9 days and counting!!!!!

Oh! Its been over two weeks since I wrote last ... sorry! But as you can imagine, the wedding planning/making has really stepped up speed now ... with only 9 more days to go! Whoopeee!

I did thought manage to go to London last week and visit the D&AD NewBlood exhibition. Here's our college stand - And congrats to Becki for winning a Best New Blood award!


Am really glad I went - as it gave me a sense of what I need to achieve for next year. The Coningsby show is on at the moment till Friday ... I was very much hoping to go, but I'm not going to make it ... considering how much wedding stuff is still left to do ...

Wedding planning is coming along smoothly - with lots of wedding crafts which I will blog lots about AFTER the wedding! Cheerio folks!

UWE Illustration '09 graduating class

As promised, this years graduating class ... The show at college is on till this Thursday the 25th; and then they are exhibiting twice in London: with UWE graphic design at D&AD New Blood (Olympia National Hall 29 June - 1 July), and their own little London show at the Coningsby Gallery (PV 6 July; show till 10 July). DON'T MISS IT!

I've tried my best to get everyone's internet presence - but I'm still missing a few that I'm chasing up and will update as soon as I know; and a few of them have a rather sparse presence (empty blog) at the moment - but give them a couple of months for the all the shows and things to be over, and I'm sure content will arrive in droves ...

ps, my favs in bold ;)

SAM BETTS - blog
SAM BEVINGTON - website
BEN BRAY - blog
CHRISTINE BOUNSALL - blog
LOUISE BURROWS - blog
MARCUS BUTT - website blog
ARTHUR BUXTON - blog
JENNA CAMBELL - blog
LUCY DRISCOLL - blog
SARAH GRICE - blog
JESSIE HARLIN - blog
BECKI HARPER - blog
AMY HARDY - blog
TOM HUNT - website
RYAN HODGE - blog
SALLY HOLT - blog
BILLY LAU - blog
ASHLEY LE QUERE - blog
KATE CRAGOE MAYFIELD - blog
ZANNY MELLOR - website
NINA MIDGELEY - blog
MADALENA MONIZ - blog
JAKE OTTON - blog
FRIDTJOF LEIVESTAD OLSEN - website
JAMES PETER DAVIS - blog
MARY ROUNCEFIELD - website
RICHARD SANDERSON - website
MARTIN SHEPHERD
ADAM SMITH
BEN SMITH
LYDIA STARKEY - website
HOLLY STOVES - blog
SARA THIELKER - website

33 Days to go!

Oh, my ... I have really been neglecting this blog lately, haven't I? Very very sorry - but since the end of hand-ins I've dived straight back into wedding planning ... yes, just over a month to go before I become Mrs Sunshine - and I can't wait!

In the last few weeks I have been:

Writing lists and filling calendars - and ticking things off ...


Starting on some table arranging - oh yes, colour coded guests!


Collecting lots of glassware (well, I've been charity shop hopping for the last 6 months actually).


Dabbling in some wedding crafts (no, there will be no blue fluffy things at the wedding - I was just practising making some of these, and blue tissue paper was all that I had on hand at the time).


All this amongst trying to give the house a good spring cleaning, and many other to-do list things ... everytime I get something done, it appears more things pop-up on my list - at least I'm really enjoying it :)

The rest of this week will be handing in my dissertation proposal form for next year; writing my graduate development programme 500 word evaluation of the year; helping the 3rd years set up their degree show; and then on Friday working the private view of the show as a student ambassador. And that'll be officially it for college this year. Hopefully I'll put up a list of this years graduates here sometime next week like I did last year. In the meantime enjoy your summer everyone!

Tagged at the right time ...

I was tagged yesterday by Lynne (Skully); and although I tend not to partake in these chain tagging things (and hence will probably not be tagging anyone forward), this one gave me the great excuse to talk about what I did yesterday ... so here goes!:

"8 things challenge"

1. Mention the name of the person who tagged you - Lovely Lynne at Autonomous Artisans.
2. Do the lists of 8. See below
3. Tag 8 bloggers of your choice. - Thinking about how I might get round this...
4. Let them know that they have been tagged!

8 Things I'm looking forward to:

1. July 18th 2009
2. Becoming Mrs Sunshine :)
3. Having my parents, sister, grandma, great aunt, and several aunts and uncles all together at the same place.
4. Seeing all our friends - especially the ones we haven't seen in a while and/or are coming from far far away.
5. Introducing them all to each other.
6. Being overexcited.
7. Getting to wear our rings.
8. It being sunny (fingers crossed!)

*** OK, so I guess it's a bit of a cheat to have ALL the things I'm looking forward to be effectively the same thing ...; but hey, I'm SO looking forward to it! ***

8 Things I Did Yesterday:

1. Visited the Jamaica Street Studios open studios.
2. Met one of my favourite local illustrators, Bjorn Rune Lie.
3. Bought a Norwegian children's book and some blue tree prints.
4. Pottered round the Bristol Design Festival.
5. Saw Sunshine's students degree show, "Future This".


6. Visited the Bristol Festival of Nature.
7. Saw some owls:



8. And got to cuddle the most adorably cute and docile skunk on the planet :)



*** Busy weekend in Bristol, ain't it? ***

8 Things I wish I could do:

1. Guarantee good weather for the 18th of July 2009
2. Have all the friends who can't come, for whatever reasons (and they're quite good reasons... but still); come to the wedding.
3. Get better faster at drawing/painting/illustrating.
4. Develop a self-consistent illustrating style /visual language.
5. Cook like my momma :)
6. Be able to take Sunshine away for a well deserved long holiday :)
7. Be as fit as I used to be when I was dancing 7 nights a week.
8. Dance around in our dining room .... no, wait, I CAN do that ;)

8 Shows I Watch:
Erm ... we have no telly, and so we don't really watch any shows ... instead I'm going to direct you to some things I think worth having a look at in the interfishynetwebs :)

1. TED talks.
2. The Do Lectures.
3. Pop-tech popcasts.
4. Makezine TV.
5. Craftzine podcasts.
6. Etsy Storque videos.
7. UCBerkeley youtube channel.
8. Stanford University youtube channel.

My 8 tagged bloggers are:

Again, I don't really want to tag people to do this, but this seems like a good excuse to re-direct my readers to some of our oh so lovely and talented friends (not all bloggers) ...
Course mates
1. Jen Jen
2. Charlie
3. Rich
4. Pearl
Other artsy friends
5. The Frase - Fab illustrator and swing dancer
6. The Bees Knees (Jo and Aila) - More fab dancers
7. Intrika (Ana and Frix) - Jugglers and mischief makers! Oh yes, they make great clothes too :)
8. Charlie Caper - magician, juggler, swing dancer. And an overall lovely fellow ...

That's alllllllllllllllllll ...

Woo!

Dancing doodles (inspired by these lovely talented friends of mine) done whilst trying to keep myself awake at the marathon - 9 hours! - presentation session yesterday ...

Good show though, everyone did really well and I'm looking forward to seeing how people's work progresses next year ... wayhay, bring on the summer!

Done!

Here's what I've been up to this semester - a children's book about a little girl who dances with her toys and imagines being in far off places. I think it still needs a lot of work - but I am happy with where I got to at this stage. Hopefully this will get a mawling by the tutors and can be 110% improved for Macmillan next April.

Dummy book:

And a couple of random spreads from it:

And here are the colour spreads I did - ended up doing 5 although usually they ask for only 4:

*Sorry for the photo quality - Can't get the white balance quite right - will try again with Sunshine's advice once he's home.

That's it for this term, and this academic year - apart from presentations tomorrow, and some paperwork that needs filling in for next year's dissertation; I'm mostly done with college till October ... phew! Just a wedding to organise and the rest of my life to plan out ...

I _am_ still here ...

Proof:

The bombsite that is my work space at the moment ...
Notice many cups of tea and blinds drawn down to keep out the sun.
(and, yes, that is a copy of Genes V and my PhD thesis propping up the monitor)

Really enjoying my work right now but it's SO hard to concentrate when it's sunny outside (see, blinds lowered to reduce distraction), and I'd much rather be doing other fun stuff, or wedding planning, or picnic-ing in Ashton Court (we've been on a couple of walks there recently and seen a pair of peregrines!).

Aarrrrrrrgh .... want it to be over already!!!

Another 4 days to assesment, then a couple of weeks to write up 3rd year dissertation proposal, then its full steam ahead to summer and the wedding!

A little bit of inspiration ...

I've got another week and a half of diligent work till the last hand-ins for this term - how time flies, eh? I'm developing the little girl dancing images into a children's book and am really enjoying it at the moment - but its all very much work-in-progress right now so I haven't really got anything to show here ...

Instead I thought I'd share some wonderful websites I've come across whilst doing research for this project - and also because my drawing style is slowly becoming very much more retro inspired ...

TWO blogs of vintage children's books! (click on images to go straight to the blogs):



And also there's these three flickr groups ... mmmmm..... eye candy!

EDIT: German children's book illustration!

I'm going to have to do 4 fully illustrated spreads, and an accompanying dummy book which is the full set of 13 spreads + title pages + end papers done as sketches rather than fully illustrated. Hopefully, if the tutors are happy with it and I get a lot of good feedback, I'm going to try and finish off the whole book over summer - yay :)

Tweet tweet?

T-minus two months till I become Mrs Sunshine ... and I thought I'd share with you one of my most important projects. I think everyone who is likely to receive one of these (and reads this blog) has already done so, so I'm not spoiling anyone's surprise ... I hope ...

If you remember this, well look what became of it:


One sheet is the (very informal) invite, and the other sheet is a cut out and make little remember-the-date bird which turns into this:


It took a long time to get to a design that I was happy with - here's the evolution of the tweeter:

The bird is based on this gorgeous set of Alice Melvin designed menagerie from the Tate. I tried lots of different bird cut-outs but this one worked the best. I had to redesign it slightly to make it work for what I wanted.

I really wanted a letterpressed invite - but the quotes I got were well beyond our budget, and for a while I thought of screenprinting at college - which would have been fine if I had 40 guests - but we have a lot more, and the time limitation just didn't allow it. In the end they were done digitally from coloured ink on watercolour paper originals. I wasn't happy with the colour reproduction, or the paper quality - but hey, they are done, and have been sent out (and received!).

If any of my lovely readers who received one of these has actually made them, please send me a photo of you with them. And there a few of my readers who can't come to the wedding - I have cards for you! I just need to get my act together and mail them ;) (yes Luceanne, I'm thinking of you!)

All quiet ...

... on the blogging front ...

I am here, just getting on with the last of this year's college work ...

Proof: More dancing in my sketchbook:

My b-b-b-beautiful neighbourhood!

I don't usually blog about non-arty things on this blog - but music is creative, no?

Anyways, this weekend it has been the Southbank Bristol Arts trail - in our neighbourhood! We wondered round last year and this year was just as good, if not better. We have lots of artists living in the area - including the dean of my art college whom we saw sitting in his front garden marking dissertations ...

Wondering round yesterday, we came across crafty musician, Rachael Dadd who lives just a few streets over from us. I bought this GORGEOUS embroidered badge from her, and found out that they would be having a 'house concert' later that evening.


After seeing lots of fab art and meeting lots of talented neighbours; we stopped off at home for a bit of dinner. Feeling satiated post dinner, we weren't sure we wanted to head out again - but it was so close, there was no excuse ... and are we mighty glad we did!

First off, Rachael on piano with about 30 people sitting on every surface of her living room (yes, I was by her feet):


Rachael was followed by her housemate, Will (got a bit too dark to take photos). Listen to their music here: Rachael & Will. Both absolutely lovely lovely ...

Then we all decamped into the back garden where there must have been at least 40 people all sat round the big washing-machine-drum fire, sitting on the wall, looking through upstairs windows, etc etc .

Rachael and Will then played together as "The Hand":


After that we had Jethro (aka Jetfly). I just looked through our photos and realised we didn't get any of him! Darn ... He was GREAT ... must say that if you ever get to see him, make sure he sings "Punk Folk Disco" ... oh yes, my favourite song of the weekend ...

Then came - through, the back gate, on stilts, Ichi. I can't even begin to describe what this man is or does ... he played anything and everything; all by himself; including right at the end, the popper on his head! Suffice to say I hadn't smiled so much in one night in a long time ... :)


Nothing could top that - or could it? Last but not least, came out, in full costume, Jaaja ... oh.my.god. Where did Rachael FIND these people? They are hitch-hiking round Europe for 6 months playing any gig they can get - if you come across them, GO SEE THEM! My cheeks are still hurting!

This is the band in full gear:


And this is their lead singer, with headgear off, standing on a chair and trying not to strangle himself on the washing line (the song was about a washing machine ...):


That must have been the best evening out I have had in a LOOOOOOOONG time ... and how nice to be able to do it in a stranger's home ...

Apart from that, Sunshine also managed to help some ladies make some pottery:



And today we managed to see a couple more great local bands, The Ambling Band, another one not to be missed:


And last but not least, we managed to see my lovely friend and coursemate, Alice, and her band Limb Bones. Ah... what talented friends I have ...

Never will I choose to become a storyboard artist

Now don't get me wrong, I think storyboards are mighty useful things, especially if you're trying to visually work out a storyline for a narrative (a graphic novel; a children's picture book; etc) BUT I definitely would not choose to be a 'storyboard artist' - someone who does it if for a living for things that are then going to be translated to screen (eg TV, ads, films etc) ...

As part of our Visual Narrative module, we've had storyboard artist Oliver Harud in doing a workshop with us. He gave us a kind of live brief - an ad he had to work on last year - and we had to make up the 12 panel storyboards for it. Fine ... but we didn't actually think up the 12 panels - we were given quite specific descriptions (for example panel 3 was "Close up of her plate of healthy food (not just salad but steam fish/chicken & veg)" and it just felt odd to be told so specifically what was needed ... creativity was REALLY limited - and a lot of us struggled. It didn't help that the ad was for a diet pill!

As you can see, the arrow thing on panels 8 & 9 were prescribed to be quite specifically as top view with the whole arrow and whole figure. I was so bored of the drawing (pretty much everyone had done the same image - just in slightly different styles), that I decided to do my own alternative version of her swimming towards the camera.


Anyways, I ended up using the workshop to try and work on developing a character and re-drawing her in different positions and environments ... and in that respect, I got a lot out of the workshop - and Oliver was a great tutor (along with Ben Newman who was also around giving advice). But I sure don't see myself doing this for the rest of my life ....

Swing it ...

Here's what I've been doing the last two days ... We had a narrative workshop with the ever awesome Ben Newman where we had to do an illustration with lots happening all on the same page (see for example Marc Boutavant). I've been thinking about swing and dancing and all the related stuff a lot lately so the obvious theme seemed to be to do a dance floor. My initial idea had also people at the bar, the dj/band, people selling tickets, etc ... but the time constraints (1 and a half days) meant I concentrated on the dancers. Its still quite unfinished - needs a setting, and more random things happening; but for the meantime, this is what you get ..

This is dedicated, in loving memory, to Frankie Manning, greatest Ambassador of Lindy Hop, who passed away peacefully in New York on Monday morning, aged 94 and 11/12ths.

With Frankie in Herrang in 2002

Frankie Manning May 26, 1914 - April 27, 2009

Gay Paree ....

So here we are, back at college for a the last push before summer holidays (and wedding!). Easter has been lots of wedding planning (and avoiding college work) and a well deserved break with friends in Paris. Sunshine and I have both been before, so it was less about being touristy, and more about relaxing and chilling with friends. We hardly took any photos, spent a lot of time chatting and sitting in parks and being laid back. We were fed really well (by a French-chef-in-training), visited some super flea-markets (didn't buy anything though), but most exciting thing was that we visited THREE really good exhibitions:

Alexander Calder at the Pompidou


It was stunning - not just his mobiles, but also all this wireform work, especially the portraits, and his circus ... mmmm ... really my kind of thing ... (details here).

Also at the Pompidou was the Kandinsky retrospective:


This was even bigger than the Calder exhibition and covered his whole life ... Can't say we liked every bit of it - he seems to have done his best work when he was at the Bauhaus School. Still, it was good to see the progression, and how he got to where he got to ... and if his best work was in his 60s, there's hope for me yet!

But my favouritest exhibition of all has to be "The Jazz Century" ("Le Siecle du Jazz") at the Musee du Quai Branly:


Oh my goodness, there couldn't have been a happier bunny on the planet! We were fated to go there (I'd seen an ad in the inflight magazine, but also one of our hosts had decided they were going to take us as they thought we might like it...). It was a century of jazz, AND the visuals that accompanied it! Record covers; gig posters; short films; animations; paintings; drawings; all manner of art that was influenced by, and influenced Jazz. Lots of stuff I recognised, but lots of stuff new too me too. I was SO hugely inspired - want to do more jazzy things in my final year. I also desperately want the exhibition catalogue/book - its one of the best reference materials out there. Just waiting for an English version to come out (the French version was, well, French; and pricey considering the Euro to Pound exchange rate). I've taken lots of notes and will be looking LOTS of things up ...

Anyways, that was our Paris trip - this next week is heads down with essays, then full steam ahead till the beginning if June!

I just wanna cuddle my toys ...

Easter holidays seem to be more about work than holidays ... The last couple of weeks have been full-on wedding organising. Mum-in-law-to-be has been here talking through preparations ... I knew there was going to be a lot to do and think about, but I hadn't quite expected this much. And with college as well, have been feeling a bit overwhelmed and wanting to cuddle soft things (like fox plushies and Sunshine!) ...

On the creative front though, I finally got my wedding invites done and sent to the printers. Its been a steep learning curve about getting artwork ready for print and dealing with printers; choosing papers; etc. Am still not happy - but I had to draw the line somewhere and get on with other stuff. Also working on a childrens' book, but have decided now that I'm not going to stress myself out and try and get it in on deadline (for a competition next week). I'd rather take my time, do it well and enter next year.

Am enjoying wedding planning, but also really looking forward to next year when I can concentrate 101% on college ...

"With this ring I will, in July, thee wed."

So we went ahead and did it ... we made our own wedding rings ...
I made Sunshine's and he made mine ...

It started with one rather expensive piece of metal ...

We measured,

We scored,

We pierced (cut),

Till we had two smaller pieces of very expensive metal (and quite a bit of gold dust!),

Sunshine had to saw mine a bit more ( I have teeny fingers),

They were formed (shaped),

And annealed (glow, baby glow!),

And pierced a bit more,

Some flux was applied,

And some tiny pieces of solder,

And the ends soldered together ,

Then it was a long process of filing,

And more filing,

And polishing, outside,

And in,

And after a quick sonicating clean,

We had our wedding rings!

All under the expert supervision of the lovely Anna ...
Who not only supervised, but sourced the metal,
provided the studio, and most importantly,
provided moral support and tea and biscuits!

We love you Anna (who also suggested, many years ago,
that I try an art foundation course, and so directly affected where I am now)!
Thank you SOOOOOO much ...

101 more days ... One wedding list item down, and about a million more to go!

Mail Me Art

We are back from our jam-packed trip to London (to do a special project, which I will blog about in a bit once I've got all the photos sorted). But in amongst it all, we managed to drop into the "Mail Me Art" exhibition for about 10 minutes. It was nice to see my work hung up and to finally meet Darren who made it all happen.

The exhibition's on till Thursday 5pm ... and if you're in London, its REALLY worth going to ... some really wonderful and lovely work on display :)

Birthday Loot!

Mmmm.... have had some good birthday loot this year ... here is my birthday book loot:


Hmmm ... in love with Oliver Jeffers at the mo' (can you tell?). Working on a children's book project for college and he is SO inspiring ...

And then I happened to win Pikaland's March Pikapackage giveaway ... and lots of goodies came in the mail today ... Thank you Amy!


I also got a nice amount of dosh from my parents to buy some new clothes! Yippeee! Now just to find time to go shopping ... Oh yes, I'm going to prop-up the economy, I am! (this from the girl who goes shopping about two times a year ...).

Sunshine and I are off to Londinium (via Oxfordshire-ium) tomorrow for a very exciting making project - will blog when we get back ;)

AND this is on from tonight - I don't think I made it into the book, but I know he received my entry and apparently ALL the entries are going to be in the Gallery show. We're going to try and make time to go see ... pop in if you're in London ... it looks FAB!

Sneak tweet peak

Sneaky peak at super secret project that has nothing to do with college ... This is about version 10 - I think I'm finally happy. Need to get this out of the way soon ... Also need to get my 2500 word essay and several college projects done ... yikes!

Doing the Polar Polka ...

I apologise for the colour quality (although you can't see it) - our scanner is acting up and seems to not be dealing with warm colours very well ...

EDIT: I took a photograph (on top) and as you can see, its SO much better colours than the scan (bottom).