May 21, 2013

Pictures Talking

Here’s something new! Sprung from a creative afternoon on the sofa with Angela Chick, and a donation of paints from a much-missed Grandpa, I made these.

That last one there is my favourite, and I’d like to do this on a large scale. All the above were made using wall-paint as the speech bubble – to help get that stark edge, which I want more practice at. The orange text is with watercolour and the thinest brush ever. Slight issue with magazine paper going wrinkly with the paint, may try ironing the paper after painting. Now need to collect more B&W images of people at parties, having a nice time.

Can’t find my keys

Double rainbow all the way (Inspired by this incredible Youtube vid: double rainbow)

Not sure if she is having a great time or not

Elvis is really enjoying this

The sexy Cara Delevingne is a pork pie fan. Can she have half of yours?

She loves her bovril

Maybe a barber shop quartet, maybe just agreeing with each other.

May 10, 2013

Telephone Drawings take 2

This wonderful old telephone, previously drawn, used as a prop, kicked about in the studio, hidden away on a shelf…. thought it was time to get it out and draw it again, because that’s always been a good starting point for me when I’m trying to get into the creativity zone or want to actually do some drawing (so very overlooked by me most of the time). So here’s the phone, and the drawings which came out. One is a 5-minute blind drawing. ‘Cos I like that

May 10, 2013

Top Notch paintings

Yesterday, paints out (wall paint, powdered Indian paint, lacquer, pencils, pins to scrape with and graphic pens) to make one very small painting for a fundraiser for Bristol’s Cruse Berevement Care, to take the form of an anonymous exhibition, each piece A5. More about that here.

Liking the words ‘Top Notch’ and wanting to write them everywhere.

April 27, 2013

Melting down oil pastels and crayons

This started as me making a ‘creative tutorial’ for the Light Box blog, but turns out that I didn’t feel very excited nor energised about making a step-by-step tutorial and wanted more of a chance to experiment and have fun with it.

So away I went, not worrying about an end-point, not worried about photographing every little step. There is this thing (all over Pinterest and craft blogs) where you can melt down old ends of oil pastels, combine with crayons to help solidify and bind, then cook for just 10 minutes in the oven at 100 degrees, and you can make a whole new crayon/oil pastels out of whichever colours you like.

But I like what I made more then that – more of an object (plus it’s crap to use as a crayon!) reminds me of using resin, makes me want to take this further and try to set objects within the melted down waxes. Could I float little objects in grey pastels, so it’s barely visible, like smog? What about just using wax? Those are notes to self!

I did take some pictures. The slicing of the oil pastels was a wonderful experience. An unusual texture – very satisfying.

April 25, 2013

Never

One word, simple really- I HAD to make SOMETHING and I couldn’t find my motivation, my interest, my inspiration. So I imagined never having any of those three things, and realised that this is a monetary thing and it’ll all whiz back to me, and it’s ok! So I wrote the word ‘NEVER’ to remind me of this, and played around with some little page-tab things I found in a dollar shop in NZ. Taking inspiration from this quote, but exchanging ”dance” for “making shit”

We’re fools whether we dance or not so we might as well dance (Japanese proverb)

March 5, 2013

Three Small Pieces

Three small pieces, made from a commitment to “I will spend 20 minutes making something today”. I didn’t really enjoy it, it felt like more of a ‘have-to’ but I bloody did it! (And I don’t like them much, apart from the one which secretly says ‘Start’.)