It's not a fashion statement, It's a deathwish.

Ah, Halloween. Literally my favourite celebration of the year. I even prefer it to birthdays sometimes, much more fun. Not sure if it beats Christmas though. Hmmm.

Hello, yes, silly pose, guilty.

I inevitably try and go for something more obscure every year, aiming to involve as much blood as possible. I can't be seen as something as drab as a witch/vampire/ghost, (don't you know who I am darling?) No but really, you have to be creative on Halloween, copping out with a shop bought outfit is laaaame. But that's me.

The bath was determined the safest place to chuck red liquid around.

So last year I went as Claire from Heroes, after being caught by Sylar and brain taken out and put back in. So basically a cheerleader covered in blood! And I like being covered in blood. So this year, I had to think of something equally as cute and horrific.

You know that cheesey chat up line 'Did it hurt when you fell from heaven?', well thank god no one's ever said that to me, but the answer this night was, 'yes of course it frickin did, there's blood everywhere, I'm probably haemorrhaging internally!!' Which is the only suitable answer.

I never figured out what I did wrong to be thrown out of heaven, probably coveted my neighbour's wife/oxen/plasma tv, but it hurt a lot and I had to drink tonnes of alcohol to make it better.

Little wings, lots of blood, messy room (not mine!)

All us girls made a proper effort, the lads were suitably boring and went as... 'lads'. Or, normals, pre-apocalypse. In my mind.

We all trekked (stumbled, giggled, marched, choose your verb) into town to Blast Off at Wolves Civic. It was epic, we rocked hard, my ribs hurt the next day = mission success.

The title of this post, btw, is the name of a My Chemical Romance song, from way back, and it's rather good. My Chem are the only band you should be allowed to listen to on Halloween. If I ruled the world.

They are quite definitely my favourite band and have occupied that spot for about 6 years now, and I did a little dance when I heard they are back in the studio recording their 4th album. Oh Em Fucking Gee. Ray says: “I think the direction of the new album is a perfect mix of what we did on Black Parade and what we did on Revenge. After Black Parade, we were ready for a more aggressive sound, similar to Revenge, but even harder. Because we had toured behind Black Parade for so long, we wanted to do the complete opposite of that this time out, almost kind of de-construct ourselves.”

Yes, oh yes.

I think I have a typography fetish.

Because this took me about an hour and a half and I loved every minute of it. I just love letterforms. And all you can do with them. Mmmm. I know this is quite graphic-designy of me but sometimes I need a bit of that.


It's graph paper (recycled, don'tcha know) and letraset. That's all. Oh yes. OLD SCHOOL people.

I'm very aware I could have done this in half the time in Photoshop. But it's all about the process. Scratching those individual letters on, and all the mistakes that happily occur along the way. Ah.

Anyway, as you may have guessed, this is a quote. About lust. One of the deadly sins! Aha. I'm going to draw some sexy people in a bit, team it all up in Photoshop (can't resist forever) and see how it looks. The graph paper may be a problem. Or it could be awesome.

(This is totally going on my wall.)

Oh, and the quote is a lyric from The Sharpest Lives by My Chemical Romance. Of course.

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*

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.