Sunday 30 August 2009

lino cuts: the mushroom and tulip








Inuit lady scratching




impact murals


Last summer i worked for impact murals. http://www.impact-murals.co.uk/ All the people working there are amazing at what they do and alot of fun to work with. We also worked on charity projects for the charity: Art for their sake. As a company they have done the murals in Alder hey hospital, the Trafford centre and many more places you go all the time. George (the one in the middle!) taught me alot and I know I can go back anytime and have a paint with them. The boards above were for a mural in a school.


Saturday 22 August 2009

ice sculpting in Finland

Whilst in Finland i did an ice sculpting week long intense course. Hours were spent deciding if the freezing cold temperatures were worth it, but it was a once in a lifetime chance so we did it. There were the same amount of international students as Finnish so we each got a Finnish partner. I believe I got the best Finn, Satu! Firstly we had to decide on what to make. We spent ages drawing ideas, some that came up were: a penny farthing, hot air ballon, a tooth! a piece of toast, the loch ness monster and what looks like a snowman holding a knife! but i suppose you have to go through all the bad ideas to get to the good ones. We eventually decided on waves with horses emerging from them, lord of the rings rip! this then turned into one wave with one horse as we both realised that we had never done this before so keep it simple! However, when we had got the ice from the lake and put it into place, we looked at it after a day or so of sculpting and decided it looked like an elephant! This was to be our final decision.


We were getting the ice to use for the sculptures from one of the many lakes in Kuopio just down the road from our school. First of all we have to clear the lake of snow that has fallen. This also had to be done everyday a week before we got the ice.



A grid was made on the lake, using a chainsaw ice was cut in blocks of one metre by half a metre. We needed about 70 of these blocks for the ice sculptures. Then after these had been cut one block was pushed under the rest of the ice so there was a hole. A ladder with rope attached was then used to fish a block out. Once on the ladder it would take many people to pull it out.




After we had got the block of ice out of the lake we put it onto a pallet, which would fit 2 blocks on and it would take alot of people to pull it! Getting all the blocks we needed took about 8 hours


This is a photograph of everybody involved with all the blocks we got!


For our sculpture we had 2 blocks on the bottom and 2 on top. It took a long time getting rid of that gap in between. We had to make them as even as we could by using chainsaws, special tools and irons! To glue the ice together we would pour water down the join which would freeze and then put snow around it to seal it.




We worked on the sculpture all weekend then after we finished classes everynight for a week. It was so cold just standing still doing the sculpture that we had to have lots of breaks!



The elephant taking shape. You can see in the head there is a twig frozen in the ice. In one block of ice there was what looked like a nokia!



This was our elephant on the night of the exhibition. We tryed lots of different colours on it but liked green the best, which turned out to be a good choice. A few nights after our school was hosting an event where all the design tutors in Finland meet, in this somebody gave a talk and mentioned that the green elephant would bring prosperity in the coming year. After it had finished they came outside to see our sculptures, and there was mine and Satu's green elephant. They thought it had been planned but it was a total coincidence.



These are a few of the other ice sculptures that were made.


And here she is, my wonderful ice sculpting partner Satu! photo by jadel!

Saturday 8 August 2009

birthday card

A card i did for my sister's birthday, but i need to scan it in better!

sketchbook







Saturday 11 July 2009

scratching



I did these in Finland at Kuopion Muotoiluakatemia where I studied for 5 months. I quite like this technique so will be trying out more.

Erasmus exhibition


Poland were lovely enough to give the erasmus students our own exhibition. Sadly I was already in Finland so couldn't be there but our friends took lots of photos instead, this is katka above with my face infront of some of my work. Thanks to the rest of the guys for putting it up for us english! Dziękuję

Polska



João as a pierogi on Halloween

I spent an epic few months in Lodz, Poland this year studying illustration. I had the pleasure of attending the Akademia Sztuk Pięknych im. Wł. Strzemińskiego w Łodzi (academy of fine arts and design) where I studied printmaking, making the first print of a mushroom in the studio which has been open for over 40years! Life drawing and printed textiles. Whilst living and studying in Lodz I was surrounded by some amazing people from Portugal, Bulgaria, Germany, Romania, Czech and of course the Polish! I also fell in love with the Polish food, PIEROGI!

big glasses project

This is a drawing of a random guy I met whilst I was doing my big glasses project, he was fun to draw.

some old work






Some illustrations from 1st year

Friday 10 July 2009

white rabbits

white rabbits!! to give my blog good luck. I have been meaning to start a blog for my illustration for years. Now I find myself unemployed over summer going into my final year of uni, it seems like the right time. I study illustration at Huddersfield university and have just returned from a year abroad as an Erasmus student! The best thing I could have done, amazing people, great food, lots of parties and some work. I studied in Poland and Finland, I will upload work I did there and previous work of mine.
This image is by Laura Plansker, who creates amazing little worlds.