I tried, but it rang and rang, I called all night.

Woke up today with a mad desire to draw something, which was nice. Been listening to Jimmy Eat World a lot recently, this is a lyric from Dizzy.

So I drew a telephone box.


The y has just come out of my keyboard. What the hell. I can't get it back in. y has it done that. Stupid thing. Need. Mac. Now.

New things: Uni, Work, People, Places, et al.

So I'm finally back at Uni :) It was a long summer, but it's great to be back where I belong. My fresher's week lasted all of 15 nights (hardcore) and now it's time for some work. This term I have 2 projects to focus on, as well as my dissertation (eep), so it should be fairly manic and stressful. Just the way I like it. One of my projects is a 30 credit one, which means double the work, double the grade, but should be nice to have something so huge and involved to focus on.

So for that one I'm going to be doing a Portrait project... haven't ironed out the creases yet, but it's going to be all about the relationship between image and text, using lyrics to distort the perception of the people you are viewing, or to reveal something about them that they are trying to hide. That kind of thing. Quite fine-art-esque isn't it. How horrifying. But it should be ace, and very moving, and really push me forward in my development.

As a little experiment I decided to start the whole thing of with a Self Portrait. Now, no self portraits will actually exist in my project, this is just a "I think this is how it might look" type thing. And here I am, existing, drunk, and hiding from you:


How vain. It does look like me, honestly.


The other, smaller project I am undertaking is an Editorial one... but not in the standard way. I think I'm going to redesign the Art School's magazine. Right now it's horrible and dull... you can see it here. It's not exactly the kind of publication that should come out of an art school. So I'm going to make it all about the students and get loads of people involved and make it fun and creative and something that you want to have in your hands. I'm kind of taking on an art director role but that could be fun. And also a lot of work. Semi scared.

I'm going to be prolific this year. Just watch me.

IF: Enough

I haven't done Illustration Friday in so long! Mainly because I don't get much inspiration from any of the words. But this one really struck me this week, and so I've done this typographical approah for it.

I'm thinking about doing some kind of quotes/lyric project in my third year, not entirely sure yet though as that kind of thing can be quite... a-levely. However, this quote is from a song called Take It To Manhatten by Straylight Run. They're one of my favourite bands at the minute, really beautiful music. And I'm quite pleased how it's come out so maybe I will do that project after all....


(Oh, I'm working without photoshop ever since my laptop got stolen (again) so this is entirely hand made, painted collage, and scanned and re-halved in paint! Old schooool. Eugh.)

Music, Neon, and Small Objects.

Hello blog-type people. This week, I 'ave mostly been fer'ilising. I mean, er. I have mostly been working. It's been really great actually, startling how much I've learned about how design companies work, relationship with clients, how to actually layout a well designed page (sweeeet), and other stuff. Been bloody knackering though. Monday is my last day; I hand back over to the normal designer, then I get paid yeeeeha :D Hehe.

Today I went shopping with my dad, for his birthday present. It's scary how much I enjoy shopping, even if it is for my (oldish) dad - picking stuff out is cool ^.^ However, being the buying-stuff-aholic that I am, I couldn't resist these shoes in the Schuh sale:















How amazing are they?? (Yes those are my feet, they are pudgy, sshh.) They were half price, from £40 to £20. Duh. And they're uber high and actually pretty comfortable! I just love the neon style reflection on my floor :P I already have lots of neon accessories, although not much yellow, so may have to get a bag, or bright yellow top and then wear black jeans. Mwahahahaha. I want to wear them all the time! This nu-rave thing that's going on is the best trend EVER.

Moving on from that, I wanted to bring to people's attention some nice things I found, first of all is:
The Small Object
It's pretty explanatory once you visit it; a site selling lots of lovely little handmade artwork, and other things. These being my favourites:
The thumb war battle of 1596

Stickers. But cool ones.

And basically it's just a lovely little site. I like finding nice things like that.

Another thing I wanted to share was:
Creature Magazine
I found this via Allmightys.

"Creature-mag is an artist run online publication released quarterly. We receive work from artists, photographers, designers, illustrators, writers, poets and musicians from all over the world. The creature encourages free thought/speech and enjoys receiving pieces that both inspire and display an inventive application of the artists creativity.

We are a magazine of folk sensibilities, we aim to develop and sustain a talented community of creative people, to showcase the work of local and international artists and to facilitate both our own and others artistic development."

It's very pretty and now I aspire to having something accepted into it. But in the mean time, it's just a nice read :) Bookmark it, issues come every so often I believe.

The last thing, again found via Allmightys.com, is:
Music video for Grandaddy - Jed's other Poem.
It's entirely made on one of those old school 70's computers, and it's utterly beautiful. The song ain't half bad either!

I think the reason I like it so much is the visualisation of the lyrics, not just written out but, interacting with the song. I'm really into this myself - I may be alone but when I listen to songs I visualise the words and how they would be on paper, and the tones and melodies of the song affecting the way they're laid out - italicised, laid over, bla bla. Anyway, so quite often I'll just write out/design lyrics to how I think they'd look if music was visual. It's fun and so therapeutic. For example, I did these a few months ago now, it's the lyrics to Another Word for Desperate by Straylight Run:
























On the left is the original, typed up lyrics, overlapping etc. Click on it, have a look. The one on the right is the same, but messed up - I'm not going to say how 'cos I've never seen anyone else do this before, and it's miiiiiine ahahahahahaha. I'm sure you can figure it out anyway. It does strange things - stretches bits, flips lines over, all kinds of stuff. It's great. Hint, no photoshop involved, this entire thing is just done in word, well and a scanner/printer of course. Now I know how to use InDesign it can be done a lot easier now :) All the lyics belong to Straylight Run, of course.

So that's all for today. Have a nice weekend all :)