2014 in review

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2014 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

A San Francisco cable car holds 60 people. This blog was viewed about 300 times in 2014. If it were a cable car, it would take about 5 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.

Christmas zine page

Idea I did for a collab zine and a tried and tested recipe for Christmas. Sadly the design didn’t go through, as last minute the zine was to be printed b&w and the colours didn’t work in contrast to its monochrome counterpart. Also when I produced this piece last month, my photoshop skills were a little rusty and compositionally it doesn’t quite work – but I like it anyway, my lost page.

Individual Xmas cards

Bespoke individual Xmas cards, a different design; colours varying and application of medium. A painted window attached to a pre-cut Christmas tree stencil card. Hopefully appealing to different preferences! I first made these cards for my friends, now I have made more for the Christmas stall today.

Pretty gift tags

More crafty bits and bobs for the Christmas stall. I had some stencils spare from the card making and spray painted some fade-y, pretty designs. Six out of seven came out well, without oily residue on underside. Not all perfect, but I’m happy with the results.

Xmas earrings

Making earrings to sell at Christmas stall. First time making! Shapes made from super sculpey oven bake clay, painted with acrylic, some then spray painted for the varnish affect (but taking a long time to dry!) Made stars, holly and cat stud earrings – shamelessly advertising myself inside the little organza bag! Got a few more things to produce, ready for the stall in about four hours.

Pug Parcels

 

A quick little photoshop sketch I did for a friend. It’s not the textural kind of work I normally do, but it portrays the humour I wanted to show – the pug pilot slumped, and laying on the aeroplane as it makes its way across the sky. It’s cute and funny and she loved it. And there’s the original sketch of the derpy pug.

Paint merge

I made a thing! More painterly, splodgey randomness!

It was getting a bit off putting that I still hadn’t got those 5 canvases done, so with a little push from my tutor Kath; I decided to go with it and create a a simple piece from merging paint. Its a bit random; out there in connection with my current work, but the colours are right. The technique however could be useful and reminds me of an artist I came across whilst on tumblr, but it was used with a very controlled detailed piece. With this one I can potentially psd it and create the scene I want using it as a backing.

The subject matter of the painting itself is nothing specific, I began by merging the blue tones with the white using the pallete knife and rolling the paint into the darker colours. But at the original angle of the painting I see figures, shapes or animals surrounded by a darkened wood. Upside down you see more of the green on the forest and the groves the palette knife created,  make the roots visible. Whereas the blue in the darkness is suggestive of a night’s sky and there’s a man’s face. Or it’s just a pretty stained glass window interpretation. Either way the quickness of this piece reminded me of how much time I don’t need to spend in this project, and I should be using it as a means to stoke the fire of creativity.

Wave woman fin

I finally finished it, not entirely happy – but are any of us really? – May have rushed it towards the end and just applied painterly stuff carelessly, but I couldn’t stand looking at the unfinished painting when I have plenty more to be getting on with.
Orientated as a spontaneous, spur of the moment lets chuck some paint on (mostly painted with a palette knife) canvas and roll with it. It’s another little stepping stone on one of my side projects. And perhaps it’ll develop my painterly side by getting me out of my comfort zone – bizarre paintings! – or distract me from the real work ahead.