What a crock

Without being too melodramatic, this week has been the worst ever.

Well for me anyway. We have this project where we're to draw strangers, or half-strangers and develop their characters through drawing them in different contexts, like them at home (or how we might imagine their home to be). It's soooo hard I'm really tearing my hair out with it. I've made my life difficult by choosing a guy with facial hair and glasses, neither of which it turns out I can draw any better than a child could! So I'm pretty stuffed. 

If anybody fancies doing it for me and me taking all the credit in class on Tuesday please step forward... otherwise have a good weekend :)

Piet Grobler

The South African illustrator gave a talk about his work at uni a couple of days ago and I've just been looking at his work online. During the talk he showed us a video I think he said his brother helped him make of his book Het vogeltjies ABC  (Little bird's ABC) and it was so funny and charming! Piet uses inks and watercolours to get a beautiful lightness in his work, just perfect for the children's books he makes. Here is a tiny snippet for you to enjoy, there seemed to be a bit of theme of farting, pooping and burping birds, so it wasn't too cutesy!

Freaky Friday...or Wednesday.

Ta-da! This is the finished poster for my freakshow project at uni. It's A1 in size and the various components had to be printed separately (which involved coating and exposing the screen twice as it wasn't big enough to squeeze everything onto). I was initially a little furious about this, as it's just so much more work but it meant that I wasn't having to squeegee into any pokey corners of the screen, or be limited by not having enough room for the "puddle" where the ink sits two or three inches from the design. 

Using one of those gun-style jetwashers to clean the emulsion off the screen was a bit scary as it feels so powerful it could quite easily rip the mesh off the frame, but luckily all went to plan. I'm quite chuffed as I think I could happily do screen printing unaided now, so perhaps you shall see some in my etsy shop soon...

Weighing on my mind

Happy belated Valentines Day everyone! I thought this rather gorgeous set of vintage scales (found at a car boot sale recently) was the exact red that I would try and use for a set of cards if I'd got round to making any. The photo will have to suffice I'm afraid.

On a slightly strange note, I keep waking myself up in he middle of the night thinking about printing, or actually saying things out loud and waking the boyfriend up! It's quite mad, the night before last I sat bolt upright and (hands turned skywards) said "What do I have to do?". I can only ever vaguely remember what I was dreaming about by the following morning when this sort of thing happens but this time I knew it was about the technicalities of screen printing. Seriously, I'm obsessed. I think the sooner this circus poster project is over the better, it's starting to affect my health...

Makey makey

I am officially knackered. I've spent 5 solid hours screen printing today!

I'm making this circus/freakshow poster and its A1, believe me, not an easy size to handle, and consists of 4 colours, one of which is now printed. I simply do not know where the time to do the other three will come from from before 10am Tuesday...we shall see.

Anyway, how yummy are the inks and medium that you have to mix up to print with? 

Answer, very.

My Old China

This was the finished set of book pages for my cockney rhyming slang project about the expression "My old china plate" meaning of course "Mate". I really enjoyed the limited palette of the 50's feel I was going for, and looking into geometric designs and how european travel was becoming fashionable especially in the deigns by Hugh Casson for Midwinter. Yes, the pottery geek within well and truly took over, which was great! Designing it to look like a crockery catalogue for a department store had its own charm too, I even made a hardback version and stuck red tape on it saying "STORE COPY - DO NOT REMOVE", which made me giggle.

Apologies to Francesca for totally accidentally ripping off her bowls print on the front cover of the book. By the time I realised why it seemed so comfortable and familiar-looking it was too late to change. I hope she's flattered...I think it looks great!

Last week

I spent a lot of time cutting letters out with a scalpel to make this A1 original for me to screenprint this week. We'd been given a brief to come up with a sideshow attraction and devise an eye-catching poster to publicise it. I went for the typography-based option (although there will be two six-fingered hands at the top of the poster and twelve yo-yos at the bottom) and really enjoyed all the fiddly cutting out. I'll print it in colour and show you how it works out...

Kind words

Nina van de Goor over at ninainvorm makes the most beautiful ceramics, decorated with her own ceramic transfers, and yesterday she was kind enough to mention my work on her blog. She's got a really great eye for colour and design and her etsy shop is definitely worth a look. Thanks Nina!

Ice Ice Baby

I wonder how many people have blogged today with that title?

Anyway, one word.... SNOW DAY!!! 

Ok, that was two but you catch my drift (Hehe drift, geddit? Snow drift?) Uni was shut this afternoon is what I'm trying to say.

I'm now on a bit of a high as I like snow and my workroom and bedroom have the best big velux windows looking out onto neighbours gardens and rooftops, which are covered in snow. It only occurred to me that I never really noticed the shapes of roofs but when they're covered in the cold stuff they become really really exciting. 

I like seeing which houses have good or bad insulation and where heat escapes from the house and melts some areas quicker than others. Also I guess they are always the last places to have snow as nobody tramples across them. It's nice to have time to ponder these things instead of sitting in seminars! Ah well, I'll be back to it tomorrow...