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.

Illustration Friday - Clutter

Can I hear you mutter clutter? I dunno this picture was fun to do and concerned some happy accidents and messy fingers. The ink splatters in the background was a sheet I was using to mix ink on and it, and though i was cluttered with colour I decided echoing the word might be nice.

I shall be start University again soon and I am looking forward. Over the summer I did some work to hand in and then started enjoying myself doing role-playing, board games and lan parties. I have started flicking about with some new ideas and I hope to find away to make it flourish and so I can be used in a personal future projects.

Overall I feel bright and shiny and looking forward to getting back to Edinburgh.

Monster Mash

Digging through some old work and I came across this fella. This guy was inspired by the work of Chiu Kwong Man. I did a few others but this is my favorite. It was drawn with a a felt tip or fine liner and just wiped over with a wet brush.

It was part of the work I did for a small story I made last year about a child scared of monsters eating his stuffed toy. Ummm tentacles...

Maybe I should give him a name? Sponge maybe? Just because it sounds so cute and fluffy. I can imagine him slivering about in the dark, eating the dog food and leaving it's greasy trail on the carpet...

^_^ Thanks for stopping by.

Look a post!

Yes my blog has been somewhat neglected lately. I have been spending my time tidying, vaguely doing essay word and eating Ben and Jerry's.

This is a piece we did for Jonathan Gibbs the head of the illustration course. I thought I'd add a bit of colour to my blog.

We were given two articles one was an review of a book about bears and one of about magic shows. We could choose which was going to be an editorial illustration and which was going to be a book of observational drawings. I really enjoyed it as I produced tons of work for it and felt that it turned out OK at the end.

It's entering the summer time now and I can feel it the weather is warm and I hope to do some more illustration Friday entries, research and general prep for next year as I have passed all my assessments, yay!

I hope your all well, if you reading this please tell me what you going to getting up to over the summer. Thanks and I hope your all well this lovely day.

Webcomics

If you read the last post you will remember mentioning that me and my friend Benn have been throwing about our webcomic ideas again.

So here are some roughs, we aren't up and running yet but we have over 20 thoroughly planned strip ideas. You won't be able to tell whats going on and that's the way I like it, it maybe that I'm inherently evil.

People keep asking me "So whats your webcomic about" and it's a tough question. Though the way Ross described it to someone he knows is, "Shes making it with someone who runs Unknown Armies, that gives you an idea of how surreal it will be." Benn the guy who is primarily doing the writing for the comic is a superb bloke from New Zealand who I met via ORC: Open Roleplaying Society that runs every Saturday at Caffe Nero on Rose Street.

If you also look in my side bar you will see a small list of webcomics that I read. I also listen to a podcast called Webcomics Weekly with some pretty experienced cartoonists, Scott Kurtz of PvP, Kris Straub with Starslip Crisis, Dave Kellett with Sheldon and Brad Guigar with Evil Inc. So this really made me want to get back into working on the webcomics. If your thinking about getting into webcomics I would seriously recommend it.

You may have gotten the idea by now that I am in love with webcomics, though when it comes to printed it comes down to three words for me.

Calvin and Hobbes.

Thanks for coming by for a gander.

Cramond Ahoy!

I thought about uploading some more sketches but I thought I'd show you this picture of me on Cramond Island. As I mentioned in my last post. From left to right, there is me, my boyfriend Ross and Vix. This is also proof I do actually talk to socialise and don't just act creepy drawing in the corners of coffee shops all the time.

Yes we all look a bit out of it, I am doing that sideways look and generally looking a bit sinister where as Ross is actually posing for the picture, hes such a tart.

It was a really good trip, though I was awake all night and by time I got back to my flat I was ready to fall over.

There have also been interesting developments between me and my good friend Benn is the way of comics so we are going to start putting those into action soon. When we eventually get it up then I will post the link. So watch this space.

Thanks for stopping by, Laura xx

Harder Better Faster Stronger

I was thinking of uploading some more sketches of last weeks projects but I found this one on my deviantart and I did this last year just for the hell of it and thought about making a little series of discussions between this tall Robot who speaking in 'beeps' and the small one who was quite angry a lot of the time.

One day I did a random doodle on a stick note, with these guys and the phrase 'Harder Better Faster Stronger' from Daft Punk.

Then I did another similar but with this. I scanned it into photoshop and opened it in illustrator and improved on the line work a little and gave it background keeping the robots the same colours as the sticky and it gave them a bit of variety from the creased paper.

This week is preparation for hand in so I am going to be busy cutting paper and all that jazz. So next week you may see some older and more recent work after I am through fiddling about with it. I hope your all well and have a great week.

Wrinkles - Illustration Friday

Monday was a day of mystery not knowing what wonders we would behold as we were given our brief. So this week I am taking part in Illustration Friday, the theme is wrinkles so here is some of my sketch book ideas. I wad trying to get away from the idea of old people and try something that was a bit abstract but now I think I am going to give it more of a narrative feel and I enjoy drawing people so I went for a wee trip out of the studio. We are doing this with Jill Calder and I feel that it is unfortunate that we haven't seen so much of her this year because she has set us some really interesting stuff. (p.s. this is rehearsed compliment designed specifically to get brownie points because she is probably reading this)

I went and hung out it Elephant House in Edinburgh as it's always very chatty and busy, so I drew some people, if you ever go the Elephant house try the mallow delight it's really nice I don't really like hot chocolate but ummmmm. Anyway look at the image and see how deep and meaningful it is. Stay tuned. ^_^