chocolate with whipped cream and marshmellows"



My friend from uni writing something on her hand...

"Umberalla"



Another friend who works in a bar showed me his promo posters...

"A great experiance"



there's just a few examples. You might think it's a bit of an obsession, which it really is, and I do sometimes feel bad for pointing them out. But as trivial as it is, it doesn't half get to me! Although I do enjoy it when these signs become humorous because of their downfalls!


8th Feb 2010 - Just realised since writing this blog I have infact changed the name of the blog to drawings and spelling mistakes, purely because of how much each amuses me :)

face

Time

Ok, I admit I have already seemed to forget about blogging slightly, as I have had lots of project work to be getting on with for uni over the last week. Had a project about contextualising an inanimate object to make it into something conceptual, and my word was bags, which was a fun little project to start off with. Getting onto the editorials this week, which will be fun!

This weekend (saturday 10th) was my first year anniversary with Chris, and we had a really great day,and he gave me a fab little necklace as a gift :) I can't believe it has been a year since we met and it's amazing to think how time has passed without noticing, which was highlighted this week as I didn't even realise I hadn't blogged all week!

to finish, here's a small section of one of the"bag" illustrations I did last week, which was all about emotional baggage and beight weighed down by your emotions on a daily basis. I used patterned and plain coloured papers to make this collage.

Kitten

Today has been a full day. Got up and had yet another walk down into Falmouth, this time with Chris, and had a mooch around the shops in town, in particular Dig N' Delve, one of the greatest and craziest shops in the town! Full of anything you could possibly think of, all sorts of stuff. I got my mom a nice old copy of The King's General by Daphne Du Maurier as she loves her. A bit mildewed but you can't argue for 75p.

Next we went into Truro for a little look around, and I purchased the new Audrey Niffenegger novel, The Fearful Symmetry. I loved the last book of hers I read, The Time Traveler's Wife, which I bought after seeing her at a talk she did at my uni (University College Falmouth) and I thought she was a brilliant character, so I figured her writing would be just as enigmatic as she was, which turned out to be true. I hope that this book is as compelling as the last.

Finally, I bought some poi from another shop in Truro. Now, I have never tried these before, and my boyfriend is interested in learning too so we decided to invest in some. I had a practise in the garden earlier, and was really getting into it when the cat from two doors down ran under the gate and started to claw at my poi! It made a pretty fun game, watching it leap about 3ft into the air every so often, but I had to put them down when I just couldn't get any progress made because of that cat!

has been a good day, however have no relevant pictures to put up, so I think I'll just show you a bit of my work. Here's a painting I did of Kristen Stewart (you'll probably know her as Bella from Twilight) for my summer sketchbook. Enjoy! :)