Screen print tester

Print and process is stupidly good fun right now. I chose screen printing, and this is a one-colour tester of an image which will end up in two colours.

Apologies for the bad scan, my scanner hates colours.

The traffic warden for Changing Places illustration

The brief is to take an object or character that we sketched in the Good/Bad Cambridge project and place them in another setting, trying to make them appear integrated (e.g. not surreal, it has to be possible)

I'm planning on the grumpy piratey traffic warden from King's Parade in a desert setting, seeing what happens, but I may change my mind. I do only have until monday, so I should get a shuffle on.

Far too many words.

Pretentious words
Prolix vomit
Spews from the fingertips
Electronic crap.

Haven't uploaded stuff I meant to, so here it is!

My mum's birthday present, a portrait of our dog, in embroidery

Sketch for Print & Process, an Evian bottle for an etching, done with a lollipop stick & ink

Sketch of my housemate Jack for monoprinting, dip pen and ink

Screenprint concept, acrylic & tan thread

Screenprint transparency, alcohol inks on True Grain

Screenprint concept, papers and ink

There's a lot more where that came from, plus prints, but laziness beckons and my hands have scanner-cramp

Embroidery. So masculine.

Oh yeah, I'm manly.

Bobo the Homeless

Far too many influences to name, but based on my project work drawing multiple sides of Cambridge. This is for a screen print, so I'll be working colours into it soon, and seeing how that goes.

Charles Darwin Thread Sketch pt. 1

Part one of the Charles Darwin embroidery I worked on last week, after seeing the exhibition at the Fitzwilliam in Cambridge. It's to use in juxtaposition to the thread sketches of homeless people I'm working on for the six week sketch brief we've been given for uni.

This is the back of the sketch, which coincidentally looked very ape-like for a long time, creating a nice symmetry with the crux of his theory of natural selection and some of the museum items used to demonstrate this.

iPod Tough

Doodling on my iPod touch turns out to actually be far more difficult than I expected. Gone are the days of loving my finger-painting masterpieces.

Let it never be said that I am only willing to reveal my relative masterpieces. I am totally willing to reveal near-ultimate failures. Hooray!

Sketches, doodles, randoms

I apologise, but scanning is impossible, and my camera hates document photos (and I'm not so great at them to start with). Randomly playing with the concept of submerged/floating hair.

Dogs in scarves. The meekest form of animal cruelty. Hurrah!

Hurrah!

Five minute scrapwood bird

So named because it took five minutes on a scrap of hardboard. Just ink and white acrylic on hardboard.

Bears and bears and bears oh my!

My ursine obsession seems unlikely to dwindle at any point in the future. I must say, though, that the terror created by your mother being in hospital with something potentially really quite nasty going on keeps you awake and leaves you with a hell of a lot of free time to paint and stuff. Also the going a bit mental from it bit leads to media experimentation. The next one is ink on hardboard. Unfortunately I don't have a saw right now, and scalpels, no matter the vigour with which they are used, do not cut it very effectively at all.

Basically, expect more bears. I may get a bear tattoo

It's been too long.

I have been very busy (mainly procrastinating) so haven't put anything up on here in ages. Lazy, lazy me. I'm taking advantage of my last little while where I don't HAVE to work.

I did this a while back. It was mainly to play with a wash technique I saw somewhere, I like it.

The scan is crappy, because it's in a teeny little book all made of envelopes that I bound REALLY BADLY. Shockingly badly. I have to tie the buggering thing together to stop it from laying half open all the time. I'll get it right eventually. Possibly.

Self portrait

Make website, will fail epically at keeping up with blogging.

Goldfishies!

For my personal sketchbooks, the little ones that I carry about the place, I like to find random materials and paper and fabric and make them myself. Mainly it stops me complaining if they fall apart, as it's my fault, but also I like owning unique things, and the making is quite good fun too.

This time I made a book all covered in kind of ugly goldfish, and the insides of the book are all different kinds of materials, with envelopes, and card, and paper and stitched pockets and things. I know it makes it weaker as the thinner paper makes points more likely to break, but it's so much fun to be able to randomly tear an envelope open and have a big patterned space to draw on. Also, as I have done with one page, you can flip oven one half of an envelope and glue it to cover the images you do that are genuinely bullcrap. In other words, remain unable to draw people in brush and ink, and yet I merrily go ahead and try without a practice go first. I know it's a sketchbook so it's all about mistakes, but I have secret fantasies about being a rich and famous illustrator (not that many exist really) and people in a hundred years wanting to own my old sketchbooks, all faded and battered. Mmm vanity.

Here's a really bad photo! I am terrible at photos, but also have a genuinely awful camera, which really doesn't help.

I fill these teeny books with odd things. This one lends itself to collecting stuff, but at the same time there's lots of drawing space for things like:

Sheepies! Slightly sarcastic looking sheepies.

and;

For some reason a hairy depressed... guy. It was late, I don't know where it came from. I think initially I was drawing a hairy border.

aaaaaaand;

My favourite! Mainly because I love bears, but I have developed an odd line-obsession in the past couple of days. I plan to do more like this, but not just fur, things like horns and hair and... hands and stuff.

Random doodles

I am a lazy holiday person. I am spending 99% of my time in bed. Granted I'm also slightly poorly, so at this particular moment in time I feel it's justified.

Blogger doesn't want me to upload stuff right now, so it's coming later.

Grr.

Cragside

Foxgloves and an elusive bee, that then flew off when my damn camera flashed. even though I told it not to.

My mother's feet, in entirely inappropriate footwear for rocky walking

The Big Tree, that I haven't ever seen before even though I used to go to Cragside all  the time as a young'un

It's really a very pretty place. I hadn't been since I was about seven, up until Sunday last. I took some pictures, hoorah!

I maka de plush!

I made a plushie. His name is Stig and he's a nervous fella. He's scared of buttercups, heights, the dark, and many other things.

Soon he shall have friends, as all people need friends.

Yay!

Display space finished

So yeah, that's pretty much what it looks like now. Framed images, all arranged according to the rules I had no idea existed until I went to arrange these. The shelf in the corner is for the three best versions of my book, along with the sketchbooks.

I particularly like the way this stencil looks framed. So secksy.

Also the book images in the frames were edited for a bit more punch. Granted this isn't the exact one that's in the frame, cos I can't find it.

I remember the red being punchier, but hey.

Display

My FMP gallery display is verging on ace-ness.

Near-sexual ace-ness in fact.

This shows nothing at all, but it does show the wallpaper I'm using. By Andy Magee, don'tcha know. And if you don't know who that is, nor do I. He designed this though.

It looks genuinely fantastic in the 12x4x8 foot space I'm using, mainly thanks to Adrienne, who can actually hang wallpaper, unlike me, who am a DIY retard, hyuk.

The bits inside the frames of the 'window' in the photo are going to have some kind of colour, as there will be coloured segments 'growing' from the backs of the photo frames displaying the other work. Then of course, there is the bookshelf with my books on, so all the rest is kind of sexy wrapping paper.

I just poured water down my chin. 'And that's when I developed my drinking problem' hehe.

I feel really optimistic instead of panicked now, which is a big plus as I have to get this finished tomorrow, as it will be marked on Mundeh.

The drastic lack of finished-ness notwithstanding, the whole thing looks ace. Imagine a bookshelf at the height of the bottom of the 'window' with two big fat sketchbooks and three hardback bound illustration books on it, pretend that chair is not there, fill colours in to the window frame, and add picture frames running in a sort of diagonal from the bottom left of this photo up past the window and finishing on the wall above the shelf, all with coloured parts of the wallpaper behind them.

AAAHAHAHQFAGH!

I R EXCITED.

Old Things

Some stuff from earlier in my FMP

Feels so long ago!

Sedna's Myth

Ducks in the Back Yard illustration

Brian Blessed, for there is no man louder or more manly than he.

DIIVE!

Well that's my cheese quota fulfilled for the night

Note to self, help for other folks

Never, ever, no matter how tired you are, leave dust from sanding emulsion paint in your hair overnight. Wash it off the same day it goes in your hair, even if you do it slumped at the bottom of the shower.

My hair essentially became wallpaper pasted with a mix of powder, water and shampoo.

College bitch about health and safety ALL THE TIME and then they have us sanding and painting in a non-ventilated area. NOICE.

The book, she am done!

As the title says!

I am actually vair vair happy (not sure why I'm substituting a word for squirrel fur for 'very', but hey, that be the language of the english, jah?)

I hated them at first. I must have done about nine books altogether, in various incarnations. I have whittled it down to two. Neither are exactly what I wanted, but both are not bad by any means.

I am very aware of the level of crappiness in these photos, but they were quick snaps I took on sunday, believing the project due today, despite the fact that NEXT MONDAY is the 8th. Tired me = dense me.

Both books are not in the parcel paper as I originally intended, due to the need for that to be paper laminate for sturdiness, and so being inflexible. But 'land ahoy!' could be called from the mast of the ship I... sailed to the Metrocentre in... when I saw the paper mill. Sexy rough brown paper ensued.
So, the two books that I forced people to select for me are:

1) A big book, fabric bound, sort of japanese bound spine, harcover, hard spine

2) A teeny book (due to the printing restrictions of wanting to do a saddle stitch bind thingy) that's bound in midnight blue banana paper. I think that's my favourite. Because it's so small the spine is made of a flexible paper. Also the inside is bound more strongly, with a strip of fabric attaching the pages to the hardcover. I only realised this method when I was doing the last, teeny tiny book, as I had to learn off teh intarwebz, and the tutorial thingy was not too clear. I'll know in future. Might set myself a book based holiday project.

Hopefully two sketchbooks packed out with work will be enough for FMP. I'll check it aaaaht with tutors, see if there's any junk missing from it. God I wish this wasn't my first year of doing this, then I would know how much analysis and stuff to do.

I'll post up some mini-sketchbook stuff when I get round to scanneralising.

Oh, and in case anyone reads this (hello new person!) and thinks that I am in some way illiterate or dense, I am not, I just choose to fuck with teh Engerlish.

RANDOM UNIVERSITY EXCITEMENT

I have random University excitement!

Again!

It better work out this time or else I'm fucked.

Hooray!

The Book continues apace

Sample pages from the book. All the illustrations are done now (thank god), and I decided to go with general impressions of form for the backgrounds, as they are mainly to emphasise the pale greyish-white of the Ammonites and so don't need any real level of detail.

Now all there is is for the printer to break or run out of ink, or suddenly refuse to print on parcel paper, as I have ONE WEEK LEFT.

Also I'm paranoid about the binding falling apart as the show is before the marking, so quite a few people might be handling the book before the woman who does the marking for our course gets to see it. Might be best to make two, and save the best one for the marking bit.

So tomorrow is tedious hours of cutting paper to size, printing and then hoping that the glue I use doesn't seep through the parcel paper and wreck the ink like it did on the sample I did on white paper. Then after all that, the braille. Might, possibly, get the basic bind done tomorrow, then I can work on what I actually want to do with the cover.

Mo' Ammonites

Because even if I haven't done the work I was meant to do today, at least I've done something. I promise (to the whole load of nobody listening) that I'll do it tomorrow.

I like the shadowy eyes. I shall retain them for l8rzzzzzzzz. Yeah, I'm down widdit. Bidniz. Yeah.

Now I just have to not fuck up the book!

YAH!

My home printer, while officially a bitch 90% of the time, has come up trumps! In a late-night vague haze of risk, I decided to try and get it to copy onto parcel paper, and ta-dah! It did it. With aplomb, if anything. Didn't even have to fiddle with the settings. Thank you Hewlett Packard. You are officially my god for the next three to five minutes.

Sigh

I don't get why it is that recently when I go to do my sketches on any form of public transport I can't see anyone at all! Tres ennuyer.

The crux of this is that I ended up drawing my foot. Twenty fucking minutes and I didn't even get round to shading of any kind. Granted I probably would have been concentrating and the train would have rocked, leaving a mahoosive line across my Moleskine. Yes, I am aware it is crap, but I had stuff to say and didn't feel right saying it without some kind of artistic input.

On the plus-difficulty side of things, I finalised the story for my illustration FMP book, all nicely storyboarded (not on here because I drew them in small boxes with a really big fat marker. Also apparently the college photocopiers copy directly on to parcel paper, so I'm nicely set up for a nice flat book rather than a deliciously hand-painted, yet lumpy, panic ridden, one-chance-only book.

I fear the presentation thereof will be a shooting-in-the-foot kind of event, as our tutor wants us to present in odd ways. I was planning on a nice set of photo frames, but now I'm constructing a corner of a room, complete with wallpaper, a window, a bookshelf (for the book, logically enough), picture frames, skirting boards, ACTUAL FLOORBOARDS, and possibly a desk, because I need some kind of surface to keep sketchbooks on. ARGH.

Oh, and also, I have a poltergeist, it would appear. Stuff keeps randomly moving, I keep seeing stuff out of the corners of my eyes, and, weirdest of all, I was telling my mum off because she knocked over a pot of paint in my room, and she claimed that she had knocked it over, yet cleared it up. However, the big mark on the floor where she'd wiped it up was gone, despite the fact there were a bunch of paint-covered rags from the cleaning process.

Weird.

Actual college stuff! Granted sideline based stuff because I got bored doing anatomical research on nautiluses... nautili?

Also my tutor Peter went a bit ranty about type incorporation, especially as the final thingy is going to be a book, despite the fact I keep on telling him that if anything the book may well be in braille, so it becomes multi-audience.

I really need to work out if printing directly onto parcel paper is possible, or else I need to factor in hand-drawn illustration reproductions into my time frame fo' this shizz.

And yes, I am aware that Nautili (I decided Nautili sounds better) have much thinner tentacle with go-go extendo bits in them, but I guess prehistoric ammonites might have been different, so artistic license abounds. 

Tuffen Up! T-Shirts

I designed some tees for Tuffen Up! Clothing a short while back, and they are ON SALE NOW! Yaaaaaay!

I'll post up zee photos. Here:

"Tuffen Up! Promotions Logo"

"Tape"

"Card"

"Cloud"

"Ghost"

On the off chance that anyone sees this and wants one (and as such gets me a second run and more money and get to design a new run with more creative freedom), they're £10 each plus P&P from Tuffen Up! Clothing. The websites are: 

Tuffen Up! Clothing's Bigcartel

and

Tuffen Up! Clothing's Myspace

Or if you live in Bury St. Edmunds and know Ryley Tuffen, she owns the company, so you can buy them from her.