Merry Christmas!

As it's christmas, and I love dinosaurs, I made this.

What happens when you give art school students alcohol, an inflatable dinosaur and a fisheye camera…

So it was recently my birthday, but as I wouldn't be at university to celebrate my birthday I got some presents early, with an inflatable dinosaur and a fisheye camera being what I received… These photographs were the outcome of this combination, along with some alcohol thrown in for good measure.

Farnham Life

These are just 3 of many photographs that I have taken whilst being away at university. The top one taken on my lomography fisheye film camera that my lovely housemates bought me for my birthday, and the bottom two were taken just on your average disposable camera. 

Animated GIF

So, this is my first post since being at university, and I will post some more university work up soon, I've just been busy making it, and settling it. 

This is the first animated GIF that I've ever made and I was quite pleased with how it turned out. It was based on a drawing that I did of a fox with wheels on his feet and with the power of photoshop, I managed to create this.

East London

Recently, I went to London for a couple of days, on the second day I spent all day in East London, mainly shoreditch, as I wanted to explore the area and hunt for the street art that is often associated with the area. I was not disappointed, there was street art on almost every wall, some just quick tags or statements, but others were large pieces that had been carefully considered and must have taken hours, if not days. I also loved brick lane which again was lined with street art and a hoard of vintage shops, some of which felt as if you were back in the 60s. I also found a brilliant gallery that was underneath the lomography shop in spitalfields. It was only a small room but on display was a few of Rob Lowe's pieces who is a fantastic illustrator, and I was glad to see some of his work in person. I also spotted the beach ball installation by Morag Myerscough which was a pleasant surprise as I am a big fan of hers but I never knew whereabouts the installation was so I hadn't specifically gone looking for it.

These are just a few of the photographs I took on a disposable camera because I like the grainy quality that adds warmth and more atmosphere to the photographs. 

The Exhibition

So last thursday was the day of the art and design exhibition at college, which in a sense marked the end of the two years that I had spent there. It was good to see the whole of our exhibition, and see how everyone's work was so different and how much we had achieved in just two years. Our individual sections were focused on showcasing our best work that we had done in the two years. One of my focuses was my final major project as this is one of the best pieces I have done throughout the two years and I added the alcohol bottles, cigarette packets and prescription tablet boxes to link with my final major project work which may have helped the pieces because more understandable along with the writing was on part of the exhibition panel. I wanted to add the writing to bring an element of my chair that was exhibited in the other space into this area so that my work was linked between both places.

This is my installation piece that was situated in a different exhibition, where we all exhibited one piece, with five pieces using the blackened space, so were allocated a time of being displayed for 20 minutes each. My chair was suspended with fishing wire going to the ceiling so that this position could be held. It was important that it was displayed by only being on one leg to be able to question the fact of whether it is really a chair and so it didn't look like how you would normally see a chair. I liked that people were looking closely at what was written and trying to read parts of it because I wanted people to be involved with the piece.

What Is...?

Recently, I have been questioning everything, so I decided to do a series of paintings based on this. I have been questioning what is real and what is not, and is anything really what we think it is. I think these three pieces are just the start of my exploration into this and shall definitely develop this further. I painted onto pieces of cardboard that just happened to be what various records came packaged in from what I ordered from the internet, but that is irrelevant. Or is it? Maybe it isn't because the cardboard packaged records, so even though the actual artwork has little connection to music the material that I painted onto is somewhat linked to music, so therefore the pieces are indirectly linked to music. So, basically these pieces represent mostly what I think about, music and art, and these two things somehow nearly always link together if I have anything to do with it. I was also listening to Telegram's soundcloud repeatedly the whole time that I was painting therefore untentionally linking this piece to music even more. (Telegram are a great band, by the way, and I definitely recommend checking them out https://soundcloud.com/teletelegramgram).

Charlie Boyer and The Voyeurs

I created this a few days ago based on a handdrawn design that I did. I wanted it to look quite psychedelic even though this doesn't really reflect the sound of the band, but does reflect the sound of some of the music they are influenced by. 

Clarietta

Being a lover of both music and art I like to combine the two as often as I can, and I am usually listening to music whenever I create a piece of art. I decided to create a piece based entirely Charlie Boyer and The Voyeurs debut album, Clarietta (which is a brilliant album, by the way). I created small drawings based on each song and each of these was done whilst I listened to the song so I only had the length that the song was to do each drawing. I thought it was a great way to spend 46 minutes and I found it somewhat therapeutic drawing for the whole time and not having to pause the album once or get distracted by anything.

Guitar Art

This is the first guitar I ever got, and I have had it since I was 10. I have wanted to draw/write on it for ages but I decided to finally do it and I'm glad that I waited. I wrote a number of different song lyrics on it that I feel represent me and are from my favourite songs. I really like how it has turned out and I think the different sizes of type works well so that each lyric can be distinguished from another one near it.

Knowledge speaks but wisdom listens

I used a drawing that I had previously created in one of the life drawing sessions to trace over using fineliner. I stuck down quite neutral coloured ripped up strips of paper that could be representative of skin tones but were just quite suttle and did not distract much attention away from the drawing. I ripped around the drawing so that it had rough edges like the coloured paper and I added the quote 'knowledge speaks but wisdom listens' spread out over the ripped paper in quite small writing so that the words did not take over from the figure but you can read the quote if you look well enough at the piece.