More paper cutting

A few months ago, I posted up an image of my first paper cutting. Do you remember? To tell the truth, I wasn't even sure if I had posted it or not and even had to glance back at my history to see if it was there. But it is and you can read all about it here or just admire the pretty picture of it below!

Well since then, I've now created another paper cut that I made specifically for my grandparent's 50th wedding anniversary. After racking my brains for something special to make them, I decided on the idea of a paper cut as I just love the simple but intricate work you can put into it creating something hopefully quite special.

After drawing out the design and tracing aspects into it here and there, I was ready to start cutting. I really must make more of these cuttings. I'd forgotten even in just a few months how much I enjoyed doing them.

But enough rambling, let me show you some photos. Cue the jingling art gallery music. (I should find away of inserting that into a blog! On second thoughts, maybe not. That jingle can get quite annoying after a while. Never mind, just hum it in your head if you want.)

Obviously all cut out of the same paper, the word 'golden' was a bit hard to see once it was all finished due to a lot of it being on top of the 50. The decision to outline the word in black was a bit of a scary one because if it didn't look right, I would have ruined the whole of the paper cut! Thankfully though, I took the gamble as I knew otherwise the word would be unreadable and it paid off.

For the frame, I went rummaging in a big charity shop that resembles more of a warehouse and found this brightly coloured piece. I thought that the contrast of red with the golden paper would look quite nice and classy. Not only that but it would coincide with my sister's present to them too. She's creating a lovely quilted bed runner in these colours with a twist in that a lot of the patches have writing on them   from the guests at the party. 

Here you can see them receiving the present. They'd better like it I thought, as there was a whole room of people watching this! 

Thankfully though I think they were over the moon with what I had created for them. I love making special presents for people who have no clue of what it might be. The excitement at seeing their reaction was definitely worth the blister that had begun to form on my thumb from holding the craft knife by a long way! 

50 Years! Wowee! Congratulations Nana and Grandad. 

Illustration work!

Thought I'd show you a bit of what I've mostly been up to these past few weeks:

My Dad is currently writing his own book about leadership and has asked me to do some illustrations to go with it.

I'm really enjoying doing this work. It's been interesting working for someone and trying to get the drawing how they pictured it in their heads.

I've also learnt a lot with these drawings so in a way, it's a great sort of preparation for college which starts on the 5 September eepp!!

Above, are just a selection of the work I've been doing for my Dad. So far I've done over ten illustrations for him and the orders are still coming in. The most recent request involves me having to draw an Englishman and a Frenchman together. I'll show you how it turns out once I've drawn it shall I?

We've got a little system set up and everything! What usually happens is Dad's working downstairs and then it's me upstairs at my desk. Occasionally, he'll come up the stairs and hand me a post-it note with the next thing he wants me to draw. I then draw it up on my computer art tablet and then email him it. A reply email of thanks then completes the process. Job done! A slightly odd set up perhaps but it works!  

And no, my Dad isn't paying me to do this. But I have been promised a 10 percent cut of the profits if it ever gets published. 10 percent?? Yeah, I'll have to work on that figure!

Brand new title

Hey guys! You may have noticed that I have a new title for my blog. Hoping you like this. I've actually been wanting to change the title for a while now. I just felt that the old one was a bit obscure and didn't really help to depict what my blog was about. This one I think does a better job. It is me surrounded by the things I love to do with my trusty companion Jenna right by me. In actual fact, she is sleeping in that exact position right now by my feet! As always, it would be nice to hear what you think.

guitar man

I've been meaning to post this for a while now. I got bought this kit a couple of months ago and made it up straight away. It's a cool little dude who now sits on my windowsill poised and ready to play!

I also did a drawing of him. Thought I'd post that too to make this post a little bit more interesting than just watching me turn a handle around in a shaky little film.

The only gripe I have about the kit was that the guitarist is right handed! I couldn't build it the other way either because all the peg holes would have been in the wrong place. Never mind!

Oh, and if you're wondering what the noise is in the backround of the vidoeo, it's Jenna chewing her basket!

Working on the drawing skills

As the title says, I've been busy doing a fair amount of drawing lately.

My theory is that by drawing often (trying to do once every couple of days) I will be bound to improve in someway. It seems a logical way of thinking to me because you're not going to get good at something by not really practising it are you?!

If nothing else, drawing regularly will build up my confidence in the hobby.

But most of all, I'm drawing because I like doing it. It's a nice challenge, really gets you thinking and it quite literally uses all parts of your brain.

Not all drawings will go as well as you wanted but when some do, the feeling of euphoria really does take a hold of you. You feel proud of yourself that you've actually achieved something you aimed for.

Take this drawing for example. I know it needs a lot of work before it's truely great (i.e work on shading and all that technical stuff) but considering that I have never really attempted drawing people before I was pleasantly surprised at the first try.

I thought to myself, it's an alright place to start off at. I'm sure that people have started from a better place than this but then you must think also that others may have started from a point where they could only draw stick men.

So yes. With a combination of practise and proper tutorials, I'm hoping that I can get to a point where I feel I can call myself an artist!

Of course a little feedback would be good along the way too!!

Robot mural complete!

Finally, after months of having it half painted, I've actually gotten round to finishing the whole thing.

I'm so pleased with how it's turned out and it's a great thing to wake up and look at every morning.

The hardest part of the mural was definitely painting Jenna. Because of her fur being black and white all mixed into each other, it meant I had to try and blend the colours. Not an easy thing to do with white I can tell you! But it's come out good and my family say it's actually their favourite robot.

Once I had finished all the painting, I then outlined it all in black pen. It's amazing how much of a difference this can make! It somehow just helped to bring them all to life and look like they were coming out of the circle.

Ok so three walls of my room decorated, one more to go!

Crocodile boy!

I did a drawing yesterday of this little guy. For some reason, I suddenly had a yearning to draw a boy in a crocodile costume. Don't ask me why this image popped in my head but my mind seems to work in weird ways at times! It's quite a big day for me today actually. For those of you who know that the past few years for me haven't exactly been plain sailing, it's actually been a whole year since I left hospital for home! I felt quite funny when I realised this actually. I guess it's because so much has happened in twelve months but even so, it's felt like a long year. I always find it fascinating the way your mind seems to warp all sense of time when really it always stays absolutely fixed!

Robot mural in part colour

So it's been exactly a week since my last post hasn't it! Where has that time gone?!

Well all the chicks that I made for charity have been sold today and all but one have got new homes. I've even got special request orders from people as well! I'm glad that they went as I spent almost all my free time trying to make a many as possible. I was a bit worried that I hadn't made enough because I had a day where I made none because I was really poorly that day. I had a really bad stomach pain to the extent that I collapsed and passed out on the floor!

But anyway, I digress.

Here are a few pictures showing you how my mural is coming along. I've been painting a little bit here and there whenever I feel like it. I've got a way to go yet till it's completely finished but it's taking shape. And because this wall was once blank, I used to watch my projected movies on there which is now hard to do unless I want to have robots in the movie too. So the solution to this problem was to buy a projection screen. Very nifty eh!

comic strip

Ok so I know that I've already told you about the unfortunate adventures Jenna got up to a few weeks ago but when I was writing in my journal, I drew up a comic of it.

Thought you'd like to see it as I haven't really got much else to show you at the moment! I quite enjoyed drawing this up actually. I'm not the best cartoon drawer so it's good that I can work on it. Who knows, you may see a few more little comic strips coming on the blog in the future.

Jenna's doing great and learning lots of tricks. I think I mentioned in the sidebar that she can do paw didn't I? Well, now she can do high five too which is pretty cool. She's going out for longer walks now and yesterday I walked by the river. I jumped over onto the bridge bank and she was so scared about walking through the water! So I don't think she's going to be a sea rescue dog any time soon! This was all whilst on the lead so I had to do a lot of gentle pulling to make her move. She even aviods puddles too the little wimp.

Wall mural

I've had an idea in my mind for ages and ages now that I wanted a mural in my room. It's something to add in there to make the room extra awesome. I love robots and my family so I thought what better than to portray them as robots!

I'm really happy with how it turned out as it was just what I had in my mind. I projected it on my wall to see how it would look and it looks so cool!

I don't know when I'm going to get it painted though what with a puppy to look after but I hope to do it when ever the time is right. I'll definitely post it when it's finished so watch out for that!

I'm am going to have it coloured by the way. I'm actually mid- way through doing this right now! As I'm sure you know by now, you can enlarge the image if you want a better look at it.

Waving Away!

This is a pastel drawing I did the other week. It's the first time I can remember doing proper work with pastels like this and I really really enjoyed it! I loved the fact that I could really get stuck in with my hands to get all the desired effects. I managed to get it all on my face at the end! I think I subconciously scratched my face forgetting my blue tipped fingers! I don't think I got any in my hair although that would have been pretty cool to have blue streaks in wouldn't it!
To see it better just click on it and it will enlarge for you!

More family (possibly book) characters!

I finished the rest of this family ages ago but I've had so much to show you in the last week or so that they sort of got but on the back shelf! Poor little cartoon characters!

Here I have the Mum, Dad and Grandad. They don't have any names or have a surname yet so any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. After all, as the saying goes; two heads are better than one!

I think my favourite one is the Grandad one!

cartoon family!

These are a few characters I've been working on in the last few days. There are a few more to the ones that I'm showing you but I haven't got round to colouring them yet! What do you think? I think that they could make good book characters if I worked on them a bit more!

Real life drawing!

I decided to try my hand at a bit of real life drawing the other day so I drew a part of my room that I could see from my bed. And I don't mean the bed that's featured in the picture! That's just a pull out bed that was out at the time because we had my Nana up to stay therefore my sister had to sleep in my room.

It's the first time I've done drawing like this since for years so for a first time I guess it wasn't too bad!

(You may need to click to enlarge it in order see it better because the photo isn't very good!)

More drawing!

Ok. So I don't even know if people saw the first lot of my drawings because no one commented on them but hey! I'll show you some more... so here they are!

MAJOR drawing fest!

In the past few days, I've been very busy drawing! Inspiration struck me so I took full advantage of it and got all my ideas out. Thing is though, I've drawn so many things that I can't put them all onto a single post! I think what I'll do is put a few on now and maybe post some more later.

What spurred on the drawing fest was that I was designing some stickers for my laptop and thought that I would create some pictures of my own to go in the mix. It's a site called MOO where you can personalize cards and stickers. It will take a while for them to be printed and then sent but when they come, I'll let you know!

My drawings are meant to be random and quirky by the way! Thought I'd let you know just in case you think I've taken permanent leave of my senses!