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.

plethora

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

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

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.