Chrismas presents :)

Some of the gifts I made for my grandparents this year. My Nanna died in March and my Granddad a few years back so these were important to me and I know they will mean so much to my Grandma and Grandpa. Both are photo size 6"x4" and took about 2 hours each.

Originals

The original photos provided for commissions.
As the dog was awkwardly cropped I had to improvise to give it entire ears...
As with the couple... I was asked to bring them closer together and perspectively reduce his size for the drawing !!

Commission No. 2

Another commission got from word of mouth... this is 10" x 12" and took about 5 hours.

Commission No.1

The first of a few commissions for Christmas in stages.
This one is 8"x10" and took just over 3 hours.

Salty cornflakes !!!!

Totally unrelated to my art... today at the hospital where I work, I watched a woman describing every single image on a stack of christmas cards to a newly blind woman. She read out every message and then listened while the old woman explained who they were and told stories about her family and friends. It broke my heart to see the woman unable to read these herself but had my faith restored with this womans kindness... felt a bit of a twat when I started crying whilst serving cornflakes, mind.

I know I moan about my job a lot, but at least I'm on the more fortunate side of the hospital bed.

I've taken so much from that place and the people and for that I am grateful.

Perhaps this isn't so unrelated... as my views change, I guess my work will too.

'Maid in Hull'

For a maritime brief for local whaling industry exhibition at local art gallery... idea that the crew on board would be slowly going mad as they are out at sea for so long... my initial idea was to create a log book with fantasy elements transforming out of them... a mermaid, whale, unicorn etc. This switched to a mermaid with the text included in itself instead... "Where has my mind gone? I hear the mermaids singing each to each... I do not think that they will sing to me"...from a poem by T. S. Elliot. I chose papercut which I think has kept a classy look to it, though I did have to cut any bits out that had blood from my fingers on it!! Just need to find some driftwood or something to display it upon before they come to chose the work they will display next year. Overall, pretty chuffed with it. Here's a few different stages of it's development.

Initial sketch

About day 3...

Day 4...

Day 5...

No more scales :D :D

The finished thing :)

'Maid in Hull'

(Can't take credit for this corny title... cheers Mark!!)

Fundraiser success !!

Last nights fundraiser at 'Lamp' was a fantastic success !! We sold most of the masks and a load of badges, bags etc and the live art went great, selling I think all of the pieces in auction :D

Everyone had a great time and on top of raising a lot of money (over £600!!), we also got people interested in our course and what we had to offer... meeting a lot of the new first years for the first time too, hopefully inspiring them to really push themselves when they get to this stage.

I managed to neck an impressive amount of shots in a catch up after I'd finished the live art... We all worked really well together despite not knowing what on earth we were doing!! Well done everyone and thanks to everyone that came :)

More postcards...

Fundraiser

Masks as raffle tickets for the fundraiser on Monday :D


Bags with labels and badge for sale... also available: grey on red, white on black, orange on natural :) made 19 so far... hope I sell... one at least!!

Wall of postcards :D

VERY happy with this so far... but I want MORE MORE MORE !!

Self promotional shizzle my dizzle...

Series of bird self promotional products... business cards (cut out by hand!!), screen print bags and plastic keyrings. Will be trying to sell them at the fundraiser... I chose the bird as it's aesthetically pleasing to the eye... and has also been adopted as my 'logo' if you will... sometimes the bird is caged, sometimes it is free... there is a metaphor here, but we won't go into it all now.

More postcards...

Bake sale :D

The happy little workers :)

Signs say: 'Please buy our yummy cakes!'




Ok so the fundraising begins... Chester's mum kindly baked over 400 buns, cakes and biscuits (I baked 21 ginger bread men :))and we sold them ALL!! We raised an amazing £150... slightly due to our rather aggressive approach of cornering people and forcing buns down them, then demanding they pay for the stock they had devoured. So well done to all the workers and thanks again to Chester's mum :D



I used the excuse that I was making 'multi-racial' ginger bread men... when in fact I left them in a bit too long and they ended up slightly darker than intended... and a little crisper...