Start Something New

It is the start of a new year and the time where most people are assessing their situations and making various resolutions and plans for the year ahead. Whilst for many people this involves keeping fit and eating well, apple has come up with a different spin on it, which I really quite like.

They have a new promotional campaign for the new year which is called "start something new" the focus of this is creating art using apple products. Whether that is through inbuilt software and applications, or through third party apps which utilise the touch screens and cameras in iphones and ipads. They showcase a number of different pieces of work on their website here, naming the artists and the tools that they have used. 

I love the idea of this, whether you are using apple products or not I think it is a great time of year to start new projects. I decided to give my desk a good clear out and tidy up so that I could get doodling. 

Now anyone who might follow my instagram feed probably knows that I have been taking aerial classes in Bristol for just over a year now. After my final project at university focusing on circus, I had always dreamed of trying out aerial skills, and now I have gotten to a point where I am really happy with the many tricks I know. 

Today I had a really great training session, I have been trying to build up my calloused hands and pain resistance after a 2 week break over christmas and today I feel like I achieved a lot. 

I haven't drawn any people for a little while so I decided this was a good excuse to get some practise in. My rotring pens are unfortunately a little sad and dried up so I decided to play around with a glass dip pen I bought last year, the nib gives quite a thick line but there is a really nice flow to it which I like the feel of.

Desk all set up.

I don't think my people will ever have faces, especially using this thick a line!

I really like these cheap zebra mechanical pencils for sketching out lines and shapes to build on. 

Hopefully will do a few more of these and colour up the good ones, does anyone else have any design/drawing resolutions they fancy sharing? 

Insta-new year

Oh my goodness where did all of december go?

So mid november I started a new job working as a christmas temp. I have loved being part of a larger team in a workplace full of lots of creative and interesting people. The nature of the job and training has meant I have not had very much time for myself or my artwork, I am hoping in the new year I can dial it back a little and split my time a little more evenly. 

This post is a little update on what I have been doing and what I hope to be working on in the new year! 

Circus anyone? Ok so anyone who has been following my work in the past will know I am a little obsessed with the circus and I have been wanting to have a go for such a long time! In November I took up aerial hoop and silks classes in bristol which has been ridiculous fun, albeit slightly painful as far as bruises and calloused hands go, but your body does start to get used to it ;) hoping to fit in as much practise as I can in the new year. 

I have been working on some CD cover artwork and text for my dads new EP. Hoping to make a whole blog post for this when it is finally finished and printed up but until then here is a little preview of the unedited artwork.

I got very crafty over christmas and decided to make as many people's presents as I could. Turns out making soap is fairly easy once you have all the materials, my kitchen smelt very clean for a while whilst I was doing this. I have also been making notecards and packaging them up in a slightly more rustic way than in cello bags which I usually use. At some point these may turn up on etsy, we will see when I have the time!

I went to London for the day for my boyfriends birthday and finally managed to get to the Liberty shop, here are a couple of pictures before they told me off (sad face). The christmas window displays were beautiful and their stationary section was a little like heaven for a pattern obsessive like me.

Christmas day itself I managed to gain a pretty hefty stack of art books, my aim for the new year is to try out some new drawing activities from these books and hopefully do a few reviews mixed with those drawings on the blog. I also got some POSCA markers which I am excited to use having never tried them out before, such epic colours!

Here is a nice little picture just outside my new job! I have been kept on for now (yay!) so will still be working but now I am more settled in I can hopefully plan some new projects ;)

What is everyone else planning in the new year? Let me know!

Bucket List - The art of getting started

I recently started following a blog by Lee Crutchley of Quoteskine which is entitled "The Art Of Getting Started". This blog sets ongoing assignments to get people to go out and do things, to think about things in a different way. The first 3 are as follows:

#001 - Write your bucket list 

#002 - Go for a walk and document it in some way

#003 - Take a "selfie" that doesn't show your face

You can then submit what you did/made to the blog, anonymously or otherwise. This is a great thing to do if you are stuck in a bit of a rut and need some motivation. I used it as an excuse to make myself use illustrator a little more, using it to colour the text on my bucket list :

I should probably stick this on a wall or something so I don't get lost and forget to keep working! The second I took a series of photographs of a bike ride I went on (same idea as a walk...) 

And for the "selfie" I took a picture of my current desk setup, as right now art seems to be all I am doing!

Stickers and badges and other fun things

Had our portfolio and promotional materials hand in today which was pretty exciting. After this all I have to focus on is making and printing things for the show - still terrifying but every deadline is a massive load of work we can stop worrying about!

So far this week has consisted of many things:

-Spending about 5 days tweaking business card designs before scrapping most of the edits I had done and just using artwork I already had..

-Sooo much cutting out of sticker pages

-Having a mini breakdown in relation to Tshirt transfer paper which just didn't want to stick on

-Breaking the light on my sewing machine sewing through paper...

-Having awkward conversations with the printers about how the postcards we got printed look horribly dull

-Lots of terribly unhealthy food including free cake

-Printing, and reprinting, and tweaking, and more printing and more photoshop 

-More money spent on ink, paper and printing than I spent on food the past 6 weeks

Despite all this, I now have a large amount of lovely colourful things, lots of stickers, postcards, and final business cards on their way! Though the next couple of weeks will be just as crazy, it is quite exciting to know that we have conquered another milestone in the workload that is third year! The Pimms is finally in sight and I truly cannot wait :)

they think its all over...

So, i had my final assessment for year 2 today. It has been an incredibly stressful few weeks finishing everything up but I do finally feel as if I am heading in the right direction going into year 3. 

We have to clear are desks before monday to make space for our end of year show and I have started to feel all sad and nostalgic again, next year it all gets serious, and I have had such good times this year with everyone I just hope it carries on :)

Pub golf with everyone tomorrow-bring on the kryptonite, we definitely deserve it!

my desk, nice caricature of me by Josh!

my happy chair! stealing him back next year for sure!

240 procrastination

So here are some photos of my workstation which has become home since we arent allowed in the studio :( Have actually gotten motivated to do drawing today! Spent an hour this morning drawing jess and then took photos and videos at trampolining to draw tomorrow. 

Bottom one is all the stages of me doing a cartwheel from a video! Took a lot longer than i though it would, cartwheels are more complicated than they look!