The Selfish Giant

Good afternoon, dear people of the Internet. How are we? Well it has been a while but today we finish a project with Jill Calder. She set us a project to make an A2 poster for a play of The Selfish Giant by Oscar Wilde. It has been a good few days and overall I feel generally happy with what I've produced though there are a few extra things to do to it before it's perfect, it has a nice bright crisp feel to it, reminds me of sunny Edinburgh days in winter where it's blisteringly cold but then the sky is clear and the suns out in the distance and you can see it over Holyrood Park walking home.

I haven't really done an actual collage for a while. I tend to use a lot of build up elements in my work, so it was quite therapeutic to get back to it, I often make coloured back drops with acrylic paint layer on paper or mixing colours I saved them and started cutting them up. Then I also drew some trees in ink and cut them out. To describe the state of my desk is piles of paper and bits of rainbow scraps, not to forget the bread crumbs.

I just realised once I put it on the wall for the crit that this kinda of collage, the colours and thinks esepcially the used of white and black goes back to some other collage work I did when I was on the Graphic Design degree in Blackburn, it was kind od a mini shock once I put it up on the wall, with my previous work though I still keep the knowledge of my previous projects in the back on my head when it came to the end od 2nd year illustration I deleted all my gallery because I wanted a fresh start for 3rd year and didn't want my mind sort of...to firmiliar with what I used to do and what I was doing now.

Christmas at Dr Sketchy's

Dr Sketchy's Christmas session was a lot of fun they had four models for posing which made it abit of a challenge for my messy ink drawings some are a little unlcear but I was really excited that I won the prize of the Dr Sketchy's Official Rainy Day Colouring Book! If you look below you'll see the image with the donkey head and thats the image that got me the prize. I also got a picture of my image taken which should go up on the website.

I have a lot of other work to upload as well as I have several projects now completed but I may not get a chance to upload them until a bit later on. It has been full steam ahead the last term and I look forward to more of the same when I start back again in January.

Hope you have a good holiday.

3rd Year so far

Hello and welcome, there has been a gap over the summer and between now and my last post, I've settled back into the course again and just completed my first project, called "It's good to talk" with the lovely Jim McBride. The task was to find a script from somewhere, from a real life conversation from films, books, television, plays and many other things.

I chose Waiting For Godot by Samuel Beckett. I was thinking about ways to apply the imagery in a way that was different from the actual play itself, I didn't want to tribute it, i was thinking about doing a conversation between two birds on a branch or not really having images but having the type as a decorative image, in the end I threw it out the window and drew rope bondage, something that I'm interested in.

I went about looking for pictures and I found some lovely artistic ones on a website called Beautiful Bondage. and did some rough initial sketches.

Next I decided I need something to take and make my own at this point I went to Twistedmonk, Monk is a gentleman I much admire and he makes and sells rope and is also a big name in that scene, I follow his blog check it out. Monk does some great instructional videos so what I did was as the video played in my browser and the screen shot the images, and then used them to model my own images, just so i could get the figurative aspect relatively clear. Traced the images back on to an acrylic background and used ink to go over the lines and white acrylic to highlight certain areas and pencil to gave it a bit of shadow and applied typed digitally. The last image is a scan of one of the final images. You can also see some more images on my deviantart.

I would really like to do some life drawing though I haven't found anyone locally that does it, may Dr Sketchy's Scotland will do it at some point and have sent them a message, about if they will do it or if they know of anything else like it. If anyone else is interested in doing this kind of drawing get in touch and then I can get in touch with the right people.

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.

Goodbye Kim

I'm back. I hope your all well. I have been moving and also having computer problems. I returned to Edinburgh on Friday so I'm just about settled down again. I love train journeys because you get to see such changes over the day and all you have to do is sit and eat expensive chocolate from the on board shop.

Anyway, my friend Kim had her goodbye party last night, I love her so much I haven't known her for all that long but shes such a lovely girl that you can't help but once to pounce on her. Here is a picture: from left to right, Dean, Kim and Benn.

Anyway Kim rocks awesome and I hope she stays well in Switzerland and comes back in two years for Uni.

Goodbye Kim we love you. xxx

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.