Hello.

Apparently I can update my blog from Word 2007 now. Which is what I'm doing right now. Isn't that clever. Word 07 is sexy, I love it. Unfortunately I only have the trial version and the full version is obviously expensive. Stupid Microsoft.

Anyway, I have Word 2007 because I have a new (Vista, ooo) Laptop. I have a new laptop because my old (not so old really) laptop got stolen about a month ago. Yes. Life got suckier. I think I should explain how the last 3 months have treated me. It's not really illustration related and I didn't plan to include much of my personal life in this blog, but it's an explanation of why I haven't produced anything creative and why the blog has ceased functioning recently. Also this is probably going to be quite cathartic. Here goes:

• Most people who paid any attention to my recent posts probably gathered about my boyfriend splitting up with me, and the horribleness that ensued. Lies, lies, deceit, cheating, more lies. He broke my heart and I honestly don't know how I'm still breathing. But I am. It affected me a great deal, and still is everyday – my creativity, let alone everything else, kind of went on hold as the feelings of pointlessness set in.
  
• I then went on holiday to Tenerife, which was lovely if quite lonely, and when I arrived back I found out one of my closest friends who I was planning to live with at Uni had made the decision to not come back in September. She lives in Northern Ireland and I haven't seen her since; we speak regularly but I miss her like crazy.
  

Second slap in the face. Two people who had become such important parts of my immediate life had just disappeared from it. Right, ok. I thought. Fine. I'll just get back to university, move in to my new house with my other new housemates, and just focus on work and try to forget.

• Four days after I had moved into my house, we were burgled whilst I was in the house, and I was attacked. I was hit and kicked in the head and held on the floor while all of our laptops were stolen, as well as both of my digital cameras, my phone, my Nintendo DS, my bank card and other various things were taken from me. I was lucky; I hadn't been hurt that badly (they could have done anything to me) and after being taken to hospital I was discharged with just a mild head injury. Obviously, it was horrifying, and I've never, and never ever hope to be again, in the position that I was actually scared for my life. Anyway, the police came and did their CSI thing the next day and took statements and bla bla, and luckily I was insured. I got quite a good payout, but it's just the personal things you can't replace, such as music, photos, videos, especially ones of my ex boyfriend; things that I can never get back. Also the emotional scars have been extremely difficult to deal with, my family and friends have been brilliant but both the break-up and the break-in happening at the same time has really made me question well...everything.
  
• I then really tried to focus on university work, it's all I could do really. Every thought was either of the ex-boyfriend or what I was going to do if I was left on my own again. So, I suppose quite understandably, I just couldn't do my uni work. Second year is so much tougher and I've always put a lot of pressure on myself; I want to succeed so much. So when I got this creative block or whatever, I freaked out even more. I just couldn't deal with it. I wanted to do my work so much but I had no ideas, no motivation, just a complete lack of self esteem and self belief. I was just crying all the time. The universe, I thought, hated me. Why did all this have to happen? Why me? You know, all those selfish thoughts and stuff like that.
  

So I decided then it was probably a good idea to see a counsellor. I hated that thought; it really made me feel like a failure. I used to be so happy and in love with life, but I'd been turned in to this person that would rather just lay in bed all day and waste away. It's been good though... I've been to a few sessions now and I'm starting to feel a bit more positive. I didn't want to accept that I was suffering from depression but I really think I was. Am. I don't know really. Some days I'm ok and some days are...hard. I miss being happy, I miss who I used to be and what I had. I'm appreciative of what I still have but I have to be honest, I haven't woken up and felt glad about it for months. It's that horrible feeling of dread that gets to me. I feel scared every day because I'm really thinking: "What next?" What's life going to throw at me next?

• Anaemia, that's what. Hurrah! I haven't been for the proper blood test yet to confirm it, it's just a preliminary diagnosis but it makes a lot of sense. I thought I was just feeling weak and tired all the time because I was so busy at uni and stressed and getting upset too much, but yeah. And I've been feeling extra cold (I'm a cold person anyway), but I always put that down to bad circulation. Maybe I've always been a bit anaemic and now it's gotten worse. I hadn't realised but I haven't really been eating properly. Not consciously, I just keep forgetting to eat. I've lost a stone since all this happened and although I can notice it and I do actually feel good about being thinner, I didn't plan to, and it's worried me. Has not eating properly made me anaemic? If so then I've been neglecting myself and that's a horrible thought. So once I get the blood test, I shall find out for sure. But I'm expecting it to confirm it. Everyone says I look pale but I don't really think so. Who knows.
  

So that's it. So far. I'm half expecting something else to happen soon, I mean why not, this has been the toughest time of my life, the universe may as well add to it. It's all just been incredibly unfair and I've lost faith in everything I used to believe in.

Returning to illustration related things. This is all why I haven't been doing much. Uni has been good ish and the projects are interesting, I'm starting to be able to come up with ideas a lot more and slowly I'm getting up to speed. I'm so behind though. I've been wondering about leaving the course, leaving this whole place and just starting again somewhere else, but I haven't made any decisions yet. I don't want to run away but being here kinda reminds me of everything I've lost. I don't know. That's a sad thought so I'm going to change the subject and tell you about my modules.

I have 4. They are Contextual Studies (booo), Narrative Illustration (Gah), Negotiated Study (Argh) and Editorial Illustration (Yay).

Contextual – Meh, not much to say, lectures, seminars, Modernism, stuff like that. And a bloody research journal. A whole lot of work, I tell you.

Narrative – We have a project to choose one of 4 extracts from novels and creating a series of 25 frames to convey the story. It's pretty mental, I have 7 weeks left. I've decided to Choose a story called "Norwegian Wood" but I can't remember the author. I'll get back to you on that. Hopefully that'll come out well and I can start to show actual work from it soon.

Negotiated – This one we basically write our own brief and do what we want. Which is cool, but hard. I've decided to design a series of illustrated hang tags to enhance the brand identity of Topshop. Hurrah! Hang tags are the price tags basically. But I'm going to make them PRETTEH. Well, aesthetically pleasing with a focussed message. Of course.

Editorial – This is the hardest module I reckon because each project has a turnaround of 3 weeks. Our first one was only 2 weeks. I think that's partly why I melted down. SO much pressure. I'm doing... ok on that. Not great. But Editorial is my favourite area of illustration at the moment I think. Our current article is called "How to mooch about." Yeah. Illustrate that, bitches. Owch.

To end on a more positive note, I'm going to introduce you to a wonderful Illustrator. She is Simone Lia and she is amazing. She created the graphic novel/comic "Fluffy", about this rabbit who thinks a man called Michael is his daddy. It's so cute and so hopelessly sad. Makes me smile and cry at the same time. You need this. Buy it now.

Go to: http://www.cabanonpress.com/simonesshed/1.lamp.htm or http://www.simonelia.com/

She is awesome. So that's the end. I'm going to post more frequently and hopefully soon I'll be able to post more of my actual own work. Fingers crossed. This is a long post. Bye.

Not dead yet

I suppose I'd better return to the minty net world. Hello. It has been over a month, after all. God. That's a long time. I would have thought the daily crying bollocks would have stopped by now. It appears that I am, in fact, very weak, and "just getting over it" is not as easy as making yourself believe it is. I have learned a lot in these awful 5 weeks though. Including that I haven't dropped dead from heart failure. (That's the real heart I'm talking about, not that bloody mess of muscle and fat(?) that continues to race extremely fast inside me.)

I still can't draw but I'm trying... I'm going on holiday to Tenerife on friday* so I'm hoping I'll be able to get some inspiration over there. Although it's not really lack of inspiration that's a problem. (If ever I wanted to create something wholly disturbing and angst-ridden, now would be a good time.)

It's like my good friend Needle Blossom aka Elly said to me "for the great master artist people, they get all inspired by depression and general shittyness. For us mere mortals, it's much harder." Then she probably said something along the lines of Don't Worry It'll Get Easier Soon.

*Wow, look at me. Being all pathetic about my life (or temporary lack of it) and yet I'm jetting off to some random country. And there are starving children, Rachel. The planet is dying, Rachel. Imagine.

Anyway.

It's a shame because I had so much arty stuff planned for summer. Totally uber exciting stuff, I even made a list. But this new Rachel doesn't like lists, and she certainly doesn't care much for what's on it, what she was going to do. Such a waste.

Oh I should probably announce my score for my t-shirt design on Allmightys.com, that ended weeks ago.
I got an average score of 1.23 (maximum was 5, remember), and 86 people voted for me. Thankyou, 86 people.

Needless to say, that average score is pitiful and didn't really help with my whole "I'm actually quite rubbish aren't I" thing that I've got going on now. Hurrah. Maybe t-shirt design isn't my forte. Fine. So what is then.

OH they've got a new competition up now, called Once upon a Time. Fairytales are bollocks. The princess always marries her lying, cheating, bastard of a prince.

I have, however, found a few interesting sites that have stirred some kind of passion in me (it's not dead yet), and so maybe I will share when I can be less apathetic. In the mean time, find me on del.icio.us and you can do it yourself. Rachelewis is my username I think. Maybe. Iono.

Hahaha. My phone just did my little text message wheedly beep thing. I've come to loathe that sound because it always gets me stupidly excited that it might be him, then of course it's an advert. Not that I think about him all the time, of course. That would be pathetic and heart-breaking.

Time to go.

Vote for my t-shirt design

This is a very quick post. Just to let people know that they can now vote on my t-shirt design (pictures below)

here.

You can rate between 0-5. I would appreciate your votes, thankyou.

Also just to let you know that I'm going through a very difficult time at the moment and being creative/drawing/smiling/living/breathing isn't at the top of my agenda right now. Maybe i'll post something in a fit of rage and genius. ness. but i doubt it.

i'll try and get back to "normal" as soon as I can.

edit - also if you pop by here, can you feed berryface please. she looks upset and i dont want her to die

Grafik 150 Book

I forgot to mention this earlier; I received my copy of the Grafik 150 Book this morning! Which surprised me because I only ordered it at the weekend. It's published by Grafik (duh), the monthly graphic design magazine that I subscribe to, and you can get a copy here. It's basically to celebrate 150 issues of the magazine (which is so great and like design porn), with loads of designers saying what inspires them inside. I got the green version of the cover yay :P

I haven't read it all yet but what I have read is fascinating. Anyone with a general interest in graphic designers and what they like etc would do well to get this actually, I recommend it a lot. And its only a tenner, bargain.


Oh and I'm going to New Designers 2007 tomorrow... should be fun! I'll post here if I come across anything really cool.

Final Design for the allmightys contest, and a handmade card...

Next week is my friend's birthday so I decided to make her a card. I usually make most of my cards but this one is quite cool I think, and semi inspired by a post on Elly's (aka Needleblossom)'s blog. Mainly cos I stole her idea of using dulux paint chart thingys. They are so sexay. Right:
I haven't sent it to her yet so I hope she doesn't read this. Actually I don't think she even knows about my blog. She lives in Aberystwyth now which = no real world connections :P

It's all about decadence and my love of the victorian wallpaper resurgence thing. I suppose I should have made it about what she likes but screw it. She'll get what she's given :P (if she ever sends me her new address, grr)

Then a few days after that it's my auntie's 50th, and she actually is into that whole thing, well basically she's just ace at interior design, so i'll make it all about her house or something. Yeah.

I also posted this on DrawAnyway as today's task is all about decorating cards! How spooky.



Also I just wanted to update everyone about my Allmightys.com t-shirt design:

This is the final version. Voting starts next tuesday, (17th), so everyone needs to vote for me :D
That's what you'll see in the voting gallery. Wish me luck!

All
works in this post is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.

Illustration Friday Night: The Dead

This is my first post for Illustration Friday Night. The theme is The Dead, and I had lots of fun doing this one:

Click for larger image.... it looks better that way.

Yeah, This is not natural...
A bunch of holes where the dead used to be, underground 
Forget supernatural...
'cause all those resting in peace, are out and walking the streets 
With no heartbeat

It was inspired by the lyrics for 'Wake The Dead' by The Used, off their album Lies for the Liars. It's such a good song. You can find the entire lyrics here. This piece was done entirely with black and red ink. It felt so good to use ink again, I really like it. Except I bought a new calligraphy pen and it's rubbish.. unless you use hardly any pressure then no ink comes out. I'll go buy a new one tomorrow.

All
works in this post is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.

Submission for this month's Allmighty's competition.

So I've nearly finished my design for this month's Allmighty's t-shirt competition:

Just a few more changes... I don't like the font, and the bottom needs a bit of work too. I was going to give it a spraypaint/stencil effect but I remembered you can't have designs with gradients on, I think. I'll have to check that. But it's nearly finished :) Should have it submitted early next week. Don't know if I'll have time to do another one, I'll see how busy I am. Sorry about the massive stupid copyright thing but as I haven't submitted it yet, I don't want anyone coming along and nicking my amazing idea :P It's transparent(ish), just look throooooo it. Eeek.

It's quite fun and cute, and I like it ^.^ And it'll make a kick ass t-shirt. Watch this space.

The other thing I was going to mention is that I'm now a member of Illustration Friday Night - definately not cute. But still hopefully fun. It's basically a blog-type-place for people who want bit more exciting/dark/scary themes, not ones like Twist. Or Camouflage. Don't get me wrong, I love Illustration Friday, and sometimes you find some really good stuff on there... but sometimes you don't, it can be a bit... 'stationery illustration'. Like nice little bunnies. And I do like bunnies. But sometimes scary dead bunnies are more interesting. Yes?

So this week's IFN theme is 'The Dead'. Which is waaaaay better than 'Geeky'. I've had lots of ideas for The Dead actually, what a great theme. Mooohahaha. And I've had 'Dead' by My Chem in my head ever since too. How I love that band. Off I go *skips away*

Bishbo! And Brochures.

So I just got added on myspace by this awesome design studio called Bishbo. One look and I was hooked; their work is amazing and everyone should check it out. They are based in London so I emailed them on the off chance of getting some summer work; you never know eh? Here are some examples:




I could go on posting... just go look, it's worth it :) All images above copyright to Bishbo, and all that.

Another quick thing, I got emailed a while back about doing the front and back cover for the new Arena Theatre in Wolverhampton autumn brochure, and finally got round to doing it. They're going to pick the best one they get sent and print it; the winner doesn't get paid or anything (duh, getting students to work for free = good business I suppose *shakes fist*), but you know, you get a name check so that could open up work in the future. That's why I did it anyway, not doing a whole lot else now I'm jobless again!

Click for larger view.

Ok, so it's not the best piece of design ever, but I'm not going to work my socks off for free am I? ;) I quite like it to be honest. It would be nice to win, too. Looking at it this small, I'm beginning to doubt the purple text glow, though. Although I suppose I had to match the Arena Theatre logo really (this was sent to me, already done.) Oh well, sent it now. Everyone likes purple.

Illustration Friday: Twist

Now, I haven't done IF for a few weeks, and I wasn't intending to do this week either, as I find little inspiration in this week's theme. However, I started doodling, as you do, and ended up doing something for it. So, here's my effort:

Click for a larger view.

I suppose it's a bit snakes and ladders-esque. It was just done using a fineliner, then scanned in and the background was added. Comments would be greatly appreciated :)

All
works in this post is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.

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 :)

Say hello to BerryFace

So I ended up emailing Keaton, asking about his work and things, and he gave me some very good advice:

"just keep painting and drawing exactly what you want to look at and it should be personal to you and therefore bare some kind of mark, but besides, being versatile is great in illustration."

Apart from the awful grammar (teehee), it's very true. I'm constantly worried about my style, or lack of it, and keep focussing on what I think I should be doing, instead of just drawing what I like, for the hell of it, whenever I want.

So I've been day dreaming about all these pieces I want to do, and most involve ink actually. I haven't used ink for a while but I love it, and I think I want to start using it more often. It's the process that I enjoy more than the outcome usually (most of the time it's just a mess, but getting messy is so fun).
So with that in mind, I did a recent Drawanyway task, where you had to simply draw the view through a door. Then I decided to go over it in ink, hurrah:























So there you go. Lots of fun :)

Another uber fun thing, as you have probably noticed, is my new Doll-Doll! She is called BerryFace and she likes you a lot, especially if you feed her easter eggs ^.^ Look after her.

Another thing I wanted to point out is my friend Elly's art blog - Needle Blossom Shed. It is posted under my "Blogs I like" section, but everyone should take a look at this post. Basically, it's awesome. Oh how I love collage!

That's something else I need to get back into as well. Argh. You see my problem?

Keaton Henson

Update May 2009:
I've been noticing a lot of traffic to this particular page on my blog. Guess Keaton's a popular guy! However this is quite an old post and so doesn't have a lot of relevant, recent information about him. Go to his new website www.keatonhenson.com and have a gander there.
What do you think of Keaton's work? Feel free to leave a comment at the bottom of the page. Alternatively, have a look around the rest of my blog and get involved! Maybe even subscribe, I'm quite interesting! :)

The other day I was wearing an Enter Shikari t-shirt that i bought at Download, and it reminded me that I was going to find out who did the album artwork for Take To The Skies. So I found out. His name is Keaton Henson, and this is his website.

It's not fair. He is a year younger than me. And he's so talented already, no university degree, just went out and did it all himself. You can read about him on his biography page, anyway. It kinda depresses me 'cos here is a guy who knows exactly what he's all about, he's already got awesome commisions, knows his style and just produces this amazing, quirky work. I'm nowhere near that stage yet, I don't even have a style.

It makes me think I should just give up if people are going to be so much better than me, and younger! :(

Ok, self pitying rant over. Sorta. I'm not jealous, I just want to be exactly like that ;)

Here is some examples:
Take to the Skies front cover
Monsterrr Clothing
T-shirt Design
Hearts Under Fire EP cover.


The thing that I aspire to is this:


Having your artwork, like if you were commissioned by a band, up on stage in front of loads of people... god that would feel so amazing. One day.

(All images copyright to Keaton, damn him.)

First day of Work!

So today was my first day at my new temporary job, at the local editorial design / publishing company I mentioned before. It was really good, actually quite fun, and considering it was a full day (9-5.30), it went quite quick. I was given a few tasks to do to get used to how they work, indesign, that kind of stuff. Like I had to design a couple of adverts for the back of one of their publications, and also just had a play around with the layout and design of one of the magazines they produce, get used to how it all works, as from monday I'll be covering for one of their designers and handling all that kind of stuff so I need to see how it all works really. But yeah, it was fun, I enjoy doing things like that.

Yesterday's drawanyway task was to produce a drawing in under 2 minutes, so I decided to draw my brother playing the keyboard:
I quite like it, considering how long it took :P

Everyone should take part in Draw Anyway, go here to find out more.

That's it for today. Yet again I didn't do this week's Illustration Friday topic. Sigh. I can't do it next week either, 'cos of me working and all, but the week after that I will do it. I keep having all these great ideas and not being able to do them! Sigh.

Must be some kind of rift in the space-time continuum.

I haven't posted in a while... been quite busy recently, nothing that exciting though. I said to myself I was going to post here once a day but that never happened. I will try though.

Anyway, you may have noticed I prettified my blog ^.^ I'm not overly keen on the header, so that might change soon, but it's ok for time being. Much better than the standard blogger text bit anyway. And I had lots of fun fiddling with colours last night so everything matches now. Hurrah!

There is a new t-shirt design competition open over at Allmightys.com. The theme for this one is 'Big City Life' and I'm going to try my hardest to win :) I've had a few ideas already, especially as one of my First Year projects was called 'The City', so I think I'll use the concept from that illustration. (Click to have a look, I posted it back in May.)

So here are a couple of my initial sketches for the competition:

This comes from that illustration that I did, but I'll do it in Illustrator (or try to), and use nice flat colours and stuff. Or...

There's this one, not as keen on this, it's supposed to be showing the road and the speeding lights of the cars at night. Meh.

I want to think up of some better ideas though, focussed on the actual 'life' of the city. And make them good. I have about 20 or so days though so I should be ok. I'm going to try to submit more than one design though because then I'll have a better chance won't I :)

So that's that. I also wanted to post about this great little site I came across via Illustration Friday, called Drawanyway.com. Check it out; the basic premise is that all of us, even the busiest, have a few minutes a day that can be used to draw. So there are daily, quick tasks set on there for anyone of any artistic ability to take part in. So far it's been fun :) I'm trying to use it because I know I need to draw more than I do, and the community feel means you can get some really great feedback on what you've done. It's only small so far but I've got a feeling it's really going to take off. For example, the other day the task was a self portrait, and the aim is to do most of these tasks in about 10-15 mins. Here's my attempt:
It's not that great; just shows how bad I've got at drawing now I don't do it every week. That's the good thing about uni, free life drawing classes :)

Tomorrow I start a temporary short job at a local design company, editorial and publication design, that kind of thing. Should be really good but I'm so nervous! I'm such a wuss. Everything frightens me. Life frightens me. It gets scarier as I get older too =/ But I shall post here tomorrow after my first day. Eep.

Last thing I wanted to say today was that a few weeks ago, while being bored and browsing on the internet, I typed in Rachel Lewis Illustration (for that is me, don'tcha know) into google, and guess what came up. Well, go look for yourself! I'm the 3rd entry down, but, and here is a massive shock, there is another illustrator called Rachel Lewis. An entry above me. Oh my god. Blasphemy. Bit unfortunate, eh. Out of all the careers :P Anyway, so I had a look on her website, www.rachellewisillustrator.com, and actually her stuff is quite good. I say actually as if i wasn't expecting it to be, no I just feel a bit put out, I hate when other people have my name! And my career. Boohoo. I like her editorial illustrations the most, like this one:
That's a bit small. Er, click on it.

And look, that's even the style I like!! Oh dear.

....Maybe it's me in the future. Or a rift in the space-time continuum. Waaa!!

Anyway, go look at her stuff. She is a better Rachel Lewis Illustrator than I am at the moment.

I hope people don't get confused. I'll have to change my name to Princess Conswale Bananahammock.

Update May 2009: I think she is now defunct... that website doesn't work anymore. So maybe I am the only Rachel Lewis of Illustration now? Who knows. You can see MY website over at the wonderful place of www.rachelsayshello.com... home of the real Rachel Lewis ;) hehe.

All
works in this post is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.

Download Festival, Illustration Friday and other fun stuff

'Ello all! Just a (not so) quick update on stuff.

I got back from Download Festival yesterday, it was such a great weekend! Saw some really amazing bands and met up with loads of people I haven't seen for ages :) I'm not going into great detail about it 'cos I could go on for hours, but Id say the top 3 bands were Enter Shikari, My Chemical Romance and Linkin Park. I suppose they are also my 3 favourite bands but yeah, they were amazing. Especially Enter Shikari, what a rave! My bag broke and everything but had such a good time.
I met Aiden as well, at a Q&A session thing, that was awesome. I was going to meet Linkin Park but the meet and greet was at the same time as Marilyn Manson, and I'd never seen him before. (I've met LP 3 times now.) So I gave my pass to a friend :) Yay.

So, I never did get the chance to finish last week's Illustration Friday topic, but I've decided to do it anyway because... well I wanted to. But this week's topic is also good. It's 'Suit', and I think I'll go down the 'suit of cards' route :) So after I've finished Your Paradise, I'll do that one too :)

So for the 'Your Paradise' one I really wanted to use Illustrator, as I barely know much about it. So I've downloaded the free trial of cs3 and had a go on it today. This is what I've done so far:
I'm quite pleased with it so far! Obviously it will have some sort of colour/texture but this is just the lines at the mo. Paths are quite fun. Except I can't figure out how to join some of them, it keeps saying something like "paths need to be in the same group or not grouped at all" or something. I dunno. If anyone knows the answer then do tell :)

So yes the basic premise for 'Your Paradise' is a self portrait of me, listening to my ipod. But it's actually me plugged into flowers and nature and stuff. Soon I'll add lyrics and scribbles and inky bits. Basically my paradise is listening to music outside, completely tuned off, doodling a bit and not caring about anything :)

I look a bit moody but i'm supposed to be concentrating =P

The results for the Allmightys t-shirt competition came out today; unfortunately I didn't win :( My average score was 2.02, but I did have 131 people vote for me, so thank you very much everyone!! You can see the winners here.

So that's about all I have to say really. I shall post my finished illustration friday illo when it's done :)

All
works in this post is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.

Random Ramblings and Reminders from Rachel

Haven't posted in a few days so I think I shall :)

The new Illustration Friday topic, Your Paradise, is pretty cool, I like it a lot. Shame I don't think I'll have enough time to do it though =/ I've been up at Wolverhampton visiting Russell this weekend, going home tonight, so no art has taken place, I have one day at home tomorrow, then I'm off to Download! Which I'm very excited about. I hope the weather holds up =/

So I could attempt it tomorrow but I don't want to do another half-arsed one like last time. It would be good to spend a few days on it. I have a few basic initial ideas though, either a personal response, some kind of self portrait (perhaps with my ipod on, cos when I'm enveloped in my own little world of music, that's my paradise) with/collage/decoration, maybe even do it vector style... then of course another paradise is creating art itself... which means that the piece could be anything, even just a 'happening' (ooo so arty) as the actual creation of the work would be the outcome.
Or focus on the definition of the word itself... paradise, utopias etc... and then go a bit different, and base it on a dystopia... because of cours ethe title is 'Your Paraadise', not My Paradise... and your paradise could be my idea of hell.

You see. So many ideas, but no time :( I'll see what mood I'm in tomorrow though, I might just throw together the self portrait idea. It's a bit 'a-level girl art' isn't it, though. Like "Oh I'm sooo misunderstood, the only time I'm at total peace is when I'm listening to my tuuuunes on my ipod that my daddy bought me".

Which isn't true. My dad didn't buy me my ipod. I won it. So HA take that, apple.
Except I <3 href="http://www.handiedan.com/">
http://www.handiedan.com/

I can't put an image up 'cos it's all flash based, but go see. Everything varies quite a lot but my favourite stuff is the kind that the site is decorated with.

Its just the vector swirls and the inkyness and the website is amazing and I'm very jealous :(

Also, this guy:
Leo Hillier.

Looky how cute it is ^.^

I can't remember how I came across him.. just one of my random internet trawls I guess - but his work is so cute, I really love it.

Two totally different styles but I love them both.

See this is my problem, how am I ever going to figure out a style if I have influences from so many different things? Sigh. Watch and find out I suppose.

OH and before I go, just a reminder to any passers-by to vote for my t-shirt design!

Details are in a previous post but just go here, register, and rate my design!

Have a look at the others too, some are amazing.

Right, enough of this madness. No-one will have got to the end anyway.

If I don't do the IF topic tomorrow I'll definately do my blog header design. It's waaay boring right now. I'm thinking inky/collage doodle type thing, with just 'Rachel Lewis Illustration', or maybe something a bit weirder than that. I keep trying to think up of fun blog titles but they're all a bit lame.

I will ponder it on the train journey :)

Illustration Friday: Cars

So here's my first attempt at an IF topic ^.^ I've been unusually busy this week so didn't really dedicate enough time to it as I probs should have done, but I was determined to do at least something.

It's 10:30 on thursday night, so pretty close to the deadline, but better late than never :)

My first idea was to do cute little vegetable/food cars, hence this little guy: (it's a tomato... suppose that would be obvious with colour...)Buuuut, I went to see Pirates of the Carribean today (good film *thumbs up*) and on my ticket was printed:




'Pirates of the Car'! This made me giggle at the image in my head until I thought it would actually fit this topic pretty well. Since I always draw this pirate guy anyway :) So I went home and came up with my final IF piece:

Now, they're both the same, except the background. I did the background initially, then thought it looked a bit weird... then I liked it.... now I don't. Ugh. I'm bad at decision making when it comes to my own work :P

So I've just put both up. Off to post my link. Enjoy!

All
works in this post is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.

Vote for my design at allmightys.com!

Yep, if you're interested at all, I have a t-shirt design up for public voting at the wonderful world of www.allmightys.com. If I win my design gets made, so this is where you come in :)

1) Go to http://allmightys.com/features/vote_designs/not_cached/index.htm

2) Look through all/some of the designs (there are 86 so i'll let you off looking at them all) And vote them 0-5 of how good you think they are.

3) The most important step - If you only look at one design, make sure it's mine!! It's about 2/3rds of the way down the voting page and looks like this:

(Yes I know it's posted down in another post, but this is the final one, waa waa)

4) If you like it, give it a nice fat 5 for me :) I'll love you lots.

5) Look around the rest of the site. There are pretty t-shirts there!

That's it. Let me know if you do vote though, even if you give it a 0 ;)




* don't you dare give it a 0.



...Right, off to finish Illustration Friday...

Life Is Scary

Hurrah! Just submitted my design to Allmightys. Hope it gets accepted =/ Took me so long to sort out the files, geez. My laptop is supposed to be new and awesome but it's damn slow... It took 2 hours to run a defrag on it this morning, then I attempted to edit the files in Photoshop... my laptop hates Photoshop. It's so laggy, takes about 3 hours to do each step I swear.

I knew I should have bought a mac. Using Windows is like swimming in honey... you think it's all yummy and nice and then you're moving all slow and suddenly you can't breathe and oh dear you're dead. Sigh.

And it's a Vaio. One of those expensive ones. Should be awesome. But noooo.

/rant.

On a different note, I had my interview yesterday with the design company that I hoped to work for a bit in summer, I think I mentioned it earlier. That sentence had the worst structure ever. Anyway, so it was pretty scary, but I think it went OK. I'll be covering for one of the designers for a week, plus a few days either side. But, it's basically full on DTP design work. So I need to learn InDesign and Quark in about 3 weeks.

Argh.

Well basically they said if I can learn them I'll be far more useful to them, so I need to really. Problem is, even if I get a crack copy from somewhere just to play about with, as I mentioned above, my laptop will hate it. And my home computer is reeeaaally old and slow these days anyway. So I'm going back up to Wolves on friday to visit Russell, and University is still open so i'll just spend monday and tuesday going through tutorials from the internet. It shouldn't be that bad actually, I'm pretty good at picking up new software, and it's in the same family as Photoshop and Illustrator so it'll look semi familiar. Eep.

But yeah, even though the job is only for 8 days, i'll get quite a lot of money for it (which I need badly, boohoo) but even more important is the experience; it'll look great on my CV :) Yay.

Wow it's nearly 4:30. I was going to have an art day today but my stupid computer took up most of it =/ However I'm still going to have a crack at the new IF topic... it's Cars though =/ And that's the one thing that I can't draw. Hmmm. Should be fun :P

I'll post it today or tomorrow when it's done.

OH OH and the nice guys at Allmightys added me as a friend type person to their website... I even have my own little button, on the right side of their page. Which is jolly nice! Although this blog is kind of a working title... I need to make it pretty really. I got some nice comments from them too, so ta for that guys.

If my design gets accepted, EVERYONE has to vote for me. I shall make it law.

The Robinson's adverts

Has anyone seen these? They're so cute! I just love the style :D

You can watch one here

^.^

Here's some press ads too:


Got them all from here.
Yay :)

I really want to know who did them. I think the advertising company was called BBH, but some designer or illustrator has got to have created the whole thing.

Answers on a postcard please :)

EDIT - OK I just found him ^.^ He's called Adrian Johnson and his stuff is AWESOME. I love it way too much. Look:

Hehe. His website is Www.AdrianJohnson.org.uk. Everybody go there!
Think I may even add him to my inspiration list. Get me eh.

On another note, I just heard today that I've got a 2 week paid work experience placement at a local design company. They are called impact! and I'm quite excited :) I was hoping for a whole summer placement but I suppose this is better than nothing! And I can stay on longer if I want, just won't get paid. Should be interesting though.
I have to go there next tuesday to show some of my work... but I need to choose pieces that have an editorial design slant... hmmm. Might be quite hard =/ Scary.

Scary Biscuits!

My housemate Claire had "scary biscuits" as her MSN name once, and I thought it was too cool of a statement to pass up. So I dreamt up this. It was just a silly sketch that I stuck on her door but then I got to colouring it in on photoshop... quite crudely really but it does it's job.

Anyway then I stumbled upon the 'Monsters and Mayhem' competition at Allmightys.com
and thought it would be fun to enter it. I haven't actually done so yet cos you have to make templates and thumbnails etc but I will do, cos I've only got until next thursday. If you win you get a percentage of the price of every t-shirt sold, so that's way cool. If I knew how to work illustrator properly I would've coloured it using that, you know with paths and vectors and stuff, so it was all smooth. This look s a bit like it was coloured in paint. But it wasn't, honest!

Yay. Next week I'm going to do my first Illustration Friday attempt. Go me!

All
works in this post is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.