Knees on bees ...

Update on these.
Edit: The Knees have a new website! Well done girls!!!

Wedding Wednesday - part 1

Phew ... what a manic few weeks its been! We're just back from visiting my family in Malaysia - and I can safely say that we're going to be mostly here for the foreseeable future ...

Now that I've actually had a bit of time to go through all the photos we've had back from our "official" photographer (friend Burning Dan); and lots of other people - they're still slowly arriving in the post; I thought I might start trying to dig through and find photos to show you all the crafting and other details of the wedding that I got up to. So, for the next few however-many-Wednesdays it takes, I'm going to do just that, right here ...

Today I start with the pompom project.

Initially I had planned to make lots of bunting to criss-cross the wedding marquee; but I found it difficult to source fabric that I liked, and at an affordable price. As a test I tried making one of the Martha Stewart pompoms that seemed to be all over the blogs last year. It turned out to be extremely easy to do and so I set about sourcing enough tissue paper in colours that I wanted to make at least 50 of them! 1 is easy; 50 is a bit more demanding ... It took me a whole day and a half of solid work to fold and tie them up; and I took them to the venue in that state. Then, the day before the wedding friends and family chipped in the "Pompom Fluffing and Hanging Game". It was a lot of work ... thank you so very much to all my diligent little elves ;)

And this is what it looked like all hung up:

Two other little details I thought I'd share are the hand painted "Wedding" signs I made from junk wood planks and acrylic paint; to be hung on the way to the venue (at the top of this post); and the paper doily place cards I made for all the family reserved seats. I colour printed out individual names on transparent inkjet sticky labels, and stuck them to small paper heart doilies. These were then taped to the chairs. Unfortunately it rained - and the doilies didn't hold up too well; and alas, these are the only photos I have of them ...

So there you have it - the first few details you would have seen if you had been at the wedding. Tune in next Wednesday for part 2!

Photos galore

My (our?) current favourite photo from the wedding ;)

As the blog will be quiet again for a bit while we are away at my parents, I thought I'd leave my readers with a bit to look at while we are away ...

Firstly, remember my invite? I was a little unsure how it was going to be received as its not your typical wedding invite, is it? Anyways, I also asked people to send me pictures of their "Tweeters" once they made them up - and what a good idea that was :)

Here is a link to a gallery of Tweeters - Sunshine's dad especially (about a-third down the page, from Dubai) really got into it and his selection is wonderful ...

And if you're up for more; here are some actual wedding pictures (lots on facebook so you will need an account for that): Will also keep updating here as more photos get put on the internetz :)

Nic Rogers Flickr

Simon and Anika Flickr

Julie Facebook

Mel & Jo Facebook

Mithi's dad (on Tiara's account) Facebook

Nic Hannam (claims to be other people's!) Facebook

Uncle Chris (on Lucy's account) Facebook

Xtina (5 photos within a larger 2009 folder) Facebook

Milla Flickr

David & Jodie Facebook

The Kathys Picasa

Adele & Mark J Picasa

Oh yes, and we've already been blogged about :

Milla & Adele

Hello world!

Photo by Simon & Anika

Greetings all! I give to you Mr & Mrs Sunshine ...

We are back from our exquistely lovely Cornish mini-honeymoon; and from the photos that have been slowly filtering back; the wedding was a fairly good (if I do say so myself) party despite the rain ;)

Now to get the house in order; spend the next week recovering; and doing all the other little things we need to deal with before we go off again to visit my parents in Malaysia next week.

And as such the blog will be a bit quiet for a bit more, but hopefully I will be back with lots of wedding crafty bits in the next couple of months. As I did pretty much everything myself, I didn't really have time to catalogue eveything - such a shame - but I am hoping that other people did, and between all the photos people have taken, I can try and give you a sense of how the wedding went ...

Toodle pip for now ...

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 ....