New Blog

As i Mentioned in my previous post I am relaunching my blog somewhere else for all that follow me I thank you for continued attention.

My 100 day pledge to update my illustration blog starts today at

Drawing Rayguns

I shall be discontinuing my posting this blog but it will still be sticking around as a note to all who follow, Thank you again for stopping by.

Signing off

Laura Armstrong

100 Days

I am going to be taking part in a project to renergise my posting in my blog it's called

100 days to make me a better person

I feel it's time to a relaunch of my blog so I will be announcing that shortly on here FYI of people who stop by.

xx

Looking back

Seen as my work has often been quite loose and messy I took much inpiration from artists who worked in come similar ways. One of my favorite imagemakers is Sabrina Ward Harrison. She creates alot of mixed media work with collage, paint and photographs. Elements of her work I've tried to replicate in my own way, and you can kind of see it in some of my rough work and final imagery to. If you look back towards my bondage work, the third image is an example of it then you can kind of see what I mean.

I own one of her older books Spilling Open which is quite a moving book where she talks very forwardly about her feelings and indecision of how her life is going, about her appearance and I could relate very well to the feelings and ideas she put down. Being in early twenties is a scary part of life because your not longer young but your definetly not old and there is still not always clarity of where your life is heading.

I just wanted to show you her as shes been a big influence of alot of my very past work and I still referance here in a lot of more recent things as well. If you click her name it will take you to her website which has some pretty interesting stuff to.

Zero Punctuation

Zero Punctuation has to be one of my favorite video releases on the net, it's a games review but with a difference as the host Yahtzee Cronshaw talks at high speed generally ripping games to shreads.

He also has a blog at:
http://www.fullyramblomatic.com/

This week he reviewed Sims3, I would definelty check this out.

Around and about

Hello everyone, just to let you know I've not been about lately I went home for a while and i'm recently back. I did plan to keep updates coming when I've been at home but the internet spent a lot of time messing up so I couldn't upload. Please stay tuned as this week I will be getting back on the horse and bringing you some more recent work.

I have some steady comic book work that's really starting to come along, every time I do a page it has a better feel.

Thanks for stopping by!

Dresden Codak

I was recommended this webcomic a while ago and haven't got on to doing it until recently I have so far found that it seems pretty awesome. The website has tons of content and interesting links.

I found this image in the gallery and liked it alot so I thought I'd share this great little site.


http://dresdencodak.com/

Illustration Friday - Unfold

The plot thickens as the tale unfolds, thinking about old people and the stories they tell of memory and youth and sometimes you wonder if some of the elements are fantasy or true.

Illustration Friday - Craving

It gets late in the day and you have a taste for so many different kinds of food that to combine them would be something obscure, possibly revolting. Today I have the cake, giant cookie, vegtable pie, carrot stick and apple combination. What combinations would you have, beans on broccoli? lemonade and salad cream on salmon?

Thanks for stopping by!

My face

A quick digital drawing of my face. I'm currently designing my website and thought about doing roll over image for when I hover over different hot spots. I realise digital doesn't really associate with my work so much so I don't think I will use it, thought it was a fun little images though.

I am enjoying doing little bits of digital work a lot. I know I have mentioned previously but it's really good fun.

Thanks for stopping by

Three Panel Soul

Three panel soul is another of my favorite webcomics, this one always working in three panels but has lots of different jokes and styles of drawing that I really enjoy.

Lately I've been trying to get my stuff together task wise I am sorry for not post yesterday, I hope to make up for it with some great content this week that I hope to be working on. I hope your all well.

Thanks for stopping by!

Illustration Friday - Adapt

I haven't done a lot of digital work and I've just started trying to get the hang of my graphics tablet so I just played at making something really simple but using a few different brushes in adobe illustrator. I guess I'm trying to adapt to a new medium for drawing. Been testing out my Bamboo Fun Wacom tablet. I've been drawing some line art just developing it as I go and it's starting to look interesting. I think Illustration Friday may help me develop some more digital work. Last week I did a digitally coloured image and have since learned to colour it better with a bit of guidance.

Thanks for stopping by!

HALFPIXEL and Webcomics Weekly

Halfpixel.com is a really great site run by four cartoonists who all do there own separate strips online. They have a number of resources on creating comics including articles, a book, videos and my favorite which is the podcast they do Webcomics Weekly which goes from story writing, technical tips, listener questions all the way up to creating a business model on the web. Very interesting stuff. Also the guys are really funny and have been most have been doing there strips for nearly or over ten years. On the page the links to all the strips are the first things you see. 

I would urge you to listen to the podcast if you want to hear interesting tips and advice for creating comics but also apply to work generally or if you really just want a laugh and hear some great stories.

Thanks for stopping by!

Unique

The phrase in this piece was said by Alex the other day and I saw some small girls in the blue and white check dresses about thought about school uniforms and school and how they don't really encourage individuality in some cases and take into consideration the different levels of learning and put children in lower sets even though in reality they are bright kids.

I also drew a lady who was at the crossing. I remember positve things getting out of school and feeling more freedom to be myself though who I was and the clothes I chose to wear.

Candi

Another webcomic I am following is Candi. It's a slice of life comic that follows Candi a female art student through her trouble and joys. I would definitely recommend reading through it. I think it works really well if your reading it as a whole thing and I am still quite enjoying it as a read it as it updates.

It isn't my usual kind of comic but I think it definitely has merit. I feel that the creator Starline Hodge (that is her real name by the way) has put a lot of herself into it but you can never be certain what is real and what is fiction so it makes it even more interesting to consider.

I hope you enjoy this one to.

Thanks for stopping by!

The Botanic Gardens

Yesterday was a super day. One of the most fantastic and beautiful days I've seen. I really wanted to go just to see the gardens and maybe collect a few sketches along the way as I had never been. Which is exactly what I did. We took lunch with us as some juice and about 4 litres of water and had a nice walk up there and then back again. Overall I well exercised day.

I definitely plan to go back there in the future. The place is pretty big and there are so many interesting people, plants and birds that I could spend all day there. Here is a double from my sketch book with a few little sketches I did. Next time I will go well equipped with inks and pens and hopefully have a really productive day, it was great to discover such a great place down the road.

In the evening I went to a barbecue at a friends and had lots of tasty food and some nice cider. Today. I shall hopefully be having more adventures, still taking advantage of the sun whilst I still can and tomorrow cracking on with some work.

See you tomorrow.

Thanks for stopping by!

An epic journey.

Today I'm going to take advantage of the beautiful weather here in Edinburgh and take a trip to the Royal Botanic Gardens. Me and Alex have been meant to visit it as we have never been and it looks awesome.

I hope to get some sketches done and to eat delicious sandwiches and enjoy my day!

If your in Edinburgh I urge you to go out and enjoy this day whilst it's here. If you can't my heart goes out to you.

Thanks for stopping by. 

P.S. sandwiches are good for your health, eat them. A lot.

I was kidnapped by Lesbian Pirates from Outerspace

I had to link to this comic (first comic) because it's one of my favorites and one of the rescources that helped me come to the conclusion I really wanted to do a science fiction themed project. The comic is currently of hiatus but there there are a number of issues uploaded on to the website to look at.

I've been really interested by Buck Rodgers which we had been watching at the series night at sciffy and other horribly cheesy science fiction. Also films like Barbarella as they include ideas of sexual awakening which I like to incorporate into my own work.

A quote from the about page

"So what is this comic about anyway?

Really? You want to know what it’s about? You’ve read the title and you still think it might be about two guys who sit around playing video games and making fun of everything in the world? Seriously, it’s about a woman who gets herself kidnapped by lesbian pirates from outer space. It’s funny. You’ll laugh."

Megan Rose was inspired by old 1950s pulp novels that often included science fiction, aliens and lesbians but they were often really sexist and so she formed a parody of this style of genre. Very engaging and humorous enthuses on the faults of this style of story telling like giant plot holes. Also looks at the importance of the fact the woman are all different sizes shapes and also that people enjoy this kind of fiction.

I hope you enjoy it as much as I do!

Thanks for stopping by.

My New Dissertation Blog

printmaking-dissertation

I started planning my dissertation a while and ago, and wanted to do a printmaking based one, it is early days yet so I am going to explore learning screen printing as a solution. On my new blog it should hopefully develop in a very useful documentation of resources and the development of my project after I've been inducted, so there should be some new work showing up on this blog as well as the new one and I'll make a new link my my sidebar for future.

Thanks for stopping by.

Warmth, Passion

I have been looking at the different kinds of patterning lately I have seen some interesting examples of in Art Brut books. Using quite quite solid colours. Some of the work I've tried to work with quite closely. This is a very much edited version which has changed it to be a bit more bright and colourful. 

I experimented with a different means of colouring which was felt tip pens, a bit of an unusual choice for me and it gets quite sketch and textured. I use a lot of fluid inks to get more solid block textures and sometimes coloured pencil but its quite easy to judge the pressure to get it looking a bit more even.

It wanted to come up with something that was nice and bright and loving. I just wanted to create a fairly passionate image, trying to see what kinds of moods I can create.

Thanks for stopping by.

A comic book cover I created for the science fiction comic ideas I have had going round in my head.