Yes, So. I have done sweet smegging all lately haha! Aside from regaining a social life *hurrah!*
Past wee while the weather has been muggy, sweaty and jus bleh... to go along with all the rain. Only things which enjoy this weather is the ducks.
Regardless. I have officially made contact to Hobbycraft!!! Yes, we have a Hobbycraft in Falkirk now and its officially a case of not what you know, but who you know which gets you into a job. Well thats never been more true than what im experiencing right this second. I am officially sick of working for McDonalds. I hate the food, hate making the dam stuff and im slowly becoming physically unable to get the simplest of tasks such as carrying certain stock. The staff I work with are officially half and half with hate and love. Some I hate, others I love. And by Hate... I genuinly mean detest with a pure passion the only thing stopping me from walking out is that I am in dire need for what petty wages I make in that building... But hopefully that may all change.
Fingers majorly crossed with regards to Hobbycraft and atleast getting my foot in the door of escaping Ronald McFreakingDonald... How awesome would it be to work in Hobbycraft? Its like an ideal job for me, If I were religious Id be praying to god right now.
But anyways, Moving on from all job talk related.
My drawing drive has hit a curveball with my regaining of a social life I havent really spared much time to draw. However, lately my boyfriend Garry has been playing the alien vs predator games. Now I am a major coward to playing these games and I much prefer to sit and watch him play away. Besides, Im a Nintendo Girl XD The most I have to worry about is if my Pokemon will make it to the next battle or not. But aside from the whole gameplay and watching the movies its easy to forget that the design for the Alien was H.R.Giger. The man is a genious and the style of the Alien is just epic. His style carries him into the areas of interior design, product design and graphic pieces. This is the man who designed the microphone to one of my childhood fascinations in music being Korn.
A few nights ago, I couldnt sleep and so decided to start doodling away to try and replicate the predator from the game Garry was playing. I came up with this eventually before forgetting completly how his hair/head/tenticles sorta went...
Now Im not completly satisfied with this. Its head spines are wrong, the horned teeth or mouth spines, whatever they're called are irregular in size but the detail of the head with its patterned skin is appealing.
Im contemplating watching more movies, games and such and trying to expand the design further. However, at this current time the predator design here, is too close to the alien. By all respects the "Alien" is a wild hunter creature designed to increase its species count. The Predator, is just a hunter. And is closer in stature and design to humans. I suppose thats where the design of the mask the predator wears keeps the connection between human and predator together. It takes away the main visual difference between the two species.
As it were said in the movie "Aliens vs Predator" -- "The enemy of my enemy is my friend" as said by the character of Sebastian.
Anyways. I have things to do, chaos to deal with and now Im off to deal with all of that
Yes I have been spending some time messing about with cross stitch... and yes I finished the daft little projects... But Im back to boredom now...
Ive been trying hard today to find something out there in the big bad world to get involved with, But it really is a case of not what you know, but who you know.
My brains already feeling stunted from lack of creative practice. And I want so desperatly to find something to do with my summer other than reading all the books in my wishlist... But the hunt wont stop and eventually I will find something I can jump into.
On the other note. I recently recieved an e-mail which has put a smile on my face to no ends. :) My piece "Man Walking his Dog" or "man and his dug" as most people have called it... Has officially been Sold ^^,
The new Stirling Campus are now the official owners of my drawing and Im extreamly happy! Not just because a part of me will now be in the new campus, But also its a new method of drawing hopefully students will be interested to experiment and try out. And better still, couple hundred notes in my holiday fund to majorca in september! (and get me out of debt quicker)
All in all Im dancing for joy at this fact...
Now all I have to do is finish off my freaking website and get the shop up and running. Even more so now Im plotting a charity drawing collection. More info on that coming up in the next few months....
Till then If theres anything going on in the central scotland area... LET ME KNOW! my brains starting to go in circles from lack of artyness... Oh! and if anyone wants to give me a job, you know, get me out of McDonalds... Please feel free XD
For the past while, I have applied to multiple commission based works, several work experience placements, a couple jobs and probably twenty or so petty jobs, so as to escape McDonald's (the one year plan to get me through degree)... So far, nothings turned up lol.
Soon as the schools go back ill be phoning constantly to get work experience and applying for secondary school teaching courses... Till then I'm doing my self motivated "big read"
Having dyslexia is a pain in the ass and my reading skills have suffered with it. The last book I read was the da Vinci code, by Dan Brown. Probably um... 8 years ago...
Safe to say the only time I've read novels have been for research purposes, and its been skim reading, don't get me wrong, when I was younger I read all the time. But with focus having went to college I only really purchased books relative to my studies... Well no more! I'm challenging myself to read as many books during this summer as I can fit in, starting with Sherlock Holmes, a childhood hero from when I were a book worm. May aswell start with something I can recognize I suppose.
But today has been a doodle, fiddly dum dum day. Found in a purse today, some thread, cross stitch fabric and a needle, a craft keyring. So hey, I put that project on hold, probably 4 years ago. May aswell finish it... Or start as the case may be... Picture is of the nearly completed cross-stitchery.
Yes its ten to one in the morning... But since coming home from work Ive been busy photoshopping/editing images to fit on my website and basically did a complete overhaul... Id have love to have done this whilst my tutor Paul was marking PDP... But its taken me 3 or so days of planning, shopping, photographing and tweeking to get to this happy stage.
But now its officially finished... apart from my 3 sorta in development projectos going on XD
Im not going to make a major officiall "Check out my website" attention seeking randomness till im 100% happy and finished with my website but hey ho. Heres what I have atm...
Obviously drop me a message to say what you think. Im not fantastic with this and since im restricting myself to weebly's templates any comments are welcomed. I have been looking at Wix website templated which I do really like... But im not for paying extra to connect it to my domain name haha!
I still want to figure out how to edit the "Identity Information" But thats a job for another night where I cant quite get to sleep...
Anyways thats enough for now Im off to catch some well deserved ZZZZZ's
The term busy as smeg doesnt come close to how its been over the past month! But hey my poor wee blog has been forgotten about *cries*
Time to fix that issue!!!
Yes *cough*
since the last blog its all been rather busy in the land of chaos...
Ive finished all the large scale drawing pieces I wanted to do...
Ive actually been to London and back...
Ive also been part of the construction of the exhibition...
We as a class exhibited our work on the opening night...
We took down the exhibition... and I sold quite a lot of drawings which im really chuffed about :)
We then reinstalled a smaller exhibition based in Alloa...
All the whilst this chaos has carried on and Ive totally neglected to update my poor blog...
And now this is the remedy!!!
Lets begin with Chapter 1...
The week before myself and Lisa headed to london I managed to complete the larger scaled and more contemporary based drawing pieces.
Getting these done was a major priority as technically Myself and Lisa would be missing a week of college with us heading to London. We were going by our previous years deadline which would make us finish up a week before the exhibition... Little did we realise that we had right up to the exhibition to finalise some pieces. (technically we could still be doing some work during the construction of the exhibition)
Chapter 2
LONDON BABY!
Yes me and lisa left to go to london on the Tuesday Evening of the following week and we didnt get back home till about... erm... Friday morning... HAHA!
I fell inlove with the Saatchi Gallery all over again and we even paid a visit to the Victoria and Albert Museum to check out some Lolita fashion... im all too aware at Lisas protest over one such piece of work which is NOT lolita at all and even the artist who owns the work is in dismay over the issue... To say the least if someone ever says the term "Japanese Lolita" shoot them... there is no such thing. But hey im not the expert. Lisa is. Its my understanding that Lolita origionated in Japan but there isnt actually a fashion route which is entitled Japanese Lolita... Thats where the V&A fucked up...
I also managed to do some drawing pieces whilst there. All in all it was
another fantastic experience with roasting hot weather to boot. We also
went to a concert to see LMC. I have to say they were amazing and
really interacted with the crowd. You can see tonnes of videos other
people uploaded to youtube if you search for LMC in London.
Chapter 3, 4 and 5...
Exhibition Chaos!
All i can say first and formost... Thank fuck for Trev. He has been an absolute superstar helping with the construction of the exhibition. If it wasnt for him and Alex, fuck all would have been done.
and This....
Would have just been a pipedream if it wasnt for the tutors, Dot, Enzo, Paul, Dee and Isabella helping me out by figuring out how to exhibit over 200 drawing pieces... thats right... I ended up doing 200 of the beggering things!!!
Thank smeg i switched walls from 6 metres to near enough 11 metres... But seriously. If it wasnt for the tutors and a couple classmates, and the students who helped me put this whole thing up. I think id still be attaching chaos to the walls. So a huge thank you has to go to Laura Sharp who basically kicked my arse to do the large drawn piece which took roughly 4 hours... If she hadnt pushed me it wouldnt be there. Another thankyou has to go to Sam and Maggie Laidlaw who helped me pin up all of the paper based drawings... By the time it got to the canvas based pieces I had had enough and Trevor helped me in just throwing them on the wall...
Taking everything down was a whole load easier... (Especially when i couldnt be bothered taking down "Swing girl") Lets face it... Buildings getting knocked down anyways why bother. Besides It was one of my personal highlights doing that wall with the tree and girl. Loads of people were taking their photographs infront of it. The one thing i would redo is the arm on the right. But overall I was hyper as smeg about it all just being up.
Opening night was a huge buzz! First time my parents have both seen my work and finally realised why i gave up a social life and why i was late for dinner the whole week. They finally understood what i was up to and why i was so motivated over my practice.
Taking down the Exhibition was ofcourse... a whole load easier than putting the dam thing up. And Id just like to say a huge thank you to everyone who purchased one of my drawings. It was a huge compliment that you wanted them. I also gave some drawings away to tutors and friends as a thank you for their time. Mainly the massive drawing of Enzo... He got to take its near to scale drawing of himself home... because theres no way i could take it on a bus... lets face facts haha! I also gave some buggy drawings to Trevor, some thank you drawings to Jane and did an Artists Swap with Fiona Jenkins (fellow classmate) Im so chuffed with it its sitting on my small shelf of arty adoration XD
Chapter 6
The next exhibition!
Yes the class had been planning this for quite some time... The main curator being Sharon Lay... Yes a quick (and terrifying) trip to Alloa to install a few drawings in a week long exhibition... Annoyingly because of work commitments I cant go help man the dam thing! *rage face*
That and its a couple trains/couple bus rides to the place its rather bleeding awkward!
Glasshouse Loan Exhibition
Still need to figure out what day to go and collect the drawings though... some of them i really want back haha!
And thats pretty much it. Everythings sorta bloggery based caught up on... oh... except one small fact... I am now officially Linday Forsyth BA... Thats right folks I passed my Degree WOO HOO!!
But the hard work doesnt stop here. Oh hell no. It was lack of experience which prevented me getting into my teaching course for next year and im gonna fight as hell to make up for it! Ive already started contacting secondry schools about getting some work experience as an artist in residence position and already started job hunting to something more art or craft related. Id love to work in Hobbycraft... there... i said it! McDonalds was only a year term thing to get me through degree. Now the fun part is finding something work based which isnt A. going to kill me, B. going to break me or C. Make me so depressed I consider suicide...
Im also reworking my website... yes scary stuff but now its not being marked for PDP anymore I can finally get back to tweeking the flaming thing. First and formost. Shifting from Weebly to Wix and getting a better layout and design for my website. Weebly was fine to tick the box for PDP but im just never going to be happy with it... Ill update soon enough with more arty gossip as soon as I can.... But till then heres a question someone emailed me
Q : " Now that your degree is over, do you still do certain habits like carrying a sketchbook or camera about or has that all just dropped dead? "
A : "Hell no, im a recovering Art Student... I still carry my sketchbook, camera and pencil case wherever I go. I still do my bus doodles, I still take requests to complete works and yes... I'll admit it... I still buy art and craft materials whenever I see something I fancy... especially pens... why... I have no idea... Im a pen junky, and official inker.... Addicted to the ink"
Thanks to the Anon for the question. If you fancy dropping me a question send me an e-mail or message me through blogger...
With the crappy weather Ive been unable to do to large pieces for drawing mainly a burn drawing piece and one with using the power wash. The constaint rain meant I couldnt do either task outdoors.
In an attempt to begin my burn drawing in the tool room with the extraction fan directly ontop of the canvas (which wasnt exactly strong enough) I quickly discovered that spending ages priming the canvas with gesso was all to a huge waste of time... Turns out that gesso doesnt burn very well... if at all. It doesnt even bubble just goes a slight beige colour... The heat goes straight to the canvas and burns it leaving the gesso to disintigrate into a thin crisp with powdery pigment.
Lesson learned if attempting a burn drawing dont bother preparing a canvas...
All I managed was to scorch the gesso and burn through the canvas leaving a ragged tear. This wasnt the idea at all but to instead build up detail and tone through levels of burning. It was an interesting idea and end result. But as the burning passed through the gesso the canvas was more attractive on the back with the blackened idea actually working out the way I planned. Overall I wasnt happy, however all is not lost. Ive stripped the canvas off the frame and purchased some cotton and heavy fabric to attach and ive already got a good size of canvas pinned to a wooden frame to try the burn imagery again. Hopefully the weather will clear up so as to get the job done.
Looking back Im glad I decided to scrap the idea as my proportions on the canvas of the imagery are wierd and better planning will prove to be more effective. Im also now less convinced about the subject matter in connection to the practice of doing the burning.
Ive still got a few things left to draw but I just cant wait to get everything done and dusted ready for the exhibition time
oh and in a sinful sorta way... Ive got a new idea for a drawing I really want to do. But I only will do it if I have finished every request left...
Anyway Im sharing a new penwork drawing finished today :)
Yes Im aware its been donkeys since Ive written in the blog but its been slight chaos with my updated brief and trying to acomplish every drawing request (but I am getting there)
Many requests Ive had to discard as they are to either draw fictional characters or make stuff up... Im sorry but I cant find a t-rex in a swimsuit which means sorry, I cant draw it. (However I have drawn a t-rex and a swim suit seperatly)
I have however been drawing as much as I can (not as much as Id love to since Im normally trapped in my McDonalds job kitchen) that and problems with my guffed up wrist meaning shakes, spazams and wierdness which annoys me very greatly...
Regardless! I've been ticking off my massive list of drawing requests (thanks very much guys for the ideas!) Some of them have been fantastic to go hunting and draw (others have been a nightmare, thank you google for atleast giving me an idea what im looking for) Ive had great fun trekking to The National Museum of Scotland, based in Edinburgh. With a fabby first year Kirsten Mains (I cant find her blog to share with you guys... sorry) It was a day of many laughs, interesting discoveries and useful insight into both our projects. Sadly if I spent all day drawing in there they may have locked me inside for the night (I wouldnt have complained but the mummy exhibit freaks me out) So I am still slightly playing catch up with my sketchy images and blurry photographs I took... blurry I have no idea why, but hey it happens. A further trip to Armstrongs in the Grassmarket tied up a couple more hunting efforts. But all in all the entire adventure to Edinburgh was fantastic, my only regret is that I wish I could afford to head through more often but sadly Im still saving up for a trip to London...
Most of the time spent at home has been spent drawing in penwork whilst classtime has been used to do more experimental drawing techniques. Some of the things Ive done have been learned from experiences in the past (several accidental disasters) But all in all with a bit more modification and tweeks those past disaster discoveries are paying off quite well. I love challenging the entire concept that the practice of drawing is confined to just pencil and paper, drawing to me is one of the most exciting practice of art I enjoy. In this practice Ive been drawing with threads and plaster casting. Most recently I have been preparing some canvas' with gesso for large scale drawing works.
Actually the entire result of even cleaning the dammed things has proven to be insightful into a process I never thought about trying out. The two canvas' I managed to get had older student work over it and since I had already pre-decided to scorch the canvas with a heat gun and soldering iron to create a burn drawing. I first had to remove the previous painting. I could have used a chemical paint stripping type product. But I was concerned with the chemicals (which are flammable) seeping into the wooden canvas frame and basically becoming a major smelly fire hazzard. So I took the pressure washer to them... and very quickly learned about the difference a cheap £10 canvas in comparison to a slightly larger £15 canvas... Quite a freaking lot. The cheaper one nearly disintigrated leaving a plastic based rigid weave where as the other one was a lot more durable heavy based canvas which stood up to the battering from the pressure washer....
Regardless... in doing the cleaning it was rather fun blasting the paint away and making swirls and wiggles with the exposed bare canvas being on show... New idea. One scorch and burn based drawing piece in which I use the heat gun and soldering iron... And another in using the power jet wash. Im already planning my sketches to the scale needed and what imagery id prefer to use.
With all the chaos set and done and stuff my revised timeplan is working well for me (basically drink loads of monster, rockstar, relentless etc and stay awake drawing) Because I am determined to have as much work finished as possible for the dreaded "E" word. My "sketchbook" has been reduced to a folder in which I have been collecting visuals of research spanning from drawing magazines, arty books, arty internets and lots of site visits/object hunting...
I have however been having chaos with the construction of my website basically... Ive grown to hate the entire design of it and really want to scrap and redo the entire thing... Do I have the time or patience... not really...
Anyway no doubt your getting bored reading everything here so heres some pictures of my drawing project "Tell me what to draw"
Enjoy
For some reason the new blogger set up wont let me upload some images (they're not rude) But in saying that I dont really want to upload every single image I have made... (Got to keep some mystery eh?)
