New Notebooks

Books, books, books...I have serious addiction to books! Thought I'd share these two little beauties that I picked up the other day from TK Maxx. I absolutely love that store for interesting little sketchbooks; I just now have too many to fill! Both have lined paper in them (not that that will stop me from doodling all over them). And both are smaller than A5 (perfect handbag size).

One of my other huge loves in life other than art and books is fashion. So I wanted to share my excitement for an exhibition of 200 of Vivienne Westwood's shoes that is going to the Bowes Museum in County Durham. It's going to be the only place in the UK that the exhibition is showing at before going on to Japan and America. The Bowes Museum is beautiful place and always has fantastic exhibitions on as well as it's own collections, and is well worth a visit should you be in the north east of England any time soon. As a child I always remember being amazed at the clockwork silver swan that magically appeared to eat the fish. It use to run on the hour every hour but to save it from wear and tear I believe it only runs twice a day now, so if you do visit be sure to time it with the swan's performance.

London Sketches

So i went to London a couple of months ago now, and have finally found the time to upload some of the sketches that i made whilst there. The first two show my nail varnish (i had barry m's specail effects on) and a figure that i sketched from a photo in a magazine after having been to the Design Museum (see ticket and flyer below). It was the 'Drawing Fashion' exhibition that impressed me the most particually the hand drawn, inked and painted old covers of magazines such as Vogue, if only they still made them like that!

I also took the time to visit the Tate Modern, it wasn't the first time i'd been and had seen much of it's collection already.

I always favoured the surrealists when i was younger and a piece by Roberto Matta Echaurren was my favourite this time, once home i tried to create some of the textures of the paint with gouache. This is the first time i've used paint in a long time (usually sticking to pencils and ink) and it's encouraged me to use it more in my work.

And finally a small sketch of the delicious cupcakes we ate whilst there!

Sketchbook Work

Well massive fail on my part, due to the lack of updating...but i have been working honest! Just some small A4 sketchbook stuff, mostly pencil. I feel my figure drawing is gradually beginning to improve but the two pages below still took me almost 4hours to do which is far too long! Still it's something i guess...

I also drew the contents of my bag the other day while fighting a small creative brick wall i'd hit (repeatedly or so it felt); lipgloss, one used tissue, mobile phone, purse and my small 'santoro gorjuss' journel all things i can't live without! Unfortunately i did forget to draw the pencil i took with me, but seeing as i had it to hand at the time i hope you'll let me off!

Oh and i have a confession to make...i haven't done anything with the portrait from my last post yet, but it is next on my to do list along with a tiger/pheasant sortof creature. But knowing me i'll just put it off, and put it off, and put it off like everything else in my life!

x

Update!

Well it's official I'm utterly rubbish at blogging! I think I've had this blog over a year now and only updated it half a dozen times...well all my school reports did say 'could do better'. The gap between posts is far too big now to update on everything that's past so I'm just going to concentrate on what's happening now...and hopefully do that more frequently!

Above is my most recent piece of work (unfinished as always with anything i do). She was meant to be wearing a motorcycle helmet but something about it says more 'army' to me then anything else...Might have a go and seeing what different colour palettes do to it before making up my mind.

That's it I'm afraid short and sweet, going to tidy up my desk, have a cup of tea (raspberry & white) and continue sketching for a bit and leave the colouring till tomorrow seeing as i have the whole day off work, instead of trying to cram it in tonight.

So with any luck another little update will be appearing here soon, but just in case don't hold your breath!

Autumn Days

Well i haven't blogged in forever so i decided it's time to get my lazy arse into gear! I always seem to get more productive when the nights get darker, I'm never sure why that is. Probably cause I'm practically nocturnal anyway.

So I've been doing some small amounts of drawing, nothing major and it just seems that i haven't gotten any further forward with my portfolio at all. Which isn't what i was hoping for by this time of the year. One thing i have been doing some work on is designing my own book cover for Lewis Carroll's 'Alice in Wonderland'.

Not sure how i feel about it yet, but colour is definitely one of things i struggle with most so we'll have to wait and see how it turns out. A lot of my crazy ideas never get beyond the pencil, I've always found applying colour painful to do.

Since I'm being honest one of the other things i struggle with is time; I draw painfully slow (as anybody whose ever watched me draw will no doubt have noticed). A friend of mine recently turned me onto http://www.posemaniacs.com/ which has a brilliant 30 second drawing tool, which I'm finding a big help on that front. When i eventually get round to blogging again perhaps I'll share some of the vaguely human squiggles that result from it. But for now i have a desk to tidy before i can take anything any further, and that looks like it may take some time!

Tyneside Metro Station

Got a camera film back today from Boots, and it had these photos from the metro station at Tyneside in it. I remember visiting there way back before last summer whilst still at university, i was totally captured by the decay and rust; the colours in these photographs are beautiful. I wonder if it's still there, a lot of the station was bordered off when i went, they were busy getting ready to redo it which would be a shame because i love it just the way it is.

I think at some point i'm going to have do some work from these photos, either developing a colour palette for another piece, or drawing and sketching...or maybe something abstract (which i never do) just trying to get down on paper the feeling of the place.

You'll Never Take Me Alive!

Ta-daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!
i've been drawwwwwwinnngggggggggggggggggggggggggg!
And it made me really happeee! Like 2yr old on a giant orange space hopper happeee, like i wanna take all my crayons and stick em up me nose happeee, like i drank far to much tizer than should be humanly allowed happeee!
And i currently have nothing else to proclaim other than that :) xx