Wood-Cut & Paper-Cut

The Invisible Cities tiles have a container!  I took my makeshift cardboard box down to woodwork, a mysterious section of the Victoria Building that I have previously steered clear of, due to my reasonable fear of heavy duty machinery and lack of the kind of macho-ness you expect to find there.  They kindly replaced it with a perfectly-fitted box out of spare MDF, and I love it more than life right now :3 not even bothered how silly that makes me sound! It might be painted, but I don't want to ruin it, so will give it some thought. The word 'cities' will needed to be added to the end there...apart from that will maybe just leave it.

So it's Halloween, which for my beliefs is a holiday I'm reluctant to celebrate.  But the draw to dress up was just too much XD so after a brief cosplay moment last night, I am spending the night indoors with the housies, my book and Minority Report. 

Should see about doing that presentation for Friday...will be on it as of tomorrow morning.

Also, me and Rosie ventured to Manchester Art Gallery on Saturday, here are some of the great pieces you can find there. But it's totally free and awe-inspiring to see in reality, so all should definitely definitely go.  It's called First Cut, and it's paper cutting artist pieces.  Completely insane.

Béatrice Coron

Andy Singleton

Peter Callesen

Rob Ryan

Justine Smith

David Risley

Andreas Kocks

Emma van Leest

Biro Gandalf.

Love having free time to do whatever the hell I like :)

Next personal project starts Monday.  I trust it won't be as chilled as drawing from a kickass picture of Gandalf.  Should also be more original and professional and 'un-fangirl-ly' and whatnot...

Decided to sketch from this after finding this brilliant picture in a magazine, and as a recovery from a terrifying evening of 28 Days Later.  And luckily Jon arrived later, in time to provide distraction by carting me off to Warehouse, so fully recovered from zombie/Rage jitters now.

Nothing else new to report. Dave has a car now, and Rosie returned five minutes ago bearing excellent London/Comic Con gifts.  Skyfall is amazing, go see it! Am excited to see Shinedown tomorrow in Manchesterland.  And I learned that my sister can make plaited bread, which I must get her to teach me, and I had my first fish and chips in the past three years tonight.

That about sums it up. Told you there's nothing new to report -.-

Ideas for a new personal project? There are a couple already, but the more the better :)

Ink design for Baileyy

Tattoo deisgn for Sarah Rose Bailey :) happy with it, apart from the mistake on the upper right of the cage.  This will be fixed, if not by me then by the professional!haha

Invisible Cities project done for now.  Had moment of fear last night, as it turns out the tiles DON'T fit into wine boxes as I planned.  After uni yesterday, we went all the way to Majestic to pull the classic 'give-us-free-shit-cause-we're-art-students' thing, and the adorable seller of wine gave us a load of nice, inexpensive boxes for fancy expensive wine (wine not included -.-).  They ended up being useless, apart from sitting around the house making us look like classy alcholics, and in one case being used as a wig stand ^^

So I panicked and found myself on the sofa carving a box out of mount board, using craft knives and superglue, making tracing paper windows in the side.

Of course, lecturers kindly advised I get a decent box made -.- but I don't care, because I had the packaged tiles to hand in, a mock up of the book cover and supporting sketchbook, and I have the chance to do something completely different XD had aceee celebrations for that tonight (unfortunately minus Rosie, who has London Comic Con this weekend. SO very jealous ><). Back home now, to read 'The End of Mr. Y' and sleep forever!zzzzz

Playing Cover Designer with Calvino

This is quite soon after waking for me to be thinking about work!  Woken up by the fabulous Dave appearing at 8am in the doorway, which I was confused about till I remembered I was sleeping on the lounge sofa last night.  

The wonderful Tash Brissenden a-visited yesterday, to join me and other lovely Prestonians Abby, Andrew, Ben and Joe in reliving our teenage days and seeing Bowling For Soup at 53s (third time for me. I really shouldn't fancy Jaret this much -.-).  Quids after that resulted in late/early walk home and finishing Dave's pizza (which I owe him for now...).  This Tuesday involves a slightly hungover trip to Didsbury and hopefully, finally, asking at the screenprinting lab to get this book cover printed once et for all.

These are the potential covers for my book cover project, which was redesigning the gorgeous classic amazingness Invisible Cities.  Inexplicably made it complicated -.- could've designed a nice cover on paper, digitally printed it and produced something clean and professional and whatnot.  What I actually did was draw individual designs on ceramic tiles with the aid of fancy pens and worryingly large amounts of aerosol fixative.  Then use my meagre photography skills to make a final image.

But the good things I've found about this, I feel, outnumber bad things about the whole fiddly process. For one, I now have a box of illustrated tiles to hand in too, which although delicate and heavy are also pretty nice objects, I think anyway.  Talking to my tutors Chris and Craig reminded me of artists who scratched onto copper, and produced black and white illustrations such as Blake.  I saw this as a nod to that style, because of the use of building materials, and the black and white designs are similar to how my drawings will look inside the hypothetically reprinted book...fingers crossed.

Secondly, it relates to the story in some ways.  I chose a chessboard layout with the colours of tiles because of Polo and Khan's chess games and how they use it as a metaphor for communicating their memories in the book.  I also think at making lots of smaller images that fit into one larger, sprawling image is a good depiction of how Polo talks about Venice: as different conflicting dimensions which all somehow reflect the city as a whole. Plus, you know...it about cities...tiles can decorate a city...I decorated tiles...there's a link there surely ><

Also, the shading and bevelling in the photos is real, and worked with the filters and Photoshop edits.  If I'd tried to get a stone effect digitally, I could never have done it as good, I'm not that skilled!

Fourthly, I really really enjoyed it all. Anddddd the guys at Topps Tiles know me now, and ask after my art project. The special feeling this gave me is akin to friendship for me.  Sad maybe...but nevermind.

Until Tash wakes up, am completing the designs for the inside...or, obviously, procrastinating by putting the designs on my Illustration course blog :) Dave just left to do his driving test! Soooo good luck and praying for you sir.  Veh nervous as I know I'll have to take mine soon.  Still have theory to go, but I'm liking lessons - have one tomorrow in the afternoon.

Now to put the kettle on and plan the book end pages to new Taylor Swift album.  Something of a guilty pleasure I suppose >< it reminds me loads of my sister and home.  Buy it and read the message she's put in the booklet, it's lovely :D

More photos of tiles, because tiles.

Byeeeee

Cities & Millsy

"...he invited the Venetian to sit opposite him and describe, with the help only of the chessmen, the cities he had visited."

- Invisible Cities

Making a chessboard-style set of tiles for my third year work.  Have so far finished 'Cities & Signs', 'Cities & Memory', 'Trading Cities' and 'Cities & Eyes', just begun 'Cities & The Sky'.  Invisible Cities is the weirdest book, I read it for a university project in second year and decided to pull it off the shelf for this year too :D all plain tiles, now covered in ink and artist fixative.

I think maybe the chemicals in the fixative have addled my brain somewhat recently. I need a better way to seal these -.-

This project is strrrrrrretching out into the horizon now. Am going chapter per tile, and there are 55 tiles :/ but I have quite  a bit of time, and I don't neccessary plan on making THAT many. How heavy would that be to transport??  Honestlyyyyy I love this project, wish we could've chosen our own briefs every year XD

All good here. Driving is much more fun than I thought it'd be, though I admit practising emergency stops nearly gave me a panic attack. Dreading theory, because I know I'll be terrible at it :( but luckily, it seems that this October is gig month, so I have plenty to distract me! Of Mice & Men is tomorrow in Manchesterland, Bowling For Soup on the 22nd, and Shinedown on the 29th.  Then frugal living for a bit to justify it.

Been doodlingggg when I'm not slaving over floor tiles, or watching nonstop Community episodes (don't judge me. After hearing endless good things about it, Jon brought home the first season and I couldn't help myself. Have now bought the second season already), or procrasinating on Facebook....ohh the glamour of my life.

 Have no real reason for this, other than the recent practice of sketching characters in onesies, and a blue statue of a Chinese lion I keep thinking about at the minute.  But heyyy I don't have to explain myself to you anyhow ^^

Now to get an early night (midnight is early right?) so I can keep up this awesome new thing I have going called not being ill. 

Au revoirrr

Dancing Animals, Grand Return.

Wow, long time no one-sided-conversation/blogging! I no longer frequent Studio Liddell, I'm sad to say.  But am enjoying third year being back at university (top picture is my studio space ^^ and below, Rosie in hers). Once again spending time guarding the Falcon with the usual crew (living in rented house with fellow cools Dave, Rosie and Jon again) and plugging on with our personal projects.  I feel like, for no reason whatsoever, I picked something that I know will be tonnes of work (and money, spent on ink and floor tiles) for the average result I'm bound to get.  But am plugging on anyway!  And working from Italo Calvino, one of my favourite authors, 'Invisible Cities' so am pretty into it.  

Felt pretty down at first, think just from moving back to Preston after six months living at home. But nothing Jimmy Eat World, distracting self with learning to drive, and the Preston Chinese Buffet couldn't solve ^^

These were commissioned in the past week for Joel Young, resident DJ at University of Southampton Student Union.  Onesie themed freshers night poster :D the brief I got consisted of 'black and white', 'cute', 'dancing', 'animal onesies'.

So thats fun. Originally was asked for a series of animal sketches, but the onesie idea took over, it seems. Was fun designing all of them! More projects like this pls.

So that's all non-uni related stuffs for the minute. Eyes closing, about to drift off. And when I get up tomorrow, sibling is visiting from Lancaster University! So must be bright eyes and bushy tailed and so forth for my visitor :) pictures of Invisible Cities Tiles project very soons. Depending on how much I get done ><