Small Illustrations!

So, I`ve been wanting to try something at least a little bit different for this newest project by doing something that I haven`t really focused on before. My boyfriend will actually be doing a Illustration course at University in September, but I`m not too good at illustration work... Mainly because I love to use random materials and I love to mess around with mixing inks and making pastes out of things you wouldn`t usually use. I`m a pretty random artist and Illustration work has to be precise at times...

Even though I am a pretty random artist and I love to use whatever materials I can find, I`ve kind of managed to use that to my advantage whilst making some small illustrative samples. I`m not too good at precise work, I`m really not good at it any more actually; I can`t just done a plain line drawing, I have to add something else to it because I`ll either mess up and I need to cover it up, or it just looks too empty to me and I need to add something else to it. Doing these was something quite different, as silly as that sounds; I`ve already tried to do some illustrations that where inspired by meg Adamson, well slightly inspired by Meg as they looked nothing like the work that she actually produces. But I usually throw loads of random crap at a Canvas and then hope for the best whenever I do that, then I work over the top of it to make it seem more organized and like an actual image.

A PRE-WARNING!
The images on this update have been set small as they are huge and there would be no room on this post for all of them if they where full size. So if you want a better look at them, either head over to Deviantart or just click the images now for a better view. However, my love for random materials did come slightly handy whilst producing these small collaged and illustration samples. I found scraps of different coloured papers, tissue papers, newspapers and some left over inks on my desk which meant that I could just tear them up a little bit more and then use them in the backdrop of the work. I used washes of pale watercolours as a base (You can`t see them very well on these scanned in copies), then pale inks where dripped all over and used within the illustrations. The newspaper was a bit harder to draw over though, so I added some pale ink over the top of the pieces of newspaper and then bleached them out so I could draw on some areas... However, that only worked on certain pieces, mainly the ones that are covered in small text. Within the illustrations and behind some bits of the text I`ve used pale washes of watercolour so it doesn`t seem too plain in colour. I didn`t want to add any other textured bits to these samples, as that`s what I`m going to be doing on my final piece and preparation samples, which I am working on right now but I just haven`t uploaded them yet.. I`ll get there eventually.

I will be doing a lot of illustration work on my final piece and preparation work... As stupid as it sounds, I`m not quite sure how yet. Yeah, there`s so many different textures and layers in the background that drawing over the top on normal fineliners and biros is proving to be a little bit difficult to do at the moment. I`ve tried a few different samples over the top of very thin layers of sand, modrock and just layers of different inks and newpapers; but all of the materials that I`ve layered up so far are now soaking up any ink that I use over the top of them, making it pretty difficult to do anything over the top at the moment. My art teacher, Sue, did come up with a way to draw over the top by using some special inks that she`s just ordered in from one of our supply companies. Since I`m also in charge of the deliveries that come in and out of the art department, I have seen the ink and it`s weird thick stuff, but I think she took it into a different classroom and now I can`t find it again... yay!

I do like these Illustrations as quick little practice samples, but I have also done quite a few different and smaller illustrations that I`ve used on redbubble.com aswell, they`re also on deviantart but I`m not using them for this project since they have absolutely nothing to do with what I`m doing for my exam piece... one of them is strawberries and another is cute small bears, now I`m also working on watermelon ones and Easter egg ones. So I`m very busy! aswell as starting my new job, these next two weeks are going to be full of me working!

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I was blasting Silk

Screens for about

2 hours on Friday!

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Plastic Fusion! (With a heatgun!)

The First set Of Samples I Made!

Although a while back, I had promised some sort of scanning in session where I upload loooooads of my work... I haven`t actually done that much flat work compared to my last project where a lot of drawing was involved. This time I`m focusing on a lot of other slightly different materials compared to my last project, and I`m quite enjoying it so far.

(I also really need to catch up on my uploads right now, I`ve got two weeks of and start my new job next week so I`m going to be extremely busy from now on)!

So my newest project is about the decay of nature and what humans do to effect the planet, however, since it`s been such a broad topic with lots of areas that I can explore within it, the teachers and I have decided to cut it down to just the Decay of Nature. There`s too much I can do with a project like that and there Isn`t enough time to try out every last technique I know on all of these different mediums, if I had more time then I think my project would be a lot more interesting and unique compared to what everyone else is doing right now... I chose the nature theme first as I has my sketchbook ready with my theme inside of it since Christmas time, now three other people are doing something that`s based around nature and decay, which is more than slightly annoying as this is my last project at sixth form and I wanted it to be something different to what everyone else was going to choose. Hopefully, The final outcomes will be completely different and you might not even be able to tell that we`re all basing it around decay.

I have gotten quite a few drawings done, that you might of also seen in one of my previous posts, but I`ve been mainly working with recycling materials and working with melting objects so that`s been something new and quite fun for me to be working with.
I`ve been collecting a lot of items from here and there lately, we`ve just had the bathroom completely re-done with two showers fitted, new super bright lighting and a new toilet, along with all of that we also had it completely re-tiled with porcelain tiles which are super heavy and super sharp when you smash them. My mum and the guy who did the tiles saved me a bunch of scraps instead of just throwing them away and I haven`t gotten round to using them yet actually, I`ve been focusing on the plastic that much that I haven`t had time for the other bits I`ve been collecting up recently.

One of the main things that I really want to do is just try my best to recycle everything I have on my desk at the moment, even old bits of tissues and wipes that I`ve used to clean up are coming in handy as an added texture in the backgrounds of my work and hopefully I can keep on using little bits like that to create more un-usual stuff!

At the moment, I`m pretty big on the plastics, as you can see from this update. I`ve been collecting plastic bags and wallets for a while trying t get enough for loads of samples for my work, and I`ve also been trying to collect dead flowers, sticks and leaves for fusion work. Last time I did plastic fusion work, I used the heat press instead; It`s a big clamp with a metal plate that can heat up to about 300 degrees and it squashes everything in-between plastic, like a sandwich wrapped up in plastic really.

It`s quite strange really...

From this, I would also not recommend using a heat gun on dead flowers in a room with no windows open. I was doing it for a while and the smell was getting stronger and stronger and there was smoke coming out of the stem of the flower and I panicked quite a bit.

Even though I did these almost two weeks ago as my first set of preparation work, the smell of the flowers is disgusting and you can smell it when you walk past the box on my desk that has them in, luckily the smell has died down a bit now but I did get one of my friends to smell it on purpose just to see if it was that gross... His reaction told me it was gross.

Some of the ones I`ve done are very basic and just have twigs sandwiched in-between them, but they do work very nicely within mixed media work. I`ve been suing them for a lot of collage bits at the moment and I`m kind of stuck with what to do with the rest that I haven`t used. I was going to cut into canvas` and glue them to the back so they come through the front... If that makes any sense at all? I like them at the moment, I`ve also done a bit more photography work on flowers and nice looking shiz since I don`t want it all to be based on dying stuff, I`ve even uploaded one of them onto Redbubble and it looks adorable! Mainly just photos of the decaying ones at the moment actually, the ones of the living flowers are a bit iffy at the moment so I don`t want to use them yet.

It`s such an easy process to do, but it`s quite fun to see the way that the materials react, like the dead flowers stems started bubbling and popping halfway through the melting and the petals started to curl outwards instead so they look like they`ve just opened up for the first time; they also go a golden brown or caramel colour when you start to melt the plastic around them. But then when you melt around them when they`re alive, they just go straight to dark brown and snap if your rough with them.

I love the crispy look once they`ve cooled down, just try not to do what I did, and that`s pick it up straight away and burn your hand. The ones that I`ve used so far have also been dipped in wax and a bit of ink so they blend in with all of the mixed media work I`m doing.

I have been really busy lately, so I ended up putting my blogging to one side for a while whilst I just got some other stuff out of the way. I`ll be back on all of my social media accounts now, and I`ll be updating on here over the next two weeks whilst I try to catch up with all of my updates; so you can all go back to sending your questions into the facebook page!

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Artist Inspired Work! (Meg Adamson)

http://www.megadamson.com/

As a starting point for every student, you`re going to have to look at various artists to get some kind of idea as to what you should be aiming for or what you should be focusing on for your most recent project... So I obviously had to go and choose an artist who does some amazing work, that I cannot imitate at all!

Meg Adamson is a young, female, amazing artist who creates nature inspired designs with an incredible amount of detail put into them, which is something that I just couldn`t mimic as I have absolutely no patience at all to do things like this. I won`t be uploading any images of her work since I feel like that would seem like I was copywriting her work or something, So I will have a little screen shot of her website so you can see a bit of what she does and I will add the link along with it so you can do some research on her for yourself!

For starts, she looks like my bloody spirit animal or something... like wow, that`s just goals right there. Her work is seriously amazing and hopefully you`ll be able to see quite a bit of it on her website, if not then just type Meg Adamson into google images and if you see a lot bright and pale animals drawings come up then that`ll be most probably her work. I think anyways...
The designs she creates are just amazing and there`s so much detail that goes into every single one and it makes me rather jealous; I`ve been an art student now for the past 4 years and I still don`t have as much patience as this woman does when it comes to my work. If anyone has ever spoken to me through the FB page about my work, then you should of realized by now that I`m rather impatient and if something doesn`t look right the first time round then I would most probably just throw it away since it`s been frustrating me for a while.

I didn`t get anything done that was amazingly complicated and had loads of detail, and I didn`t get any animal like designs done like the ones that had inspired me in the first place. She has also got a lot of floral designs that I found online, but there was so much detail in those that I just wouldn`t be able to match something like that with my style of drawings, I did in fact attempt a very complicated one, however I just ended up confusing myself and I eventually gave in trying. If I could do something as complicated as she does, and I had the patience to get it done properly then I would do and I would do a cr*p load of drawings... But hey ho, some people, like me, just have no patience at all.

So the designs that I made aren`t the most complicated things in the world, but it`s something that`s a bit more precise than what I normally do so it was something different and new for me to be working on for my nature project. At the moment there are only three sheets of designs which is a bit disappointing, so I`m going to get some more small sheets done with smaller observations so I can also, hopefully anyway, make more complicated designs with much more detail. Another thing that I haven`t used for the past three years... Pencil crayons, yes, out of every material I`ve ever used during my time being an art student I haven`t used bloody pencil crayons on my work. These designs do have a small amount of pencil crayon in them, but not tons of it and hopefully I can get some other bits like these done with pencil crayons and then coloured fineliner over the top off it.
even though my work isn`t mimicking the kind of style that she uses, I`m still quite fond of them as it`s something different to what I normally due at sixth form, and it`s given me a short break from all of the messy inky stuff that I usually do on a daily basis, and it was nice to try something different. In all fairness there`s only one designs that I`m particular fond of, and that`s the large circle with the dying flower illustrations inside of it. So far, I`ve used them all for emulsion printing for backgrounds of mixed media work and they look quite nice once they`ve been layered up enough.

It does seem rather strange to not use something as simple as crayons for a long time, and then find a whole shoebox full of un-used crayons. Why bloody crayons? Out of everything to possibly find?

head over to Redbubble now

to find my designs on products

that you`ll love!

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Redbubble Products!

Click on the "shop option" to find the items that are

available at the moment!

Once again!
I`ve signed up to another site where I can show off my stuff, hopefully anyways. My friend Amelia in the year below me showed me this site where you can upload your designs and then they make them and send them off, then you get a percentage of the price... Basically just like Live Heroes, but the only thing is, that on this site It`s easier to upload designs in bulk and you can actually change the prices of your items. I wasn`t so sure at first about signing up since I`m already on Live Heroes, but looking at the design of the website and the navigation of the whole thing; it does seem a lot more professional looking and easier to use, also giving the user a lot more options rather than just upload and sell.

If you don`t fancy reading the whole blog post and want to get a look right now, then follow this link to my profile to see all of the products that are on this update!
http://www.redbubble.com/people/amywatkinson

I`m lucky I`ve got good friends in Art, because they suggest loads of different things for me to try out, and loads of different sites where I can help myself with promotions and getting my work out there, so yeah, this is another self-promotion thing I guess. Getting my work out there is still quite difficult to do though, as weird as that sounds because I`ve got so many accounts that everyone can follow. It`s getting people to notice you that`s the difficult part really, I can upload every single day and just get 3 views on each post, it`s that hard sometimes.

iPhone sizes range from 4s, to 6s.

I`m not sure if I prefer this website too the Live Heroes website, I`m not quite sure yet, I haven`t used it this much I`ve only just stated using it this morning actually! I quite like this site so far, it`s so much easier to navigate and upload designs in bulk; say if you have one design but you want to upload it onto, books, phone cases, shirts and stuff... It Comes up with a page, it has your chosen design on every product that you can sell and then you just through the products and click either "enable" or Disable" (or something like that). You can click on the items and move the designs or re-scale the designs, so the movement and placement of the designs aren`t as restricted as Live Heroes too.

Samsung sizes range from Galaxy

S3 to S5.

I`ve been messing around with it all morning now, Since I`ve had to have the day off since my lovely nephew has made me ill... again. His friend Mason was ill, so he`s been around Mason, Owens come home, and Owens been around me, made me ill, my boyfriend was looking after me, and now he`s ill. The circle of bacteria is lovely. So luckily, having a day off has actually given me the time to create an account and have a mess around with the site... Thanks Owen!

The designs that I`ve uploaded so far are actually just colour splash designs; It`s when I drip loads of inks on a table, spray a bit of water over the top of them and then place paper over the top to print all of the colours, then I`ve scanned them and changed the brightness and contrast balance just so the colours looks a bit better. I think there`s a much better range of products to choose from on here, and it`s ridiculously easy to upload the same design on to multiple products, instead of having to do them all separately like on Live Heroes. With designs, I have no idea as to where to start with designing bits for the site, I had the same problem when I signed up to live heroes since I didn`t quite know as to what kind of designs people would want to see. With this site, I could actually use a lot more photography of nature on the phone cases and stuff, if you know what I mean, on Live heroes nothing really looked right on the phone cases, I`m not quite sure why, but to me they didn`t look right. They immediately look wayyyy better on here.

With the Spiral Notebooks, you can

have either Ruled Lines or Graph

paper inside of them.

Another thing that I immediately fell in love with was the notebooks, and journals on here, it was just so much easier to place the design on the books and the final look was just adorable, well I thought it was anyway. Along with all of the designs you see here, I`ve also made just one hardback Journal; I think I`ll need some more classier looking designs to go on those, or just simple cute looking things with white backdrops... Clean and professional looking stuff I guess!
I`m not suite sure If I`m going to do anything with clothing at the moment, there are options for clothing, not as many as Live heroes but then again I would probably never wear half of the stuff from Live heroes, just not my kind of thing. So this site is seriously ideal for me, easy navigation system, dumbed down instructions that you can actually understand, the items and the site look wayyy more professional and people who buy from there get to write reviews on the final product that they`ve received so you can get a good idea as to what the final thing will be like or if it`s good quality.
That`s one of the downsides to these kind of things, you never know what someone is going to think of the final thing if you`ve never seen it yourself so that`s always a worry.
if anyone does ever buy anything with my designs on, then I would seriously love to see either pictures of the finished thing or just your general opinion on the product you`ve received. I`m not sure if I should order one myself too, just so I`ve got my own design on a notebook and I can show it to people and be like "yeah, it`s my design on my notebook and you can have one if you`re willing to pay." (All in a sarcastic tone too).

HOWEVER, the prices seen above are different since I get discount on the items... I think anyways, as soon as I log out and look back at the designs they do all come up at different prices and are slightly more expensive, so I do apologize for that!

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Small Observations!

As we would of all hopefully gathered by now, as I say it all of the time, I hate observational drawings... Like seriously hate them and everything about them.

It took me a while to get a good few of them together, and to be honest, I don`t think they are all that good compared to everyone else`s drawings at the moment. Most of the class are yet to even start an observational drawing and we`re about a month into the project now. I`ve been trying to avoid doing them by working on other small bits here and there, and also getting my sketchbook work up to date. At the moment I`ve got absolutely nothing else to go in my sketchbook, just these drawings on this blog post are all that`s left to be documented at the moment.

There`s quite a bit of artist research in there at the moment too; Hannah Sykes, Chris Jordan, Rosamond Purcell and Meg Adamson, there`s quite a few more pages but I can`t recall the names to save my life! I`ve been trying to get some artist inspired work done aswell, but I`ve still got a few more bits of work to do for that before I can show everyone, It`s mainly Hannah that I`ve got left to do at the moment. She does quite intricate designs and a bit of dot work, so I`ve just got to have a bit more patience to get them all finished; after I`ve done them, I`ve got no idea as to what I`m going to do with them actually... I could always use them as Emulsion print backgrounds for layering work, I`ll find something for them eventually, I hope.

At the moment I`m getting tired of just drawing flowers and leaves, and I need a good source of subject matter to keep me going. I`ve found a collection of shells amongst my art equipment, So they've come in handy for one drawing at least. If anything, I want to find more materials as subject matter. An initial idea I did have was to produce plastic fusion work and then draw from those, but it`s getting them made and then having to go back and draw them again when I initially wanted to get all of the drawing out of the way.

At least I`ve got some of out of the way and put to one side. However, last time during the exam unit, I was one mark off the A grade since the grade boundary got moved up by one mark; to ensure that I get the A grade this time around, I have to get plenty of observational drawing work finished and at a good standard... At the moment, they aren`t at the best standard they could be so I`m going to have to go back over them soon and work on them a bit more.

I`m not suite sure what to work on next, I want to try and get some small illustrations done but I`m not sure as to what I could possibly illustrate since my project is on the Decay of nature; I was thinking different materials in the background and then inks and drawings over the top to illustrate man made and wasted materials... Not quite sure about that one. Also watercolour drawings with fineliner over the top for detail, but then again it is pretty basic and I could always link it into the Illustration idea.

A new subject matter is definitely needed if I want to get more done, and I want to move off of the drawing part now and perhaps start something more 3D and more challenging. The main thing is that I seriously need to start getting more exam preparation finished, it takes a lot of time to get all of the preparation work done for the exam period, and I`ve got a three day long exam so I`m going to be screwed if I only have enough preparation done for the first day of exams.

There`s going to be a lot of plastic and wire work coming up soon, if you want all of the latest updates then It`s best to follow the links to deviantart where all of my current work has been uploaded. Keep on watching this space for some more work and new stuff that I`ve never tried out before!

Lastly, I wanted to say a big thank you to those who also have deviantart and have begun to read the blog, and those people who`ve sent questions in about my work on facebook! It`s good to see support from you guys and it`s much appreciated!
I`ll see you all in the next update!


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