Season Greetings

Its drawing nearer and nearer  to Christmas every day. Luckily I am ready with only a few gifts to wrap.

With the Christmas spirit in full flow with Christmas songs on every radio and in every shop I visit. I can't help but feel in the Christmas spirit.

So I thought I would do some quick designs of Christmas cards I may develop for a future show. I particularly like the card I have shown as it interprets my style in a different way. However I am unsure about the text, but thought I would try this as an example.
I would love some feed back if anyone would like to leave a comment.


I will continue to do designs now and may have a nice collection of new cards for the New year. 

For now I will wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

My last few months

The last few months of my life have been so crazy. Work has given new me targets to achieve which I'm finding difficult, but I will rise to challenge. I do find I'm quite exhausted from work. It has been physically and mentally tiring trying to think of new ways to recruit people. Me and k also went our separate ways, but things couldn't be better.

I had a great birthday with some new friends and my new man. My friends wedding that I was preparing for was an amazing day and couldn't be happier for her. Also many close friends are having babies or have had a baby.

I'm looking forward to the New Year now and hope to focus on my artwork more often.

The Gromit's begin

It's been a week now since the Bristol Gromits have landed in my home town. And I have been so excited to see them but have had no time to find them.

I have seen a few on my trips around Bristol and have particularly liked the Egyptian gromit in the Bristol museum. It fits in well to the Egyptian exhibition they have in the gallery at the moment.

I still think about my gromit and where he would have been displayed. Possibly somewhere colourful area with a jungle theme around it. He would have fit well with his Mayan design, and hopefully made people excited by it, as well as making them think.

This weekend I spent alot of time with K, going to a birthday party and walks around a lake. This was great, as there was so many things to see that inspired me. The animals, the high wild grass and the seed pods for all the amazing flowers. It just made me want to draw right there and then. I think the beautiful sunshine and great company helped alot as well. K has always been a great help inspiring me, and I thank him for it.

I will now look out for even more competitions and commissions for my art, as it be waste to not use this burst of inspiration.

Preparing for a friends wedding

Over the past year I have been doing little bits towards preparing for a friends wedding. I been helping her by making the name placement souvenirs and now looking at the hen night. My friend is an amazing person and very family orientated, which had made me think of many different ways to celebrate, than the traditional way.

I've been looking forward to being a bridesmaid and the day it's self, it all sounds amazing. The colour theme is both the bride and grooms favourite colours with a little compromise, with the decoration based on birds.

My dress is so beautiful. It's inspired by a 50's style dress and a great blue that luckly goes well with my skin tone. The bride's mum has made all the dresses for the wedding which has made me think about doing some dress making myself. But I might need to get the nick of it again as I haven't used a sewing for about 7 years.

Designing for friends

Its been too long since I last pick up my pens and started a design. In the last few months I have been so busy and I found myself completely uninspired.

Its only since my friends asked me to do some tattoo designs that I have had the itch to draw again.
I now find myself doodling little patterns on post its at work, and even carry my sketchbook and pens everywhere.

It has felt good getting back to my designs and have now started different styles to my original pieces.
My plan now is to build a portfolio of my designs and hopefully collect enough funds to start my ceramics again.

I do admit I miss the feeling of clay, and making glaze to spray onto my vessels. The anticipation of waiting for the results of each stage was a great feeling especially when they turned out better than I expected.

My Lastest competition venture

 

In the last few months I have been frantically rushing around in my job, but have also still been looking at competitions to enter. In December I stumbled upon the Gromit competition for the Grand appeal charity. I was so excited to see this competition as the charity is one close to my heart and I love Aardman animations especially Wallace and Gromit. So I applied to have my designs on a Bristol Gromit that would have been displayed around the city.

It would have been one of seventy creations, that will be displayed around Bristol this summer and would have been bigger than me. So it would have been interesting to decorate. However sadly I was unsuccessful with my design that I have shown above. 

I called it 'New Year' and it was based on the Mayan calender. I was inspired about the recent events that were happening and thought about how I could make a positive twist on it. So I wanted to show Gromit in a style of a Mayan warrior to symbolise the Aztecs but named the design 'New year' because it was the end of their calender and the start of a new year.

In neck dress and even the war paint I wanted to add as much pattern as I could, which would have made the piece very intricate for me and a lot of hard work as well, but I think the finished result would have looked very impressive. I was unsure whether i wanted to keep the design black and white if I wanted to add colours like red, blue, yellow and greens. These would have been similar colours that we see on Aztec pieces such as their wall art.

Although I did not get the opportunity this year to decorate a wild art figure I will hopefully try again next year. But for now I will look forward to seeing the amazing designs that will be on the Bristol Gromit's, and continue looking for more competitions.

What do you guys think? any comments would be gratefully received.