Protest board

My protest board for Zara Arshad's "60 Years" project (to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights ... have a look at more here in Zara's flickr page.

Haroun's adventures ...

So this is the last of this semester's projects. We had to design two book-covers and we were allowed to choose whatever book we wanted (as long as we cleared it with the tutor first). I went with one of my favourite books - Salman Rushdie's "Haroun and the Sea of Stories".

I wanted it quite tactile - for a while thinking that I'd make a set, then photograph it .... but that was just too much work considering how many other projects I had on. Instead I started playing with lots of cellophane sheets.

The first cover I did is quite colourful (refers to the streams in the 'Sea of Stories'):


I laid out lots of coloured strips that I'd cut, straight onto the scanner and scanned them in. I also tried adding several fish and water splashes etc until I found something that worked. It was all then composited in Photoshop and printed onto acetate (to give that translucent feel the original bits of cellophane had). Here's a photo of what the original strips looked like:


And examples of the scans are here.

The second cover is the last thing I did on Tuesday night before rushing to college to drop it all off. Part of the story refers to the people of the land of Chup - where their shadows are attached, but independent of them. Haroun comes across a warrior practise-fighting with his own shadow!

I made this up using more black and blue cellophane, photographed it and tried to composite it into a book cover in Photoshop. Somehow it just didn't work .... I tried all manor of iterations and it just wasn't coming together. Eventually I decided to go back to what I do best - hand made ... and so this is what I did ...


On a funny note, I did this, handed it in Tuesday night, and look what Rob Ryan put up on Wednesday on his blog.

Anyways, this is it for this semesters work ... I've got some time off now to do my OWN stuff (includng wedding planning!). I'm off to a zinefest tomorrow in London, and then visiting my Grandma ... will be back with further adventures soon!

Jumpin' at the Labside ...

After all the cryptic-ness that was this entry, here is what I finally produced:


So, the rationale ... erm, I still don't know what bacteria have to do with jazz (I did find a nice quote about bacteria and music that I put inside the front cover), but anyways, I ended up doing a very long concertina book, kind of inspired by how 'Peter and the Wolf' is put together - ie, each character in the story represented by a musical instrument. I went through my whole collection of swing music looking for something with very distinct solos by particular instruments. In the end choosing Count Basie's 1938 version of "Jumpin' at the Woodside" (yes,I can just SEE the lindy hopping crowd getting excited) ...

Listened to it till I couldn't stand to listen to it any more, then started working out how I might represent each instrument as a type of bacteria. After many iterations (and a bit of artistic licence), this is what you get. Each page is roughly 16 x 4 bars (or that's 8 x 8s for you dancers). Its not very clear here but there's also de-bossing (opposite of embossing) on almost every page. The bacteria images were all sourced from the Science Photo Library.

I'm still not sure what I think of this piece. It was a real stumbling block. Two of my passions - science and swing; and I found it really odd juxtaposing the two. Still, it was a great learning exercise in more ways than one! I'm most happy with the "introducing the band" page, as I was so tired, I thought I'd give them 'scat-esque' intros.

yes, its a bit small here at the mo... (might split it into a few chunks as blogger doesn't seem to like such a big image). Will be uploading individual page photos onto my flickr site soon - but right now, I just want to go to bed ....

EDIT: Done it , they're here now ... and for your amusement, here's my favourite page:

Paaarp!

Final pop-up piece in all its glory ...

You can also just about see in the close-up shot (on the red cloud-shaped bit) that some of the pieces have de-bossing on them ... Also the word "paaarp!/JAZZ" has a mechanism that makes it swing out as you open the page.

Curiously finished ...

So THIS is what I was working towards: (click on image for larger view)

Still need to print them out on quality paper for assessment, but otherwise done ... thank goodness! You can see how the project evolved by clicking on the 'Curious Incident' tag at the bottom...

So that's another one down ... Most of the others are kind of coming together ... only a couple more days to go - hand-ins on Wednesday!

(Thank you Sunshine, my very bored model and photography assistant. In the top photo you can see my right hand, but my left hand is out of shot taking the photo via the remote trigger!)

EDIT: Thank you SYAR for being a great proofreader - typo fixed now in original. Also, several people have asked and the answer is , No you can't actually play the game - I'm not a game designer. It was for aesthetic purposes only. I'd had a conversation with my tutor about this and we both agreed that it wasn't my job to make something playable!

Swordfighting with my Shadow

Part of something else I'm currently working on ...

ZOMG SPIKE!

Imagine the surprise I had when I saw my site stats for yesterday ... almost all coming from here ... Muchas Gracias Microsiervos!

Explosion in progress...

It feels like I'm working 24/7 at the moment .... looking forward to the end of January (already!) when we get a couple of weeks off while the tutors get busy with the marking ... in the meantime, here's an explosion of paper mechanics ...(work in progress!)

Sea of colour

Mmmm... I like coloured gel sheets and scanners ...

Game of Curio-do anyone?

Doh! I was SOOOOOooo close to finishing this off today - but the printer has run out of ink and the replacements will take a couple of days to arrive. Need to still print out the game board, and then take photos for my double page spreads. But the bits and pieces are at least coming together :)

Maybe another two?

I think I'm done with another two pieces ... going to sleep on them and might tweak them a little before handing in. But have got to stop here for now and move on to the next project ...


Oh, and if you're wondering, the brief was to do two images for this banking based thing - so all the words we had were quite 'finance' and banking based ... really uninspiring like "integrated solutions". I really struggled with this one, initially doing quite figurative stuff (see 'Flexible'). The tutor, who had noticed how much I enjoyed the abstract book project, said that there was nothing stopping me from taking this brief that way as well ... and so you have this; which was SO MUCH MORE my cup of tea ...

One down, many more to go ...

Abstract book all printed and bound - hooray!

Tumblrweed ...

Whilst I'm being a busy bee trying to do ALL the bits of coursework due in a couple of weeks, I thought I'd share with you some of my inspirations. I've been meaning to blog about stuff here as I went along, but it was just too much work... Then I found the fab tumblr, and now I can keep all my inspiration in one place, with links to the original images and artists and places that they came from. Its SO easy ...

Here's a screen shot of what the archive looks like at the moment - click on the picture to be forwarded straight to my account...

Its also at the moment keeping track of random wedding ideas ;)

Look out 2009, here we come!

2009 is hopefully going to be a year to remember - mainly because I'm GETTING MARRIED! But before we embark on that ... here's a review of the last FANTASTIC year :)

January
- Engagement excitement ...
- Mail Me Art submission - its been received so should be exhibited sometime 2009...
- And more Birds.

February
- Self portraits galore...
- Learned to make books...
- Science can be artistic ...
- Thank You Suzanne and students...
- Mobile swapped. Thank You Elise Marley.

March
- Portrait partied ...
- Had a Charley Harper Birthday...
- Started my 365.

April
- Made some ships!

May
- Did a lot of painting ...
- Met lots of lovely people ...
- Got featured in "A view in your mirror"

June
- Did a lot of sewing ...
- Finished the first year of my degree and went off and did lots ...

July
- Learning to drive ...
- Mmmmmm.... Cornwall ...
- Whip Up and ...
- Craft !!!!!!!!!!!
- They got round a lot, yes

August
- "How to save the world" sketchbook exhibited by Arthouse Co-op...
- Thank you Pete Scully...
- EJC 2008 - mostly spent watching ;)
- Found a wedding venue ;)
- Back home in Malaysia ...

September
- Molecular!
- Spider ... We was 'dere!

October
- New academic year ...

November
- Just working bloody hard!
- Exhibiting in Cafe Kino.
- Started dancing again ...

December
- Fail driving test :(
- GOYA projects :)
- Mutant SUPERToys!
- Molecular made Pikaland and MAKE :D

Friends give great plugs ...
- Emma
- Suzanne
- Sharm
- Janey
- Gesa
- Connie
- Zara
- Scully (and again)
- Milla, infact the lovely lady linked to me several times over the year - and I am eternally grateful!

THANK YOU TO EVERYONE WHO HAS FOLLOWED, SUPPORTED, COMMENTED, BLOGGED ABOUT OR GENERALLY BEEN NICE to me and my little corner of the blogosphere this year ... LOVE TO YOU ALL and have a GREAT 2009!

MAKE Molecular!

First CRAFT Mag, and now MAKE too!

Thank you (my lovely ex-dance student and friend) Nikki for bringing it to my attention and Average Jane Crafter for bringing it to MAKE , and Amy@Pikaland for promoting it there yesterday ...

Links:
Original link to the font in Neo2.es Magazine
Original blogpost about being on Neo2.es
Very original idea done about two years ago

Here's the lab set -up I also photographed for the feature page in the paper version of Neo2. It looks slightly out of context, but imagine this at the bottom of the page, with the top half with text explaining the font and where you can down load it , picture here.

What a great and funny Christmas gift!

Merry Happy Holidays!

Continuing on my theme of typographic holiday greetings, here's this year's Gocco printed card :) I made them the day I failed my driving test, so I was desperately trying to cheer myself up...

Hope those of you who actually got a copy, liked them ... and to everyone else (especially all those coming recently from pikaland.com and neo2.es), HAPPY HOLIDAYS!

Supertoys!

Continuing on from the GOYA post, I thought I'd put up some photos from something else that Sunshine and I got up to earlier this month. We'd both had a bad day with work and being stood up by potential wedding caterers. I left Sunshine in the Arnolfini Gallery while I popped upstairs (our studios are in the same building, on the 4th floor) for a tutorial.

When I finished, I came down to find Sunshine pulling apart a toy typewriter to get the keys ... He had found the SUPERTOYS exhibition and was busy making a "dancing tape-head baby"! Not be be outdone, I made "Mr Wolfie" (that's your favourite fairytale character's arms and legs sticking in him / out of him ...) ... yes, it was all a bit bizzare, but it was such a load of fun! (especially after a bad day ...)


Here are our creations all lined up on the shelves. "Love Me Bear" was by Sunshine and a reaction against all the mutilation. Apparently the toy stash that was there in the gallery for us to take apart and put back together were donated by school kids who had been asked to bring in toys they no longer wanted! Bear was so soft and cute that we left him be, with a necklace round his neck saying "Love Me", and a tag that said "Representing the Hopes and Fears of Endangered Toys Everywhere..."

The exhibition is on till the 18th of January 2009 and I HIGHLY recommend it. We've been back a couple of times since , just to see how things are going; the shelves are PACKED with mutant creations, and I am proud to say my Mr Wolfie has been moved to the extra special Window Sill, where the curators have displayed the best of the creations ... ;)

GOYA projects ...

Or "Get Of Your Arse" projects - a term coined by Sunshine for projects we get up to when we're bored of doing the usual stuff that's expected of us (job and coursework) ... much better than sitting round the kitchen table post dinner, and complaining about how tired we are and how much work we have to do ;)

mithi on tv, originally uploaded by Drew & Mithi.

365:072 Smoke, originally uploaded by planetmithi.

dripydripy, originally uploaded by Drew & Mithi.

Some tea in your milk sir?, originally uploaded by Drew & Mithi.

There's some ink in your milk, sir..., originally uploaded by Drew & Mithi.

I've always loved photography, having been inspired by my Dad who always seemed to have a camera about when I was a child. Now I'm inspired by Sunshine and his quite 'geeky' interest in photography. I started a 365 project earlier this year and have learnt SO much from it ...

But I've also been partaking in these photography experiments with Sunshine. They're more his ideas (and mostly to do with his adeptness with technology!) , but I do enjoy the collaborative element in them. And they're as much a part of my 'creative journey' as is the art stuff I do for college; and I've been thinking for a while that I want to blog about them here ...

Hope you enjoy them ... hopefully in 2009 there will be MORE of my creative influences on this blog and not just the college work ...

I saw three... erm... TWO ships sailing by ...

Yesterday was the last day of this term (apart from the few people with tutorials today) and as an end of term fun project (because the tutors knew our hearts were not really into doing real work), we got to MAKE Christmas themed stuff.

A couple of weeks ago the tutors went to Scrapstore and picked up lots of bits and pieces for the first years to work on a fab making-3d-ilustrations-with-low-tech-things project with one of last year's graduates, the lovely Hattie Newman. Some of us second years were a bit sad because WE never got to do that kind of project ... so yesterday, we were given free rein to all the random leftover bits; pressure free, to make whatever we wanted in a vague Christmas/winter theme. I started with just wanting to make lots of layers - with eventually became the carol "I saw three ships come sailing by on Christmas eve in the morning ..." But I only managed to make two ships (on sticks so you can move them about). This photo was taken this morning by the window. It looks much better with strong sunlight shining through - but not much of that this time of year!

Photos of more of the random creations here on the illustration facebook group.

The Music of Microorganisms ...

I've been thinking a lot about bacteria (and other microorganisms)...

And I've been thinking a lot about jazz (specifically swing)...

And have tried to bring the two together ...

But very unsuccessfully I feel ...

So I went to the tutors with all the work I had done, and asked them "How do I make sense of this?", and they, with their much well trained eyes said, "Well, what about doing this?". It was there right before my eyes, but I couldn't see. I just needed someone who could step back from it all and tell me how it could all work together.

Have a lot of work to do over the Christmas holidays - 12 pieces of work; the thought of which kept me stressfully awake all of last night! Hope I can make this come together well ...