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.

Illustration Friday - Cracked

A small illustration here that I quite enjoyed doing. I drew it scanned into photo shop and coloured it digitally, which since I'm pretty new to doing is still pretty fiddly. But I think it was overall pretty successful, I need to practise more. This was done without my graphics tablet also making it  a bit more tricky but I had fun and that's what counts, right?

Today has been pretty productive by the end of this week I shall hopefully be inducted in screen printing and starting work on my project based dissertation. I need to create a body of work and then write about it. I am thinking at the moment of experimenting as much as I can with the process and how it applies to different mediums, like t-shirts, packaging and as flat pieces as well. First I have to see if I like the process enough to do a whole dissertation on it and if not then change to a different technique. Overall I am pretty certain I want to do printmaking I feel it is an area I want to feel more experienced in.

I applied for a few jobs as I am staying in Edinburgh over the summer and that requires rent, so generally and steady but productive day. Tonight I am likely going to the Edinburgh B-Team, which is the B-Movies night that runs every Monday evening at Jekyll and Hyde which is much fun.

Hope your all having a good day. Thanks for stopping by.