Thursday, February 23, 2012

Star Wars

Well, for the past couple of days I have been crouched over an easel using a tiny brush to paint my Star Wars figures. They are not perfect of course. I am afraid their heads may be a little bit to big and Princess Leia, gosh, well to be honest it was nearing the end of the day and her face is SO small that I found it so hard to get any semblance of nose, eyes, mouth (particularly). I would put one little tiny stroke down and wipe away her previously painted eyes, which were okay, or her mouth or something. So I think the photo I post here is just before the final adjustments I made to her face - I tried to give her a mouth but it may have gone awry. It is always hard to know when to stop messing around with something. Next week I think I will do an Optimus Prime and Shockwave face-off (portraits) on bigger canvases so I don't go quite as mad. It is amazing how many times I start talking about my Transformers and how the face of the person I am talking to lights up. Whoever created them I think was genuinely amazing. It has got to the point where I was walking home with a friend last night and we came across a huge roadwork machine and we said wouldn't it be cool if it transformed and made those transforming clicky sounds. 



Saturday, February 18, 2012

Being a kid

So, as usual it has been forever since I posted. Listening to Finding Albert at the moment, a Scottish band that I saw live on an old school double-decker bus this week as part of a university French fete. Well, we started a new project about 5 weeks ago. I feel like I have been working pretty hard and learning a lot but don't have much to show. I didn't know what to do - the project was Phenomena. So one night I went to a Pub Quiz with some friends and with the scrap paper I started making paper planes, because it seemed the obvious thing to do. Then I couldn't sleep that night because I thought of all the things I used to do as I kid and the toys I used to have and kicking an Aussie Rules footie around the paddock with my sister. Interestingly, as I madly searched if I could buy an Aussie Rules footie in Scotland, I found out there are 3 Aussie Rules footie teams here. Anyway, I digress. This lead me onto a path of drawing toys that were similar to those I had as a kid and how to make paintings out of those - well put them into a Scottish landscape of course! So I have started a bizarre series of paintings. This is my first one, together with some collagraph prints I did last week. The Ford Escort push and go car features mostly. The ink on the collagraph prints bled a bit unfortunately as I went overboard on the material I had glued on and the ink got stuck. I figured out how to lessen the effect later on, but some people said they liked the bleeding.