'Sup?

I have been the busiest of all busy things for the past couple of weeks, but here's a sneaky peak of part of one of the projects I'm working on now:

What's New, Pussycat?

I got this Fisheye camera for my birthday, and last Thursday I took it for a spin.

Now, I was a bit of a doofus and didn't get the wind-on mechanism to work properly, so only five photos came out, but out of those five, these three are my favourites.

After the ease of my digital camera, it was odd trying to get back to grips with actual film that needs winding on, and, of course, you need to remember to take the lens cap off (like I would forget, right? ....)

But I think I have it sorted now. I took some more over the weekend which are being developed as we speak, so come Friday I can see how my second experiment turned out.

Er...hello?

Anyone there?

Well, has it been a hectic couple of weeks or what?

I have:

Started a new project

Left my horrible part time job

Got another, much nicer, part time job, which I start on Thursday.

Had my birthday and got lots of lovely presents from my wonderful and generous friends and family.

Bought too much stuff in Ikea (again).

Tried to have a week off, but only really managed three days.

Got a new haircut and colour (see photo on top right)

Become obsessed with the idea of making aprons.

Developed an mid-afternoon baking habit.

Basically, my whole time at the moment is taken up with my new illustration job, a sneaky peak below. That will be finished next week, so hopefully I will have a bit more time to myself to develop some personal work and FINALLY get the rest of my flat painted. Oh, and make some aprons, obv.

This week has been pretty good.

My postcards arrived from Vistaprint on Tuesday, only taking eight days from uploading them to receiving them. Excellent. Will be sending them out ASAP, maybe in a couple of waves.

My family also came to see me on Tuesday, and we had a great time hanging out, wetting myself with laughter at my crazy sisters and eating ice cream.

I've been knitting A LOT, and can't seem to drag myself away from my WIPs.

I could possibly have another illustration job in the offing, just got to wait for the contract.

I went to Stitch n Bitch on Wednesday, hung out with the lovely ladies, and then Steph and I went for dinner at Gourmet Burger Kitchen, where I had my traditional chicken, camembert and cranberry burger washed down with a banana milkshake. Yum.

I uploaded some repackaged badge sets to my etsy shop (pics on the right) and opened a new shop at Folksy, where I've put up a couple of monsters and a few button bracelets.

I cleared out my wardrobe and took a whole load of stuff to Oxfam.

And then promptly went and spent too much in Primark on three tops and a lovely new purple autumn coat.

I also bought this mug, which rocks, by the way:

Here I am, coming to my own blog everyday to check the links on the right hand side to other peoples' blogs, and yet not realising I need to update my own.

The rockets and other space-related doodles in the post below were ideas for my new promo postcard. The ones here are extensions of those, leading on to the final idea at the bottom here which I finished on Monday and got sent off to lovely Vistaprint the same day. Get me all organised, like. Hopefully they will be with me by next weekend, so I can spend a few lazy hours inside my shady lounge and not outside in the blistering sun, writing out the addresses ready to send.















I have to say I'm pretty pleased with the finished result. I think I'll do one or two more cards for a later mailout, maybe with an octopussy/sea theme...





There's a lot of talk about the "right time" to send out a mailout, but the simple truth is you never know. Many people say summer isn't a good time as Art Directors are away from their desks, but there's always someone checking the post. An entire publishing house doesn't shut down just because one AD has gone to Barcelona for a long weekend. Besides, the person who does see your card may like it better than the one it was intended for. As with everything in publishing - or, indeed, any profession whatsoever - if you don't try you'll never know.

Sketchbook Rockets

Haulage Part II

Isn't it great when the postman brings you all sorts of nice things?

First of all, new rentals from LoveFilm to keep me entertained in the evenings, new DPNs from Angelyarns (always excellent, speedy service) and a fabulous King Cole sample card that the lovely people at Texere Yarns sent me free of charge. They are great.




Then three prints I ordered a couple of weeks ago using funds from my PayPal account after selling off four of my eight sets of Monopoly on ebay:









Yes, that red really is that red! They are by Sasha Barr of The New Year. I saw some of her work two years ago at the Sub Screen Sonic poster exhibition in Brighton, and, coming across the catalogue for it again recently, looked up her website and couldn't help spending a few pennies on some her work. I'm going to get some frames for them and then add them to my rapidly-growing screenprint collection. Fab.

Joe

Today I've been experimenting. I'm not entirely sure what I've discovered, or how useful it's going to be, but I've had fun, anyway.

Last year I started on a calendar project that had to be done in two sections: the cover and one page before Christmas, and the remaining 11 pages after Christmas. I started off painting it all rather traditionally, but then started on the Cornish project in the middle, and discovered a whole new way of drawing out my characters, ie with a dip-pen. Of course, I then cursed the way I had started drawing out the calendar project, but, having already done the first part, had to continue in that same style for the rest of it.

So, what I suppose I am doing here is trying to come up with a way of drawing my characters with the dip-pen like in the Cornish project, and then finding an interesting way of putting together an image that isn't necessarily all painted by hand.



(The singular image at the top didn't come up in the mosaic, for some reason. It should be bottom left. Tsk.)

In the top left image is the original character of Joe I painted last year, and the rest are today's experiments with line, colour and texture. I put everything together in PhotoShop, with scanned textures and the watercolour sections.

I'm REALLY liking the orange versions. Reminds me of 60s kids' illustrations. Maybe these could be good as screenprints? Particularly with the use of only two colours.

So, I think my next step is to take this approach and try a whole illustration with it. My portfolio is full of characters on white backgrounds, so I definitely need to come up with a way of making an interesting background that isn't just white! Maybe if the characters are drawn in the fairly heavy ink, then the background could be outline-less?

Hmmmmm........

Haul!

I went to the lovely Steph's house on Sunday, and, due to her pre-move de-clutter, went away with this amazing haul o'knitting:



The old tin (I love tins, especially old ones) contains an assortment of buttons (I LOVE buttons). Steph found them high up on an almost unreachable shelf in the first flat she ever lived in by herself, and now she has passed them on to me. I will love them like they were my very own.

She also tagged me, like, a million years ago (well, back in May, anyway) to write a Five Things About Me thing, which I must get round to doing. Apologies for my general lateness.

A new religion that'll bring you to your knees ...

... Red Velvet, if you please.

In the past week curtains have been made, walls have been painted, and lots of cake has been consumed.

It's quite surprising, really, as I had my usual Post-Doctor-Who-Season-Finale
-Funk last Sunday (*sigh*, I love that man), but it seemed to have disappeared by Monday morning just in time for me to take a trip to Ikea and spend WAY too much. Mucho moolah might have been parted with, but it has made my gaff a nicer, more comfy place to be. (That's my justification and I'm sticking to it.)

Not only have I been banging away on the old sewing machine, but on Saturday New Boyfriend and I made Red Velvet cupcakes. Now, the whole concept of RV cake is a fairly new one to me. I think I only came across it in Jan/Feb this year, and was immediately taken with the idea. Gawd bless those crazy Americans. So, much trawling of recipes later (I love the internet) I came across a couple that sounded easy enough (if a bit scary on the amount of food colouring involved) and whipped up a (humungous) batch.

Here is the recipe I used, which is a bit of a mix between two different ones I found:

250g plain flour
2 tblsp cocoa (Green and Blacks all the way, baby)
100g softened butter
300g caster sugar
2 large eggs
250ml buttermilk (or, plain milk with a teaspoon of vinegar added and left to stand for 10 minutes)
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp white distilled vinegar
1 tsp salt
1 whole bottle of red food colouring (about 80ml)

Cream butter and sugar; add eggs one at a time, beating well in between; sift flour, cocoa, baking powder, bicarb and salt into a large bowl; whisk milk, vinegar, vanilla and colouring together in another bowl, add wet ingredients to dry in stages, beating well in between; divide into cupcakes papers (don't over fill, they rise A LOT) and bake at 180c/350f for about 20 mins. Et voila, beautiful dark, red cake. Makes about 30 small cupcakes.

Leave to cool, then ice with:

100g softened cream cheese
100g softened butter
600g (eek!) icing sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract

All creamed together well. You can add more or less icing sugar according to taste. Top with a cherry, Minstrel or whatever you fancy.

We didn't add the whole bottle of food colouring, but I think I will next time. Even though the batter is SCARILY red, like someone has been murdered in your best china bowl, because of the lovely, dark Green and Blacks cocoa, they come out lushiously dark. I'd also try baking them in larger cake cases, more on the muffin-sized side of things.

But, most importantly, they are DELISH.

The Past Week in Pictures

Finally, I have decent internet....

...and can post properly.

So I'm finally in my own place, and loving living by myself.

I've been having a tidy-up-and-sort-it-all-out-and-then-get-creative day. I've been organising my workspace so it's nice and tidy and the chi generally flows a little better. I even got around to putting up my collection of inspirational/cool/interesting pieces I've collected over the years:





And, of course, once you have a decent working space you have to Christen it, so I whipped up a skirt out of an old pair of jeans. For once, the sewing machine worked first time for me, so it only took about 30 minutes. Fab.



(Notice the scrape on my knee where, on the way to the bank on Monday, I slipped on wet tiles and went down like an elephant on ice skates. Tsk.)

Now, what to do with this fabulous new desk.....

So the stuff I posted yesterday has been taking up my life for the past five months. There's a 2009 family organiser which will be in the shops late this year, and the six books helping to teach the Cornish language which will hopefully be out in the big, wide world at the end of this month.

I've been finding the last week with nothing specific to do - ie no early mornings, no late nights, no frantic scribbling, no constant scanning and emailing - a bit weird. For months I've been dreaming of a bit of time off and now I have some I'm itching for something to do!

But I will have something to do soon enough. References willing, I'm going to be moving into my own place on the 16th. I am SO excited. The move represents so many things for me, but I don't want to talk about them too much now. Things have a nasty habit of going awry as soon as I write them down! Suffice to say, it's going to be really scary, but really cool.

And I promise I will be back here more often now. Maybe not everyday - don't want to go too crazy! - but definitely a few times a week. It'll be really helpful to log all my new and crazy ideas here. Woo!!

This is Some of What I've Been Up To (Yup, still alive)

Look Wot I Did Buy

Yum.

What I Have Been Doing

Seagulls from my sketchbook for my current project:









And just a bit of fun inking and then digitally colouring this one:



I have to admit for someone who is usually anti-sketchbook I've really enjoyed scribbling out these seagulls and really developing the characters. Just being able to stick them down and try things out without it mattering too much has been really helpful. I always find it hard not to overwork things, particularly at the start of a project.

For the final artwork I am inking up the main character in each story with a dip pen - as you can see on the last image - and that's made the line really interesting. The flat digital colour sits really well beside it - they contrast and balance each other nicely. I must have a play with making more simple, dip pen characters with flat, digital fill. It could be a great alternative portfolio. Yay!

My Whole Life is Organised in This Notebook

Woe betide me if I forget it. I need to put it on a cord like kids' mittens to thread through my jumper so it's always there.

Even I was getting bored of constantly visiting my own blog and seeing the same old boring post, so it's been time for a bit of an update and a spring clean. Nice and fresh for the New Year.

Speaking of which, I went for coffee on New Year's Day with a old aquaintance who asked me if I had any New Year's Resolutions. At the time I just umm-ed and ahh-ed and made vague noises to the effect of "Errr, dunno. Get more illustration work?", but actually now I've thought about it, I do have some things I'd like to achieve in the upcoming year.

Work Goals:

1. Work incredibly hard on the Brave Tales project, and really use my four weeks off from the PT job to concentrate on it.

2. From April, send out a promo postcard every six weeks.

3. Update websites, and, funds willing, sign up for another one or two portfolio sites.

4. Re-plan "The Eeries".

House Goals:

Too many! But,

1. Decorate all the remaining rooms.

2. Update the taps etc in the bathroom and re-tile.

3. Lay new floor throughout the downstairs.

4. Lay decking in the garden.

5. Put it up for sale and get loadsa wonga!!!

Knitting/Crafting Goals:

1. Knit something lovely for Erica's upcoming bundle.

2. Learn how to crochet.

3. Make a quilt, even if it's really simple.

4. Make real use of lovely new screen printing kit to make softies for etsy/craft fairs.

Personal Goals:

1. See friends much more, and to stop my internal monologue being such a kill joy, so if someone invites me out I won't think of 100 reasons why I won't enjoy it.

2. Get food issues sorted out.

3. Chill out. Big time.

4. Only take on as many things as I am comfortable with doing at once, and stop beating myself up if other people do things differently - that's them, not me.

5. Bake more.

6. Moisturise.

7. Take more photographs.

8. Blog more. Of course.

Actually, I'm sure that list wasn't that long in my head, but it's good writing it all down. Now it's out there it's real and therefore I have to do something about it.

Right, let's go do something productive!

SOSF Christmas exchange - thanks

Here is my package from the lovely Helen:



Check out the immense* Edward Gorey wrapping paper, and the "sand dollar" - I've never seen one of those before. Apparently, according to t'interwb, they're "echinoderms (a type of invertebrate), spiny-skinned animals that live on the sea floor." Cool.

This fat, red fishy is my favourite; he's carved from wood and hand-painted:



Many, many thanks for my wonderful gift, Helen. I hope you had a wonderful Christmas and New Year.

*apologies for the use of "immense", in this instance meaning "amazing" or "brilliant". I've been hanging around teenagers too long.