ORIGAMI

Screen printing today! There is a slight possibility I turned up at college today wearing a white skirt and shoes ready to print with navy and red ink, but never mind. I did these designs a few weeks ago as part of my textiles project, and I'm really happy with how they've turned out today, but I don't actually know how I'm going to incorporate them into my final piece of work - I think I'll hem them and put poles at the top and bottom so I can hang them on the walls!

WOOF

Sorry guys, the blog's been getting a bit photography heavy, hasn't it! Just a few pieces for my current photography unit basically, of my beautiful Labrador!

NEGATIVES

Just found this beauty whilst sifting through my iPhoto library..my negatives! (the ones that are horrifically out of focus are probably the ones I took - the camera kept taking me by surprise because the shutter button was being weird.) I've got another set that I'm going to go and get processed in colour tomorrow, so watch this space!

WORK

Today was a little bit crazy! About 20/30 of us crammed into a room for still life class, people sitting on the floor and wedged into corners, but it was really lovely actually!

 The top painting is from 2/3 weeks ago, but the bottom one was finished today, and I'm super proud of them. Unfortunately my list of work to do is growing longer and longer gradually and the promise I made to myself to try and get on with my arts award has had to be forgotten until this easter - 2 weeks to make 12 paintings, what have I got myself in to?!

FABRIC

The work pictured above is by Timur Novikov, and I love it. I think the main part of it is, they're so transportable, still have creases all over them and look loved - they're the exact sort of thing I love in a piece of artwork, because they're so simple (not to mention beautiful to look at! I think the airplane over the blue stripy fabric has to be my favourite, the way it hangs in the gallery is just breathtaking.) I've filled a couple of pages in my textiles sketchbook for college about how I could incorporate his style into my final pieces, and I will definitely be taking a trip to Ikea soon to collect some fabric ideas.

WORKSPACES

Before continuing with this blog post, I think it would be a good time to say: NEVER WORK LIKE I DO. Impractical, messy and chaos would be a good way to describe it - in our house it's kind of like, find a surface and claim it as your own before someone else does, and I tend to claim quite a lot of them. (And as a result spend alot of time then clearing it up and moving it all to another surface in my own room!) My bed is my favourite place to work, so I bought myself a laptop holder to keep it up on a level so I can watch TV and google, I keep alot of work tucked inside folders and books, and the lovely box you can see infront of me was a present from my Grandma for christmas - I've never seen anything like it, but it's wooden with little goldfish carved into it and I love it! - which I keep basic materials in that I can just grab for when I need them - Scissors, Glue, Selotape and fineliners and pencils.

YOU DONT LOVE ME

Also, THIS. Absolute perfection, and a really good song!

UPDATE

Seeing as I'm having so much trouble with the whole job thing, volunteering is taking a precedence right now. And rather brilliantly, it's paid off! That's just my little bit of news for now, I am currently an art free zone (*sniff*) thanks to the fact it's nearly half term and most of my class is away on a school trip, which is all a bit sad. To cheer myself up I've been working on my arts award, and I think I might head into town this afternoon to buy some sheets for my Portfolio (scary stuff, I shall be planning it A LOT before I sit down to do it), but I'm really having 2 fairly boring weeks. This is all that's been keeping me sane:

NEW

I am basically, a complete idiot. I've had my Canon for about 2 years now, but stuck mainly to using it on automatic settings because I thought 'ugh, can't be bothered working out all these times and apertures and stuff' (I have learnt them, but it's kinda like learning times tables - annoying, and time consuming). BUT THEN SUDDENLY SOMETHING AMAZING HAPPENED. Realised there was a light metre inside the viewfinder. It was a bit of a, 'I could slap myself right now' moment, but there we go, I have a newfound love for my poor camera.

COLLECTING

So, I don't know if you can tell, but I've been getting a little bit leaflet-happy. I am a compulsive leaflet collector, so yesterdays IYP session was definitely my idea of fun. Think, copies of every leaflet from every single gallery I've visited over the past year, lots of photographs and even some artwork I'd thought I'd lost. There was that much of it that the folder I was carrying it home in sort of snapped when I put it down on the seat next to me on the train. It's all in preparation for my Arts Award, which I'm fairly excited about - and need to put alot of time towards putting it together. That's my wednesdays off sorted out then for the next few months!

FOOD FOR THOUGHT

I think this is possibly a slight 'too much free time' thing, but it is partly relevant. For me, now's the time when I'm really having to think about where I want to take the next stage of my life to, and it is really, really difficult. I haven't had to make the GCSE to A-Level kind of decision my friends have, and the majority of them have probably almost decided or definitely decided on what they want to study at Uni. I have no, idea, at all (although, obviously it'll be art related).

PHOTOGRAPHY

Well, ta da! These, are my first ever photographic prints. We went down to the park by college last week and took these photos on the play equipment - we were out there for hours, so much fun! It's a really difficult process, and incredibly headache inducing but so worth it for the results - these beauties have been edited, but they still looked lovely before, just not exposed quite as well!