MEG

So, when I first saw Meg's blog, I kinda fell in love a bit. Her fashion sense is just plain gorgeous, a vintage dream ~ I am already planning on making myself a flower crown! I was feeling a bit arty, and browsing through blogger and thought hey, it'd be nice to just do a drawing for someone, so here we have it...actually really like this too!

MATISSE

~said painting, really proud of this~

STILL LIFE

I am an absolute mess when it comes to painting like this normally, but today has been ok for me (apart from every single brush turning the white paint gray). This is supposed to be in the style of Kaffe Fasset, which i'm not seeing yet but IT WILL HAPPEN. Last weeks Henri Matisse peice was alot more successful (I'll blog a picture of it seperately). Personal achievement from this was drawing straight onto A1 paper, because me and large scale have never gone together very well - I just can't seem to get the perspective right. Also had a nice little thoughtful moment, about how the 3/4 hours a week I get working on traditional art skills are really nice, and great for improving my 'art confidence'; even though I'm doing an extended diploma, which doesn't sound quite as nice as Art Foundation, I suppose the idea is the same - I'm getting a really well rounded art experience, and learning stuff every day that's useful.

STAYING CREATIVE

Said book for the boyfriend - plus me to slightly! Keeping creative is near impossible sometimes, and the 10 tips to stay creative and that little group of websites really, really help me to stay motivated - I don't always realise quite how much!

TUMBLR 2

Well, another week, another Tumblr post. You can find all these images on my tumblr.

(none of these images are mine, they're just reblogged; you can find who they actually belong to via my tumblr archive)

MUSIC

So, if you're following me on any other website, you've probably seen me ranting about these already. A friend told me a while ago to check out Haim after she saw Florence and the Machine, but I forgot all about it, then suddenly remembered it the other day when on youtube - and instantly fell in love. This came up on their youtube channel, so I checked out the whole album on spotify - and fell in love all over again! This album is just the best thing ever, and I have been listening to it all day, driving everyone mad with it. These are my 3 favourite tracks that I could find on youtube basically, but there are more that are really fab!

PROJECT

Ok, so you know I blogged a few days ago about Discoverables? Well, today I filmed my first video challenge for it! Don't get me wrong, I can talk for England with people I know well, but I get quite nervous public (internet public?!) speaking, so today on my day off, I plucked up the courage to film this! The idea of it's simple - think of a personal or creative goal you've set yourself, and tell the camera 6 reasons you can't do it, then argue back as to why you could do it. The great thing about it? I now feel 10 times more motivated to go out and do it, and little clips like this will look great in my online portfolio, because not only do they give little snippets about what I'm actually like, they (providing I actually pull it off) prove I've got the determination to do what I want to with my life.

TUMBLR 1

Tumblr this week just gone - click the link to my tumblr to see them all properly. Quite like a little post like this - inspiration stuff that makes me feel happy.

ITALY

Also wanted to share these which I'd completely forgotten about  - summer in Florence, Lucca and Venice.

CURIOSITY

I'm really struggling to get a good photo of this without wrecking it - ironically I really need one to stick in my sketchbook so failure on my part. One of our units at college is to make a kind of 'being' using inspiration from loads of artists who make things like dolls and little cute textile pieces. All I could think of to take in was my ever growing collection of origami, So i'm going to sew a 3D origami crane, and wishing stars and make a kind of mobile, which will have images like the ones on the background of this printed onto it. I HOPE. LIKE, REALLY HOPE. (We were told to whitewash/colour wash the backgrounds on these so I'm a bit worried it's wrong but I think it kind of conveys what I want to do? I hope so at least...)

MOVEMENTS

Sculpture/3d notes from this week. Thinking of heading towards Dadaism, because of everything I've come across recently to do with Schwitters.

TODAY

Number 1 .. Illustrations. I am a terrible procrastinator and just general ridiculous person when it comes to putting things off. I'm currently in the middle of starting at a new college..stressful doesn't even cover it, but I WILL START DRAWING AGAIN SOON.

Down to the real reason I'm writing this post - look. at. this. As a 16 (almost 17!) year old, I am finding looking for jobs near impossible. GCSE results and all the arts activities I've taken part in seem to count for nothing unless you come with previous experience, which of course, I and many others have none of. But this, looks like the perfect answer. A new website, called DISCOVERABLES, which enables you to give yourself skills that employers look for.

'Discoverables is built by youth charity Spark+Mettle to enable young people aged 16–24 to translate their capabilities and their life experience into work-readiness. The website allows them to uncover their signature strengths, capabilities and skills, to prove and improve them, and to learn how they can articulate these in ways that are relevant to you and your organisation.

We want to provide a platform that offers young people from diverse backgrounds an opportunity to showcase their strengths and skills and to show you what they are made of.

To discover your next great team member, or future leader, use the search function to find fantastic young people by location, power, interests or skills.'

  (extra plus, the graphics are super cute!)

DAY 2 - CHEESE

Spent all day watching films, waiting to go back to school ~ boredom's taking hold. The picture is from the COS spring/summer magazine-y thing. 

DAY 1 - DANCING BEARS

Went out yesterday and bought myself a brand new A4 sketchbook - the rymans binded ones with elastic around them are basically the perfect moleskine dupe but for way cheaper - only downside is the paper. So my rather late starting new years resolution is going to be, an illustration a day. These little polar bears have been all over the internet, but I took them from the Sunday Times' Magazine - who can really resist a dancing polar bear?