IT'S OVER!
...
well, not really. i still need to whip an end paper that dosn't totally suck ASS, but the heavy lifting's done. thank god.

initially when tutor man said i should go back and colour it by hand, i was all like;

but in hindsight, i'm so fucking glad i took him up on it. the digital colouring was totally oppressive and dead. like to think this is a bit more spritly. also, watercolours and photoshop play surprisingly nice together. take note for future reference.

life drawing.... FROM LIFE!

in other news, i got an email from the new york musical saw festival. i don't know wether to be totally heart broken i can't go or a little weirded out that they know i have one...

and in other other news, here's an article from /slashfilm.com show casing some totally awesome mock up posters for that hanna movie. gosh, these are tight. that jock chap is a total genius when it comes to design and mind bending perspective. it makes me rather sad that nowadays, film posters seem so keen on plugging what names and faces are in the flick they're advertising, rather than trying to do something clever with the concept.

but then that would probably make for tres shitty marketing.
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IS THAT THE OVERWHELMING STENCH OF CYNICISM I DO DETECT???

so in honour of our campus being reduced to a pile of rubble this summer, the university's putting together a book with drawings and photos and what not of the old girl.

i'm kinda sorta a little bit desolated.

the place is totally quirky, higgldy-piggldy and has a real charm... unlike the sterile, super-swish building we'll be in next year. siiiiigh. and as much as i bitch and moan on this thing about screen printing, that room is totally one of my favourite places ever. you will be missed.

more early stage stuff from the self initiated. gah, i have totally been neglecting this in favour of trying to put the macmillan to bed. this will undoutably going to be payed for in spades further down the road.

in other news, one of my friend's managed to land a gig illustrating an interactive game for the guerilla dance project. it was part of the last 'late at the V&A' event which is so freaking cool so hats off to abi (who's blog you can check out here. she's a total ace with collage and watercolours, but will deny it vehemently).

OLD NEWS IS OLD!

currently in the middle of trying to fix up the macmillan entry. it's... kinda long...

right now my brain feels like a sad, floppy fish out of water. *GASP GASP GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAASP*

finals for the stamp project. american's came up with some of the most amazing nick names for their heads of state. also, the internet is an AMAZING source for fonts. been raiding that thing like a GODDAMN VIKING.

oh god. these things are going to be waaaaay too tiny irl for you to be able to see jack or squat. time to fudge the dimensions in photoshop methinks...

MY GOD. CAN WE DO ONE PROJECT WITHOUT CHEATING HORRIBLY PLEASE?!?

aaaand more print project stuff. holy crap. i could actually listen to 'melancholy hill' by gorrilaz ALL DAY. EVERYDAY. that shit is just so synth-tastic, it's off the chain.

it also has a gloriously random music video. i'm guessing it makes a whole lot more sense if you've kept up with the storyline that's been evolving over the course of the band's discography... should catch up on that some time since i am totally in love with what jamie hewlett can do with a pencil.

aaaand for a closer look:



MY, WHAT PRETTY HAND-WRITTING YOU HAVE, ALEX. for the print project. oh man, why they didn't include 'bird song' on lungs is a bit of a mystery. this song is just too much damn fun. hooray for maddening guilt!

arts for the stamp project. not too sure if the pencil works with the hella plastic photoshop colouring but oh well, what the hell.

life drawing. exciting stuff, i know. charcoal and pencil might be something worth thinking about.

in other news, i think we are going out drinking tonight THANK GOD. i think i might go a little loco if i spend any longer shut up in the house and tied to the grind stone. don't get me wrong, i love the working, it's just the not being around other people that i miss. OH GOD, HOW I FEAR YOU SUMMER HOLIDAYS WHEN THAT WILL BE MY LIFE FOREVER.

... i am so sorry for getting so live journal up in this shit.

in other news, did you know that origionally alfred hitchcock didn't want any music in THAT shower scene. good thing he went on holiday and bernard herrmann was all like 'I KNOW BEST, BITCH'.
r
if you would like to learn more about the composer bernard herrmann, may i recomend this totally informative and entertaining episode of battleship pretension: EPISODE 210: artist profile of BERNARD HERRMANN. there's a ton of preamble, but if you can get past that it's a swell show.

at the mid year crit, our tutor gave each of us personal project. i'm supposed to have spent the last 4 months designing a set of stamps based on american presidents....
....
..
WHOOPS-A-DOODLE!
yeah, i totally can't multi task projects and the list of to-do has hit bloated, gargantuous proportions so i have devoted all of ONE WHOLE DAY to it. bravo, champ, bravo.

initial pencils. ah well, at least it's done. if you can get another macmillan page coloured before the day's out, i'll give you a high-five to self.

first lot of pages from the self initiated project, a.k.a tekeshi's castle isn't as challenging as this.

i don't know, there's a ton of things i want to try and deal with with this.

• first off, the whole thing's going to be totally hand made. i've become WAAAAAY too reliant on photoshop when it comes to colouring. time to grow some balls and do some water colouring.
•painfully slow work rate. recently, it's been taking me FOREVER to make even baby steps on the liberty. we've only got about 6 weeks for this project so i'm totally going to have to pick up the pace if i want to get all 24 pages drawn, coloured and lettered.
•quit being so damn 'DUHRRR LOOK AT ME DRAWING'. this has been a recurring criticism from my totally awesome tutors over the last two years. i'd over-draw a frigging line if you let me. hopefully with this, most of the work's going to be in the colour. this is partly because when i grow up, i would quite like to be gipi : http://giannigipi.blogspot.com/

four weeks to go. got two more pages to lay out and 13 drawn. this could quite possibly be doable.

initial drawing and colour test for yet another of those pesky screen prints. HA, you say that like you've done a shed-load of these. so far, you've only done FOUR over the course of the whole year and really, you've only really got time to do one more of these before the end of year crit.

TAKE COVER, 'CAUSE HERE COMES THE FAIL WHALE.

on the up side, this is quite possibly the only existing example of you using a colour scheme that doesn't consist of brown, brown and brown. well done you.

WOOOOOOW, that was a whole lot of self piteous bitching and moaning. here is some totally rad music to make up for it:

holy freaking hell. i LOVE this little ditty. pretty hyped for the film it's from too since folk are describing hanna as a totally nuts art-house action flick. HE-LLO!

man, don't you just love it when the life model's all like "BAM! MY JUNK! IT'S IN YO FACE!"

awesome.

in other news, totally shirked off the metric ton of work there is to do and sodded off to brighton for a day. man, what a totally nice place.

some character design stuff for the self initiated. phone lady is essentially somewhere between the twin peaks' log lady and velma from scoobie doo.

...she is also quite possibly me in 10 years time.

throwing this up because i totally can't deal with cross referencing between 12 million bits of paper right now.

TRA LA LA LA LA! TOTALLY DICKING AROUND WITH THE BLOG INSTEAD OF ESSAY WRITING!

i know i've already bored you to death with how much i love sticks and ink BUT OHMIGOD OUR LOVE IS SO TRUE. must must must try drawing free style with them sometime. it would be pretty fly if they could be brought into actual work.

fun fact: did you know that once beethoven went totally deaf, he'd bite his piano in order to feel the vibrations in order to 'hear' what he was composing? so tragic/triumphant...

just a quick style test for the self initiated project. more on that soon- i'm just throwing it up now because i need a reminder about not being totally tight and anal (WOW, what a terrible paring of words) about the inking.

HELLO IRREPARABLE DAMAGE TO ORIGIONAL ART WORK! but yeah. tutor man said to maybe have a go at water colouring the macmillan book. looking back on the digital colours, they do feel totally claustrophobic/overwhelming... so maybe this is a way round that. defiantly lighter... but i did a totally shit job of putting the paint on.

GAH GAH GAH.

so last month our course took us to madrid and it was GLORIOUS.such a great vibe... and architecture... and food. oh my god, i can totally get on the side of anywhere that gives you a platter of sausages every time you order a beer. totally blitz zee sketch book while we were there, so you're probably going to see a lot of this kind of thing... once i bother to scan it in



the zoo there is also fantastic. the reptile house was host to a whole load of really bizzar looking beasties.

this is 'this is laura' > http://www.myspace.com/kittyandsarah < they are really rather good.
we had the total good fortune to catch them playing at caberetnightshowthingy. they didn't have their drummer with them, but they still blew my socks off. if you like your music on the dark and gypsy, folky side of things, you should look them up. i've been swearing up and down that i'll go see them intentionally, but so far have failed miserably. note to self: stop sucking.

(god damn do i love drawing music folk. dose anyone want to give me a job doing this?)

oh screen printing. i am the stella to your wife beater.

but really, i just suck balls through a straw at doing this. been trying to print this particular little s.o.b for like... 3 weeks or something stupid. in the end, i ballsed it up so fantastically that i just printed the colours speratly and put it together in photoshop. way to pussy out, son.

musical accompiant- dead man's will by iron and wine

mole skinning



so yeah, it's super duper final project time. yipes. where the hell did this year go???? anyways, back in the rabid-finger-nail-chomping early days of this thing, we had to write our own brief.
...
self-determination scares me. a lot.
anyhow, here's one brain fart left over from the macmillan project. i HAVE GOT to do this sometime but yeah.... i might go a little gaga doing another children's book right away.



in other news, we went to the pub for an art jam a while back. we came up with some _very_ high brow stuff.