Screw you, New Busy. I'm just tired.

I haven't blogged in weeks - this is very bad. It's not for lack of content - I've got 8 draft posts that are half finished! The past few weeks have been so busy and I just have not had time. That's bad I know. Lots of good things have been happening though, as well as work being ridiculously busy at the moment, and swanning off to various places every weekend for various things. That doesn't help. But hey, I like to have weekends!

Anyway, I was talking recently about how I want to move this blog over to my own domain name, and I've pretty much decided that I will do this. Hopefully this weekend if I get time. So even though I didn't mean to not post, maybe it's a good idea not to... then just wait until I move over and start again. I don't really know.

How do you people with full time jobs manage to also blog a lot too?? It baffles me. I think it's my commute though- if I lived in London I'd be home by 6.30 and maybe then I'd have the energy to write. At the moment all I want to do is eat and sleep.

I've also been ill for about a week and a half now and it seems to be getting worse :S right now I have no voice! Very annoying. But I read this post today by Ben Terrett over at Noisy Decent Graphics about 'Being Busy' (have been following the blog for years... you should too) and it's timing is very well placed.

Read the full post but it's summed up in 5 points:
1. Work when you work best
2. Healthy body, healthy mind
3. Don't do everything on your to do list
4. Ask for help
5. Little and often


It's extremely good advice and I really recommend you go and read it. I need to take heed. We covered all this stuff, and more, in the CSM Immersion course I attended, but it's so easy to slip back into 'crazy mode'.

I think the answer is a good ol' break; even though right now that's impossible. This weekend I plan to do nothing social at all (except when it precedes the word media) and sort out my illustration life; that is, email people, so some actual work, sort out my website, you know. I will feel a lot better when that side of me is organised. I struggle with this constant feel of unease when that side of me (illustration) isn't as organised and clear as I would like - afterall, my goal is to be freelance, yet I'm putting most of my energy into my current job. Which is fine. I have a career to forge after all, and I quite enjoy graphic design/having a 9 to 5, but I wish I could have more time on the stuff that I'm really passionate about. Sigh. All in good time and such. 

Anyway, the title of this post of course refers to Hotmail's New Busy campaign. I blame this 'new busy' way of thinking for pushing most of us creative types to some kind of melt down. We are made to feel that we should always be on to the next big thing, finding out new stuff, being here, being there, being awesome. I can be pretty good at that, but not all the damn time. Sometimes I need a sofa day watching Twilight (of course), without the nagging guilt of 'you should be blogging/drawing/updating portfolio/networking/running around in circles'.

Well, I'm trying new busy, and although I'm having a great time, I'm so tired. And I'm neglecting important things that need to be done. So I'm going anti new busy for a while. Hotmail? More like Hotfail. Pass the duvet.

Things I Have Learned In My (University) Life So Far.

This is a bit of a homage to Stefan Sagmeister, genuis-like legend that he is. Have a look at his site, he has an 'answers for students' section which has so many useful things to say.

His book, Things I have learned in my life so far, is equally amazing. Firstly, the design of it, slip case with each section bound separately and loose, and secondly, maybe more importantly, the content is perfect.

Being an illustration student with a bit of love for graphic design, I'm very much into illustrative/decorative type. And this book is full of 'em. Each thing he has learned has had it's word 'illustratively designed' (I guess that's how to describe it) to form the complete sentence. Just look:

(Taken from http://sleevage.com/vega4-you-and-others/)

I love it. So, I've decided to list the Things I Have Learned In My (University) Life So Far, not spectacularly designed though, I'll admit. Definitely a project for the future, though. (The Things I have learned site has the functionality of people being able to upload their own sentences, I may just do that one day.)

1. When deadlines approach, things will go wrong.
This is the law of being an art student, I think. And it'll be the little things that go wrong, the tiny disasters that don't ruin everything, but make completing projects about 100x more complicated. Like, your printer running out of ink the night before. Every Mac in the building freezing and not liking you. Photoshop crashes 8 times in a row. Somebody sits in your studio space. The University internet goes down. You lose your ID card and can't even get in the building. You somehow mess up the simple task of chopping mount board in a straight line. You stub your toe and there's so much blood. Or you scalpel your finger and there's so much blood. You get the idea. What do I do to make sure I avoid these things before hand-in? Nothing. You can't. Just accept your fate, cry a bit, don't get blood on your badly cut mount board, and get the job done.

2. I am very lucky. I know exactly what job I want.
The thing that I forget, and shouldn't take for granted at all, is that to know what you want to do when you leave University is actually very rare, from my experience. I take it as a given; I want to be an illustrator. I'm sure most of the art building knows what they want to do - most of the ceramics kids want to be ceramicists, in some form, half the grapho designers want to be...well, graphic designers, or web designers, the textiles students, I'm sure a lot of them want to start their own accessories label. It's kind of like, yeah, duh, I'm an Illustrator, I Illustrate. But most of my friends aren't art kids. A lot of them do History, War Studies, Philosophy, "real" degrees, and most of them have no clue what job they're going to end up in. (Although in these times of recession, who does, eh.) And that must be quite scary, actually. We're lucky - we might be scared about our chosen career and where it's going to take us, but hey - we HAVE a chosen career.

3. University fundamentally changes you as a person.
90% of the time, I'm pretty sure it's for the best. Well, I've changed for the best, I hope. The thing about this is you can never really tell, unless people tell you. And people have told me. But this is cool. Also, it's kind of natural - you arrive 18 or 19, and you leave 21 or 22.... those years of your life are always a bit turbulent, without the added intensity of the Uni experience. Because intense is what it is. And awesome. I'm going to miss it so very much.

4. These 3 years have been the best and worst of my life.
In relation to number 3, I think this probably applies to quite a lot of people. University is NOT uneventful. In no order at all, I've met some brilliant people, actually developed complete independence (not a thing to be taken lightly), loved, lost, laughed, cried, been on sleeping tablets, been prescribed diazepam, been attacked, burgled twice, won an ipod, bought cheesecake at 3am, danced in a hot tub in Oceana, bikini and all, (cringe) run out of money completely and entirely, learned to cook properly, discovered I actually can stand/do like commercial r 'n' b (didn't see that one coming....), went to NY and Barcelona, spent 5 months depressed and sober, fell in love with the wrong guy, and I've got more friends than I've ever had in the rest of my life put together.

5. Photoshop is a genius, miracle invention, but it won't make a bad idea good.
It just won't. I know nothing about software programming, but I'm pretty sure Photoshop is made by wizards and it's a very, very clever piece of kit. But just 'cos it has lens flare, doesn't mean you have to use it. You get out of Photoshop what you put into it. If your original concept is a bit naff, and you just put Filters > Poster Edges, or my personal hated Plastic Wrap, it doesn't make it suddenly a brilliant piece of design. Oh, filters. How I hate thee. I used to use Cutout a lot in my first year. 'Cos it looks, 'like, totally collage effect, omg'. But first year is the place to do these things. Filters should be banned from second year onwards. But what HAS saved me, is Blending Options. How did I not know the wonders until 6 months ago. Again, these can be used badly, but the good solid standard Multiply and Screen are saviours. I've even been known to throw in some Colour Burn, I know, rebel. I used to sit there painstakingly cutting out all the white from pencil drawings. Multiply does that. In one second. When a classmate showed me that I literally nearly cried. Oh and holding down Alt when you drag a layer to duplicate it. I used to do Layer > Duplicate.... bla bla bla. These are things I learned in horror and now can't live without.

6. Changing your hair colour does not change your life.
Neither does buying lots of clothes and always wearing makeup and never going out in flats again. I've had every hair colour at uni, pretty much, except green. (Yeah, I had an orange fringe.) I never did any of these things consciously to be a 'better person', I just discovered I love shoes and clothes. But things still go wrong, things still go good, and I'm still not a model. Ha.

7. My life is sometimes worse than a soap opera.
Seriously, I don't know whether it's every uni, or just mine, but everyone knows everyone, everyone gossips about everyone, people you just met are connected to that girl you hate for no reason (there's a little list of these between me and my girlfriends, 4 or 5 girls we HATE and we don't know why, it's just amusing and immature) crazy not-even-neighbours-would-have-this-storyline things happen and sometimes it's so tragic and horrible that it makes me laugh in a sad way. It's so weird. It's worse than school, uni life. It's like a big playground where the picking on is much more subtle, the boy you fancy isn't just not playing kiss chase with you, he's making you die inside, there's either no popularity hierarchy, or, it's so detailed that you can't see it, and there's alcohol and 24 hour Asda for cheesecake and hair dye.

8. Your friends become your family.
That sounds sooo cheesey. I'm sorry. But they really do. When you move out, you have the initial, 'ohjesusi'mallalone', then you have the euphoric 'hell yeah, i'm all alone!!', then you realise that you need people when things go completely tits up and your mum isn't here. And you can tell them things you wouldn't tell your mum. And they throw up in your shower and that's ok. Your mum wouldn't do that. (...Right?)

9. Get involved in everything.
There are some people at Uni who live at home and commute. Who never come out. Who don't really ever turn up for lectures or crits, who don't use the studio spaces, who don't vote in the student elections, who don't go on the bar crawls, who don't throw halls parties or attend them, who don't do any of that stuff. It baffles me. a) you're paying over £3000 a year to be here, milk it, it's bloody expensive. b) University is about way more than the course you do. Way, way more. c) There will never be a time in your life again when you are surrounded by so many like-minded people of the same age. Mingle with them. I know there are good reasons why people live at home, I'm not saying they're wrong and I'm right, but I feel that I've had the whole experience. I'm student rep on my course, I talk to my tutors, I not only frequented the Union but worked at it (before they closed it down, we woz robbed), I campaigned for my mates in the student elections, I go out twice a week and I'm getting pretty decent grades, I lived on the bread line for many months, I maxed out my overdraft, I don't have a job in third year (why I'm getting good grades, heh) and I live with my friends. Pretty cool. You can't have it any other way.

I'm just going to punctuate this list with the fact that I am watching High Fidelity on BBC1 right now. I'm semi paying attention, it's quite a good film, and it seems to be entirely constructed around lists. Interesting, and a bit coincidental.

10. Tutors are not always right.
They know a lot, and are better at the subject than you are, but sometimes, you need to go with what you want to do and not what they say. That's how you develop. Choosing which bits of criticism/advice to absorb. You have to absorb most of it, that's just being arrogant if you don't. But you know you and what you want better than they do. Everyone needs criticism, and you need to learn how to give yourself some. Constructively. 'I'm rubbish and I'm going to be a waitress all my life' isn't constructive. 'I should focus more on my line weight' is.

11. Being on your own is ok.
After 'the bad time', (break up, cheated on, attack, bla boring, this was ages ago now) which I now call it, I couldn't be on my own. I cried continuously and slept with the light on. I went to councilling and sorted all that out, and I don't dismiss it as unimportant but I'm not going to expand on it. I did in a post at the time. Anyway, I learned to be on my own. In the physical, 'I can watch tv alone in the house' sense, and also in the relationship sense. (I still hate being single, though. Anyone who ever says they like it, is lying. Or weird in the head.) And not only that, I learned the importance of being on your own. I recognise that I'm a really social person and prefer being around people, (I'm a leo, center of attention), but sometimes you need time to chill out and eat asda brand doritos and post on your blog at 1am and watch a random film (this is what I am doing now). This is actually one of the most important points on this list. I can be on my own. All day. For 4 days, actually, as I did last weekend. It wasn't a hoot but it didn't bother me. I got stuff done. And when I finally saw my friends I appreciate them. Aw. Isn't that nice.


12. It's worth it.
I'm going to be in at least £19,000 of debt when I graduate. I don't even have a car or a credit card. I don't even know what £19k looks like. But it's so worth it. You can't buy experiences like these. If I could I'd be a student forever. That sounds lazy, but it's bloody hard work, actually. I love learning. One of the reasons why I wanted to do my MA. But I didn't get accepted to either RCA or St Martin's so I won't be going for at least another year. I'm going to miss studying. I don't want to graduate, if someone rocked up and said 'there's been a terrible mistake, you'll have to resit 3rd year' I'd probably go OKAY :D What a shame! Oh no! Ha. But, this does bring up an issue, actually. How high are they going to go, with tuition fees? I think next year it's going to be £3,225... they keep putting it up every year. That's not good for my brothers ,or anyone else who's at uni next year. I heard they want to take the limit off so any uni can charge what they like. If they suddenly go, er, £10k a year, then I might have to reconsider if it is worth it... the debt would be horrific. Can you imagine? It's all a bit wrong, in my opinion. Even £3k a year is a bit steep, but acceptable.


I have learned other things, like..... I dunno, what copyright is, but that's boring and uninteresting. I hope people enjoy and some relate to my list. I can't believe I've completed my degree. I'll post as soon as I find out my classification...how scary.

What have you learned?

Self Promotion woes and stumbling upon nice things.

Every so often I have one of these days on the internet. It's quite strange. I'll be researching something or other, an article or artist or whatever, and it'll take me on this crazy ride of following links all over the place. A minute ago I had 20 tabs open purely just because everywhere was taking me everywhere else. It's exciting. The cyber version of opening a door which leads you to another door and another one until you fall off the moon. Or something. Anyway, right now, this is entirely useful because I am currently trying to devise my Visual Identity. I capitalised that because it's such a huge thing that I feel it needs it. It's a scary thing, right? How exactly to capsulise ME in a nice little branding package. Business card, CV, Letterhead, Postcard. These are requirements for this module (of course it's a uni project, I'm glad of it, it forces me to do this.) But me being me, I also want to apply the 'rebranding' (omgzzz total like corporatementalness there) to this blog, and I want a website too. A real one. That is all www.lookhereIamisn'tmyworkwonderful.co.uk. Haha.

I've been stuck for ages, so I just thought, I'll do something, and work from there. So this is my first little idea. It's not a huge leap; ink, graph paper, hand rendered text. I want to have white space definitely because my work gets so cluttered that I need to move towards involving white space. Because I like it, and it does look better rather than 'everythingeverywhere' which is the approach for me in the past :P The font here is called 'Sketch Rothwell', and I'm not going to use it; I want to actually draw my own type (I'll probably end up tracing Gill Sans or something lol, totally obsessed with ol' Gill at the mo). But you get the point.

And yes, this isn't the best dimensions to be applied to....well any of the things I have to produce. But it's a starting point.

What I really wanted to blog about was Keri Smith. She is the author of The Guerilla Art Kit and Wreck This Journal and other lovely things as well. She's basically a pretty cool illustrator and human person. I like her, she did a nice post the other day that has gone some way to pull me out of my unmotivated/overwhelmed/ohmygod the end is nigh mentality of the past few weeks.



This is the coolest thing. I want one. Go check her out :) The other thing she has done is this PDF, of 100 ideas to do. I've just printed it out and I'm definitely going to do some, or all of them. This is my problem you see. I'm a creative person. But I never bloody create. My journal is pitiful. Keri is like, Queen of Journals. And I always say, oh I'm going to draw every day or collage once a week or whatever but inevitably I get sucked into doing Uni work, and when I'm not doing Uni work I'm enjoying my last few days of studentland and crying on people. Haha. It's not that uni stuff isn't creative, it clearly is, but it's always for a deadline, always for a purpose...always now now now do something quick before your tutor calls you a failure. Lol. And ultimately, sometimes I'd rather curl up with a film after a hard day at the Macs instead of drawing my telly or something.
Does that make me a failure to the illustration profession? Hmm.

On the subject of drawing, here's one I did of a not so happy snarly wolf:
Copyright to me, Rachel Lewis please. That goes without saying but I don't trust the mintynet *squinty eyes*
that one is straight from the scanner, levels are a bit off. Actually looking at it now, the eye is a bit weird too. Noted. It's for my book cover for The Secret History; of which I don't have a jpeg to post of what it's looking like currently. Man I need Photoshop. At least Ps Elements or something :( sigh. But as I don't believe in any form of digital piracy, and I have no money, I have to go to uni to experience that delight.

I'm off to brainstorm myself. No, really. If I'm going to Visual Identity myself then I need to know what myself constitutes, in spider-diagram form.

Honestly, I really thought this was where places were.

I've never really had a good sense of geographical direction over long distances.

This is where I thought cities were, in my head without looking at a real map, right up until I was about 17. So I thought I'd do a little diagram to explain exactly where, and why.

Do we all think like this?

I'm having a bit of a freak out recently. That's the wrong word, because it's not. It's more of a gnawing, consistent worry. I am worried about my career. And this is particularly worrying because I haven't even started it yet. I'm not entirely sure why I'm blogging this, but I'm pretty sure it has something to do with hoping that I'm not alone in it. There has to be other Illustration students out there, right now, that are sharing in this vague sort of unease.

First, let me point out that I love Illustration, I love my career choice. But in the past few months or so I've become increasingly aware of how difficult this is all going to be. I didn't ever expect it to be easy, in fact I love a challenge, but the prospect of me graduating and then finding a job straight away, or getting enough commissions to sustain me, seems like an impossible pipe dream at this moment.

But then, having a job you love and getting paid well for it is the Holy Grail, right?

Let me throw some statistics at you. These are from the AOI'S Illustrator's Survey 2008, which can be found here. It's a pretty fascinating read, but here are things that stand out to me:

• 34% of the people surveyed generated the majority of their income from Editorial Illustration. This doesn't surprise me and is quite nice to know actually, being that I enjoy doing Editorial (albeit fake and uncommissioned at the moment) Illustration. Lovely.
  
• Only 23.5% think that "being an illustrator is very satisfying and I can earn enough money to make a decent living." This is slightly worrying; although what exactly does a 'decent living' mean? Bread and butter or Prada shoes? Somewhere in between?
  
• 77% of us work at home. This emits a huge 'OMGZ' from me because that's my idea of hell. I. need. to be. around. people. More on this later.
• 22.4% (The highest percentage of all the choices) earn between £0 - £1,000 a year from Illustration. Eek. That's not a lot. But wait...
• Just 7.2% earn between £30k - £40k. 9.8% Earn over 40k. That's not a massive percentage. Well done to those who do earn over 40k though, that's quite...immense.
• However, 30.3% earn LESS than a quarter of their annual income through Illustration. Which means they've all got other jobs. Which is something I have accepted I will have to do maybe for the first year or so but not as a long-term thing. I don't want to be an Illustrator/Waitress. Hi, what do you do? I'm an Illustrator-slash-receptionist. You?

However, I have deducted that, the same amount of people (roughly), who disagreed that "being an illustrator is very satisfying and I can earn enough money to make a decent living," are the same people who earn between £0 - £1000 a year from it, and so are the same people who earn less than a quarter of their annual income through Illustration. Right? So what about the rest?

I guess what I'm preoccupied about is that I want to be good. I make no apologies for the fact that I expect highly of myself, push myself, and want to succeed. So I want to be in that top 8% (ish), earning £30k or more. Of course I do. But 8% of all the thousands of us who will Graduate this time next year is not a lot. To get there I have to work damn hard. And that's fine, that's not what scares me. I suppose what I get scared about are my own limitations. I'll look at some amazing Illustration/Design/whatnot and think the same old, 'Wow, I am never going to be that good. I'm graduating into the actual real world where actual real people get actual real jobs in one year and I am not that good. I'm going to be a receptionist,' school of thought. Which isn't productive, but what if I'm just not that good. There's a thought. Failure. What if I want the £40k and the 18 hour days to finish the commission and the sleepless nights and the recognition and the amazing studio with my imaginary Collective and the Prada shoes and.... I'm just not quite good enough. Do we all think like this, us aspiring Student Illustrators?

I suppose there's never an answer to this unless I push myself the hardest and give it my all and be original and be clever and be pro-active, and a little bit lucky, and go out there and find the jobs, and then I'll either be on the ladder on the way or I... won't be. But I know that there's nothing I can imagine myself doing except this. There is no Plan B, because Plan A is what I want to be. So I have to get this right. That's possibly the scariest part of all.

Like everyone, I have short term and long term goals. I need to Graduate. That would help. But first I'd quite like to get a commission. I think that would perhaps calm the little nagging feelings if I know that someone somewhere likes my work and wants to pay me for it. That's what it's about after all, isn't it. But of course to get the coveted first commission people have to actually know I exist. Self promotion first then, eh. But I also think of all these long term things that I want to do, with my imaginary perfect studio and dreams of personal projects and collaborations and all sorts. Maybe I just want the world.

As a side note, and following on from Bullet Point number 3, I read a quote, and it completely slips my memory who said it, but it was something like, "if you want to be an artist, you better like your own company." This really struck me. As an illustrator, I probably should like being on my own if I'm going to do this. That whole image of the lone illustrator working out of the back bedroom. So there is this side of my personality that doesn't quite sit right with my career choice. This adds to this vague worry that is the theme of this post.

Of course, I'd quite like to have a shared studio or even eventually start a Collective. If if maybe.


So I suppose this is just my reach into the dark, with the question, Do we all think like this? 'We' being aspiring Illustrators. And 'this' being the Vague Worry.


Or is it just me?

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.