Edinburgh Reef & a wee update

After way too long I am actually posting it here: the Edinburgh Reef site which is part of my degree show is live. And actually has been live since 13th of May! You can admire there some illustrations, the story of Rufus and Henry Pearce and other miscellaneous things!

Apart from that there have been some gentle visual amendments to my portfolio and the actual contents of it have changed. Next step: Eelcat update!

The post of April

I am very stressed.

I thought that you little humans would love to see what I am up to in those dreadful times. Well, here it is:



The story of Rufus and Henry Pearce. Not yet complete. Hopefully will be soon! Will come complete with a whole website dedicated to them two.

humpback and killer

I felt I really needed to post something, so here it is. Most of my life has been focused around my last - now less than - 2 months of college. (In theory, this is when the Final Hand In is :)). Past couple of weeks were mainly dissertation focused, and I am frankly just a bit fed up with it all. So as a treat to everyone, these are further two pages of the Drawing Journal - and there are PLENTY more, so I might start posting them more frequently again. I can't wait for when all the stress is over and I can spend more time having a web presence...

untitled collaboration

These are effects of collaboration with Lindsay Ure. This is the text and illustration I did for the said text, you can see the other one here.

You think about them while sitting in the sun. The tip of your cigarette throbs orange between the grey of the growing ash as you inhale, sitting at a café, sipping your latte. The noises around you are muted, quiet trams and foot traffic. A bell mounted on a bike handle chimes, cautioning. Wind pushes itself through the streets. The morning light reflects off the canal in front of you. It darts across the rippled water among swimming mallards and sinking leisure boats, shining up to the buildings pulled forward by the weight of their many windows. The water sparkles as if covered with coins.

They are tall navy coloured houses with decorative white trim, lining the canals, leaning into one another like narrow books stacked loosley on shelves. You wonder how to describe them; their endearing unevenness, their lines attempting the elusive right angles. How can you illustrate their pultritude? As European as empty wine bottles, as crisp as tailored suits, as romantic as tulips in basketed bikes...Bricked rivers flow under, beside, in front. An arced bridge is a conversation between them. You sip your latte. They are exquisitly handsome yet oddly familiar, their grace stands unaffected. They remind you of prostitutes tied upright to benches to sleep, but that reference does not do them justice; their beautiful dysfunction is too charming. Next you try to imagine them as windmills tipped into one another, but then ask yourself what would happen to the overlapping blades; Victorian dollies on display; fat crows on telephone wires; crooked teeth in fat women’s mouths; illustrations in a graphic novel about the life of Vermeer. You decide that none of these work, you need to be more economical in your phrasing. ‘They lean’, you say to yourself.

Long time, no see!

Christmas had me very busy, so did New Year... I am mainly focusing on my college project at the moment. I got this idea that it would be so nice to animate some things, but I never did flash before. It seems to be quite easy to leart though. Here is my test animation, which only consists of few of my sketchbook drawings put into one!

Out of the Blue Arts Market!

Yesterday I shared a stall at Out of the Blue Arts Market with Claire Macleod. It was really good fun, as she's a lovely lady and it was just generally quite a successful day! Will afford to get a Christmas present for the boyfriend ;)

I said goodbye (among other things) to two paintings. One was the Wolf Hat and other one I haven't published here yet, so there it is:

Future is Now

My current project at college is about what we think we will do in future... I will have a (rein)deer farm. Obviously.

(Acrylic paint and inks on card)

The Hub

One of he most characteristic buildings around. You can see it from the illustration studio at college, and last year I had the pleasure of working in there :) First one of the more properly "underwatery" buildings. More is yet to come!

Today is going to consist of doing some college work (this is the "plan" for pretty much every day, whether it goes according to it or not is an entirely different matter) and doing fun things in the afternoon with Riennahera.

Yellow + Sea

These are two of my favourite so far pictures of buildings. I played a lot with them both and they are the sor of thing that I would quite like to do later on - not necessarily for this project, but surely at some point.

I am finally feeling a bit more settled in my new job too (shoe shop! Mondays and Wednesdays, quite perfect even in last year of your course). And for Halloween we watched (with Mr C) Zombieland, which was quite disappointing after all. Either more guts spilled out or more funny things would have been good... But generally it was so-so. Popcorn we made was pretty good though ;)

Drawing Journal

It's all about paint mark and line.

Drawing journal is current college project. It is meant to be researchy-connected to our main project for the year. I decided to just do a series of drawings that will be connected with my main project by a theme, and also use it as a field for researching and working out the way I will draw/paint the final illustrations in. Some of those drawings I like quite a lot, so I decided to put them up here :) It is all drawn in a little journal book which I made specifically for this purpose - it has days of the month marked on each page. Some of the drawings in it are just on one side, others are on both - but since it is a book, there will be a line dividing it in the middle. For the first time this doesn't bother me :)

Jam, baby!

I am thouroughly regretting not making any jams this year. Although last years delicious strawberry-rhubarb was a bit of a failure, as it never sealed properly (so I had to have lots of strawberry rhubarb jam within 3 weeks, which was best before time suggested by my jam master - granny J).

Instead I painted some... I really like the colour scheme in this one.

Wolf Hat & some website talk

Ohhh, he's angry!!! I wish I could be where he is. And have the hat.

I am really struggling for good walk areas near where I live. The closest thing is the Canal, and you can have really pleasant walks along there. I need proper FOREST though. One you can go in and get a bit lost. Back home there were loads of forests you could go into, finding old cementeries and walking surrounded by trees for hours! In Edinburgh - the local places are nice, but they all seem pretty busy. Pentland hills are great too (got lost there quite a few times, hihi), but then they are a bus drive away... The world seems to be against me today.

On the less interesting note, I am planning on changing a few things on the website, menus, portfolio bit etc... And I spent about 5 hours today messing with code, preparing it for the changes and there is actually almost nothing noticeable about it, apart from the portfolio bit which might seem a bit bare/cluttered now (to be changed soon). At least the actual changes will be now well easy to make... Once I get round to do them.

Autumn Cat

I don't really now what to say about it - the weather outside is miserable yet again (the benefits of living in Edinburgh), there isn't many trees around where I live that would look this pretty... I just felt like doing some autumny themed things and cats are cute. What more would one need?!

Acrylic on card, my favourite medium I suppose ;)

Also on Etsy.

Pink Bulb

Painted this last year. Acrylics on card, framed. The frame also hand painted :)

No background story for this one, really. Just been plaing with layers and colours (the flowers on Bulb's outfit).

It's not in my usual style. And all the pink is actually neon pink. Pretty cool, eh? ;)

Here on Etsy.

Mariella of the Forests

Came across this recentely.

Over a year ago I started writing this very complex fantasy story with a lot of separate plots that would eventually come together with a big BANG and... Thats roughly where it ended, in planning stages. In my great A4 hardbound sketchbook. I have a few designs of characters that were meant to go in it, some plot bits and bobs written down, but generally the whole story went 'on hold' because I decided to focus on Eelcat for the time being. And then... I looked at the sketchbook few weeks ago and really want to work on it again! Although I doubt much will come out anytime soon, as a warm up - here's Mariella, the girl that talks to dead people or something along those lines.

It's black and white acrylic paint, some arty pens and pink eyeshadow. Oh yeah!

(the study of medium it was done in suggests that it was in fact done about 1,5-2 years ago :P)

Rainy Royal Mile

It's pretty miserable in Edinburgh today. Raining and all that, just makes me want to snuggle up on sofa with a cup of tea and read Moomin books. (Which sadly, I don't really have time to do).

This is a painting from a cuople of weeks ago, posting today because it fits the dreadful weather...

I am very sad to report that unfortunately, St Giles Cathedral in Edinburgh has drowned in a fishtank.

My second attempt ever of painting architecture (the first one was funnily enough the very ame part of the very same building).

Trying to catch up with July posts ;)

Dill

It's a painting I promised my cousin a looong time ago. I in fact already painted one, but I hated it as soon as it was finished, so decided to do a new one. It probably will be the only post of July... Unless I manage to do something else too.


:)

feature!

My work has been featured on Edinburgh Theatre Review site! Here it is, so that the post doesn't look empty:


It was a result of a collaboration between ECA illustration and University of East Anglia. More info about the project and other people's works here.

This picture was based on a photo I got from the tutor. It was meant to be environment of person depicted in th ephotograph - which was a cyclist. I couldn't come up with anything complicated and I believe that was for the good - as in this case the simple idea worked pretty well. Technique is acrylic paint, some ink and a little bit of colour made with eyeshadows. Pretty girly!

I have been declining this blog and a lot of other creative activity due to my current day job - which thankfully is just for the summer. I promise this will get better!

3x3 part three

Last one - part three. Only two pages...