Beauty and the Beast!

Here are a few sketches and a model I made for the fairy tale Beauty and the Beast. They are for a competition. Wish me luck!

Printmaking

Well the massive news is that after 3 years of longing, complaining, hinting, making do and general miserable failure, Fluffycloud Studios finally sports a PRINTING PRESS! Albeit a tiny, bench top one - but it is mine! I had a very quick go today and printed the two plates above - not as dark as the presses I used to use at the BIP studios but only to be expected I suppose. The woman on the left was etched using environmentally friendly materials which so far are as rubbish as I expected them to be - but I will have to persevere and get to know how to use them, because I can't bugger about with nitric acid in my studio with no fume cupboard etc.

The top prints are just experiments to try out backgrounds. Oh I really need to get this project underway and stop faffing around!

I've also been making some 3D models, but those projects are so new and may not even go anywhere, so I won't post them up just yet.

Enough about me. How are you?

Tayori - Postcards for Japan - Put The Date in Your Diary!

Buy a postcard sized piece of ORIGINAL art in aid of Teachers For Japan.

Tayori - Postcards for Japan

Michaelhouse Cafe
St. Michael's Church
Trinity Street,
Cambridge CB2 1SU
01223 309 147

Dates: 5th - 11th September 2011

Opening times: 8am – 5pm Monday – Saturday


The title of this exhibition can be interpreted two ways: Tayori, ‘便り’, means letter or tiding, and interpreted with different characters '頼り', it means help or reliance. Our intention for this exhibition encompasses both.

We present a collection of original work submitted both by student and professional artist/illustrators, some already established, some at the beginning of their careers. Each piece takes the form of a postcard: individually and together, they are intended as a message of hope and good wishes for Japan.

The work will be exhibited and sold anonymously and at the same price. In this way, anyone may become the owner of a piece by a well-known illustrator, and everyone will be able to buy original artwork to enjoy!

Teachers For Japan is a nonprofit, all volunteer charity initiative dedicated to the cause of rebuilding education in northern Japan in the aftermath of the earthquake and tsunami of March 11th, 2011.

Visit our website here.

Postcard

It's hot and sunny in this neck of the woods, and I wore the fewest ever clothes to my studio today. (Normally I feel daring if I take my gloves off).

Our uni group is organising an exhibition/sale of original art on postcards to raise money for the Japan Tsunami survivors. This might be my offering (or might not if I have time to do another one!). There will be loads of people taking part, some of them dead famous and everything. Watch this space for details!

Another Pigeon Post

After a key-losing drama ending in a tearful flounce to the clifftops, I finally gained entry to Fluffycloud Studios. When I proposed my new project to my tutor I suggested that I went out sketching so that I could include more backgrounds in my work. As you can see, I have really succeeded.

I also did a bit of 3D modelling which I'll put up when I remember to take my camera down to the studio with me...

Nostalgia

Well now that my dissertation has now been dissertated, I can move joyously onto my MA project - the grand finale. I definitely want to have some sort of three-dimensional aspect to it and gearing up to that has meant looking through all my books about puppets and dolls. My friend gave me some old toymaking books a while back. This is a page from a 1970s volume which made me feel very nostalgic.

We live in a throwaway society nowadays... I don't even know if people make their children soft toys any more. I hope they do. I would have very much appreciated a Humpty like this, being an avid watcher of Playschool! (And look at that groovy fabric!)

Silly Tree

Just experimenting with materials in my studio and got a little carried away with the tree. (I was listening to the lovely Bill Nighy in the Radio 4 Afternoon Play and just didn't want to stop!)

My dissertation is still bubbling away - although I do admit it has been turned down to a gentle simmer after coming to the boil quite quickly. I really wanted to have it finished before I go away next week. I am just too busy to have a job, you know.

Experimenting and a Bargain

It was such a beautiful day today I couldn't face staying in dissertating. So I took Poppy out for a walk and then dabbled around in my studio for a while...without the heater on can you believe?

I just noticed I didn't crop this image...oops. Anyway, as well as this I tried etching an aluminium plate with some copper sulphate solution I cought some months back when I still had high hopes of my mangle working as an etching press. I didn't know how long to bite it for and will take the plate next time I go to uni and try printing it out - if I can get past the grumpy technician, guardian of the printroom.



On my walk I spotted this on a table of books for sale outside the library. I've bought some really good graphic novels there before - they must have a policy of not keeping them very long! I have wanted this book for a long time and now I have it...and all for a mere pound.

Scooting around

Hello there. As many of my friends know I am currently working on my dissertation, so 'tis a mean period, artwork-wise. Sorry about that.

In other news, I have been constantly tired and look and feel like an elderly woman.

Scanner Infidelity

Here's a bit of sketchbook malarkey. Sorry for the absence...I spent some time familiarising myself with the toilet bowl, during which time my computer and scanner fell out. Since then they have refused to accept that they ever knew each other and insist that a scanner has never been installed. They now seem to have formed an uneasy truce, even though the computer sometimes tells me the scanner is working for another device. I think the scanner is a man.

Back to the sketchbook!

Had three much-needed days off, most of which I seemed to spend sweeping up dog's hairs, worrying about money and watching television. I don't know which is the most depressing! But, I did venture out with my sketchbook.




Have also started thinking about my dissertation. But of course I couldn't actually write anything, because I was busy waiting for Jeremy Kyle to give those all-important lie detector test results.

Cutting a Long and Painful Story Short

Here is a sample of images from my MA Diploma Project. As my friends must be sick of hearing it was a really difficult project for me and I seemed to come up against one obstacle after another. But I got there in the end and passed...whoop whoop! So it's onwards and upwards for the Diploma Review and Masters Project!


I must thank John Lawrence for counselling me through the engraving process and Digital Goddess Abbie Stanton and her family for letting me invade her house and abuse her equipment...I am so lucky to have such knowledgeable and generous friends!

Not Enough Hands

Well as many of you know, I rent a little studio, and at this time of year it becomes encased in ice, and I have to chip my way in, and then a friend or family member has to chip me and the dog out again at the end of the day. The sub zero temperature has not helped my injured fingers (my fingers aren't great at the best of times) and it took me all day (and more than a little pain) yesterday to engrave this image, for the first page of my book:-

When I was printing it, I realised I had completely missed out Bea's other hand. A Freudian slip, perhaps. So all in all, a failed day, hand-wise.

I can't decide whether or not to brave the journey to uni today. Maybe I will chip my way into my studio and see which body parts I can leave off my characters this time.

Struggling

Sorry once again for my absence...I have just got a new job with more hours so have even less precious time for my coursework. So you can imagine how I chortled when I stumbled down my steps last night while putting the rubbish out and hurt my RIGHT hand while trying to save myself! Oh, I roared with laughter, I can tell you. I was in denial at first, and went to work today as usual - but the fingers swelled and were stiff and painful. So I ended up having to go to hospital. Luckily it's not broken, just bruised and inflamed. But the doctor told me it could be like this for TWO WEEKS!! Two weeks!! Well, I won't allow it. I can hold a pencil and draw a little (albeit wobbly) but I can't curl my hand round an engraving tool at all at the moment. Hand in date is 5th January. What a hoot!


Here's a rough I did just before IT happened.

Crit Day

Here's the drawing I did yesterday on the way to Cambridge. He had very big unruly hair, something I am very much in favour of. He reminded me of the eagle newsreader in The Muppet Show (which I am also in favour of) and was reading a book about Otters and Martens - breaking off to type important looking things on his Mac book. It's reassuring to know that while we ordinary mortals go about our mundane business, someone is keeping track of the Otters and Martens.

So, it was the Big Crit day at Uni, and, as if this wasn't stressful enough, there was a Japanese tv crew there, filming it. I mean, what next...naked crits? Crits while someone is whacking us with sticks or throwing water at us? (Luckily, though, they were only really interested in the, er...less mature students. Just as well because our tutor could not have held his stomach in for much longer!)

A tube strike meant that I had to break my journey to panic and get lost in London, phone home and cry, vow to give up my course and resign myself that I would never ever escape from the crowd I had found myself swept along in. Once I had done all that, I simply got on the tube as usual, (which ran completely normally), and carried on to make it home in better time than most weeks.

Here are the two drawings I did on the way home. Out Of Proportion Arm Woman, as I affectionately call her, was not at all happy about whatever she was reading - she kept shaking her head and tutting. She does have a hand, at least. Someone in the crit got their hand drawing criticized - and most of us admit to avoiding drawing them at all costs. One look at OOPAW tells you why.

Not really catching up.

No uni this week - I've been feeling a bit under the weather - plus it's half term, so I thought instead of abandoning my child I would try and catch up a bit at home/in the studio. That was the theory but, of course, millions of obstacles were put in my path. You know when you have one of those bad dreams when you're trying to get somewhere or do something and you can't move properly or you realise hours have gone by and you've missed something really important? Well that's real life for me buddy! Anyway I did get to try a bit more engraving.

Bea and her (newly acquired in the re-write) cat:-

And a mouse I did for my New Address card:-
Thank you and good - Nytol enhanced - night.

Pondering

I had a nightmare journey to Cambridge this week and was stuck on a train for ages due to points failure. That meant I only attended uni for the lecture before starting the crappy journey home again. To top it all I forgot my sketchbook - so no train sketches to put on this week.

Then at my studio yesterday I spent the day trying to storyboard my book which is definitely not fit to be seen here yet!

I've been thinking about picture books, as I have done a lot over the years, and in particular, the characters in them. I got to thinking about children with disabilities, and how it must feel to be so un-represented in picture books and literature; to feel different to any of the characters they read about or see in illustrations. When I worked in a children's book shop, the only picture books featuring any disabled people were books designed to "inform" children about the disabilities. Like "Emma has Cochlear Implants" or "My Mommy has a Wheelchair" (Not actual titles but you get my drift). The story, if there was one, was about the disability. Some were OK, but quite a lot were dreadful.

Anyway I looked around the good old internet on the subject and it turns out there is an organisation dedicated to this very matter. There are examples of work by lots of illustrators including Quentin Blake and Jane Ray (who is a passionate believer of inclusion in children's books and has written widely on the subject). There seem to be more books published now where disabled children feature, especially in books for the very young. The publisher Childs Play certainly seems to be the most inclusive at the moment.

I don't know yet if any of the characters in the book I am working on now will have disabilities. But it's certainly something I will always think about if I ever have a "career".

By the way the lecture was great - Fabian Negrin - absolutely stunning work and a lovely man to boot. (What a strange saying "to boot" is)!

Blimey.

Well, that all took longer than I hoped. What a faff. In short, I got huffy, Sky got dumped and I'm now online courtesy of BT. So, normal service has been resumed and there's some drawing to be caught up on. Not much, admittedly...but here's a few from the last couple of weeks. Alexis Deacon in a lecture...

And later that day a hideous journey home which didn't end til after ten and involved torrential rain...

Last week's train journey to Cambridge...
No drawing on the way home last week.

Back at the studio today, and I am still at the early stages of my new project. Wrestling with the story, and meanwhile learning the printmaking technique. Here's my character again only printed with oil based ink (as advised by the wonderful John Lawrence who I was lucky enough to talk to last week) on nice paper. And with added colour at no extra charge.

I love printmaking but I always seem to be in need of something crucial yet really expensive in order to carry on. I would so love a press...it would make my life so much easier and so much more enjoyable! And it wouldn't make my hand joints hurt so much and I could do etching as well as relief....sigh.

For someone who is proud to be non-materialistic I sure do want a lot of things.

In other news, I had cleared up three piles of poo before 8 am this morning (one cat, two dog.) The glamour.

Commence the Dancing...commence the prancing!

Well I will be off t'interweb for a few days (thanks, Sky!) So meanwhile, here's something brilliant to look at.

Back to Uni! Hurrah!

Well it was my first day back at uni today and we're now second years...how scary! I came away feeling daunted, but inspired. So-o-o-o pleased to see my friends, and of course all their fab ideas for this semester. (Which of course all seem so much better than my ideas!)

Anyway, here are my train sketches.



I was going to crop out the song lyrics I doodled, but then changed my mind...Florence was part of my journey after all!

On the way back...much harder to draw pretty people with no wrinkles/glasses/double chins! And I think no matter how many years I travel by train it will never, ever become interesting to draw the seats.