I'm so behind on blog posts I'm not even going to apologise. It's too late to apologise, remember that old classic? I'm just going to post all of the work I've done since the summer of 2013 in a few separate posts and make a feeble resolve to post more frequently in the new year.
I was commissioned by the Queen's Hall in Edinburgh to do four sets of illustrations over the course of the year for their brochure's, banners and posters. I came up with 3 patterns based on different genres of music and then combined them and threw in some bagpipes to create the final festival brochure. I have captioned them accordingly for your benefit.
It has been a really long time since I last posted anything in here. I'm afraid it has been a hectic time for me as I've attempted to get on my feet with running my illustration/design as a business while simultaneously working in an outdoor equipment and clothing shop. It has been a steep learning curve but I've learned a lot and am really happy with my situation! I feel really blessed to be able to make a living (or part of one anyway) off of something I am so passionate about. Anyway, I would like to make a few posts about the work I've been doing over the past couple of months to start with, because there is a lot of it.
Over the summer I did an internship with EUSA (Edinburgh University Student's Association) and did a number of projects with them ranging from campaign posters to beermats! It was a lot of fun working there, and it was really cool of them to offer the opportunity to a graduate. It was paid as well which I am told of is relatively unheard of for the majority of "internships", but that's a can of worms I won't go into. I was really fortunate with my experience, the people there were great, my boss Dave and I got along really well and i had loads of support from him while still being trusted with enough responsibility for me to feel like I was making valuable contributions. I've even continued to work with EUSA on a few freelance projects after my contract has ended so I am very pleased that it worked out so well. During my three months there I completed over 15 different projects, some of which involved creating more than one piece of artwork, and all of which required a couple of different deliverables.
Here are some of the posters I did for various events/campaigns/adverts in the student's union. It's not the exhaustive list of my work but its a fair representation of the sort of things I was doing!
Alongside these sort of things, I did some logos and identities as well as helped out on a few other things that were led by other people from the marketing department.
The coolest project I was responsible for was to create beermats for all six of Teviot Row House's student union owned bars including The Lounge, The Loft Bar, The New Amphion, The Underground, The Library Bar and The Sports Bar. I came up with distinct and individual patterns for each bar based on the function and aesthetics of each location which go printed on one side of a set of collectible beer mats. The reverse side held the bar logo and a bit of information about it. Here's what the finished beermats looked like. You can see the patterns on their own in the new section of my website.
That sums up the first chapter of the past however many months nicely, so I'll leave it there for now. In the next few posts I will be writing about my work with Edinburgh's Queen's Hall, Couthie (a Scottish giftware company), two big murals for Zizzi's restaurant, a nature book cover and a few other projects so watch this space!
Over the past few weeks I have become a serial killer of time. It is not something I enjoy greatly, admittedly, at least not to begin with, however I have learned to appreciate the finer elements of such a banal and sluggish existence. Watching time waste away before your eyes when you can think of 10 million other things you'd rather be doing - all of which are more fun or useful to your life experience - is a very dire prospect. Now forgive me for launching into something almost philosophical here, but what is time? What seperates the time well spent from the time poorly spent. I am currently writing this blog post on my phone from the viewing terrace of a rather empty airport, and would like to think this is an example of time well spent. Why? Well I'll get into that.
While trying to come up with a solution to my sheer boredom, I came to the vague conclusion that I didn't actually have to 'kill time', I could try to make use of it. When I am going about my daily life sometimes it feels like there are so many things I would like to do but just never get around to because life doesn't really have a pause button. And yet here I was
complaining that I had toomuch time to waste. What was to stop me from having fun by myself in this new and exciting place of joy and wonder? If you could call the viewing terrace of an airport such a place.
Children are rarely ever bored as they have the mental capacity to find something entertaining to amuse themselves with wherever they go. With young children this mostly involves making loud noises and destroying things. Obviously spending a greater period of time in a given place with not much in or around it will have the effect of a prison and eventually you will run out of things to do, but this is rarely the case.
I have chosen to spend my time more wisely by pursuing my creative ventures and have been doing a lot more writing and doodling to generate ideas. It takes a certain skill to be able to come out with interesting ideas from a place like an airport or train station after 5 hours there, but being in one place for a long time gives you a whole different perspective. Rather than being part of a fleeting moment, you become part of the furniture of a place.
I have done a number of doodles and written some things which I will post soon, but for now I must go. Bon voyage!
I don't normally share my creative writing here, but my good friend Nathaniel has suggested that I should and in fact, it is a nice way to formally document life as it happens. This is just some prose that I wanted to write in light of recent events.
Communist structures stand in even rows, queasy shades of grey streaked by grime. Poland's history is complex and tragic; the scars from its past will take a long time to heal. Having only spent a very short time in the country of my birth, I feel spared but at the same time, guilty that I know so little about what these streets and walls have seen.
I press the buzzer in the alcove of the entryway and enter the apartment number. Its cheerful melodic beeping ringtone is familiar, but seems out of place in such a grim setting. In the pitted and pot-holed car park, a rusty car stands half buried in the mud. It has been like that for years, I look out for it every time to see how much deeper it has sunken into the mud. The door opens and I leave the bite of winter's cold.
I breathe in while stepping into the rickety elevator. There's plenty of room for my lone body, but I feel like I want to occupy as small a space as possible. I press the button for level 4 - most of the numerals have given up their ghost - and it lights up with a retiring glow. The walls bear the abuse of decades, a shattered mirror clings half-heartedly to the inner wall and in its corner, the twinned scrawl of illegible graffiti stops abruptly at a jagged edge. I briefly consider the displaced existence of its message, the intended meaning is now fragmented and most likely forgotten.
I arrive on the fourth floor and I am greeted by a flood of warm light from an open door, spilling into the dim and dusty stairwell. A small lady beams at me from the entry way. I smile and embrace her, kissing her on each cheek. Three kisses as is customary. She holds my face close to hers in order to see me properly, her vision has become very poor. This is my grandmother. I feel very big in the presence of her shrunken frame, even more so being the giant that I am. I can't remember when it was that I went from being the young girl on summer holiday clinging to her apron, to being the tall bean pole whose head all but skims the top of doorways.
I go to sit on the living room sofa bed, the cushions are sunken and I feel dragged into its depths as if it intends to swallow me. My grandma goes off to the kitchen to make us tea, but she continues to talk to me from there. While we speak, my eyes wander around the room. Despite spending so much time away from it, I have a very good memory and it always seems like nothing has changed. The retro orange walls, the threadbare carpet, the lace curtains. I could swear that even the lampshade is skewed awkwardly at exactly the same angle it was one year ago. I notice one of the paintings on the wall is crooked, so I step onto a chair to fix it. It has probably gone unnoticed for months, but I straighten all the same. Everything else is in its place exactly how I remember, the vase on the table, the place mats with children's cartoons, the black velvet wall tapestry my cousins brought from Australia. It is strange coming back here, just once every year. You'd think that you would notice change, and Warsaw has probably changed greatly from the first memories I have of it, but in my Poland, mostly everything seems to stay frozen in-between my visits. Everything apart from the people.
My grandmother has the television on, the Bold and the Beautiful, episode #5866. I have watched at least one episode of the soap every summer I've visited from before I can remember. I am half surprised that it is still being shown, but as I say, Poland changes slowly. It is even dubbed the same way it has always been, the same monotone male voice speaking over the voices of the beautiful, larger than life American actors and actresses. You must put the original voice in the background together with the translation for the characters to work, but it is still just as unnatural to hear every line spoken in the same grave drone, with no intonation.
The image on the screen is grainy and has ghosts, but with my grandmas poor eyesight I know she doesn't really watch it any more. She tells me she likes to hear human voices in the house, and I don't blame her. It must be so lonely living by yourself, and she seems so fragile. I can't really imagine what it must have been like to look after an alcoholic, all the while struggling with her own failing health. Now, things can't be much better. I was blind to these things when I was younger, but now I half understand all those moments I could not fathom in my youth. As I've grown older, my family has too, and now I'm filled with a regret for not being able to understand things sooner, and a tinge of guilt for missed opportunities.
Today my grandmother has left this world, but my memories and my families memories of her will continue. I will remember how we hid things around the tiny apartment and played hot and cold to find them. My memories will be of the long and pleasant walks through the woods of Dziekanow with Traper, the dog., picking wild mushrooms and blueberries. There will be the setting of a summer sun over fields of golden wheat, criss crossed with paths of sand and clay. We will gather humble bouquets of wild flowers from the fallow fields as the dog chases rabbits through the haze of sun, and smoke, and memories.
The fisherman speak of fish in the sea,
I think the river's where I'd rather be
Never a pause but for winters hold
When boughs are tired and reeds grow old
Whether your river does rush or meander
The water takes your heart in hand
Currents of fate have little remorse
Do big fish in small ponds know of their loss?
An eddy is as bad as a line or net
If I'd never have left, we would never have met.
Here is some music to keep you entertained while you wait.
I have recently had a number of really annoying experiences which involve phoning call centres and navigating an endless maze of numerical menus. It seems that when listening to the options 'If you would like to proceed to the enquiries menu press 1. If you would like to be entered into a competition to win 1 million pounds (subject to terms and conditions you should not apply if you are pregnant, breast feeding, suffer from heart or liver disease or were born on a day ending in the letter y) please press 2 etc. I tend to lose focus and forget to listen to the options and find out which number to press so I can speak to a human in real time.
After listening to each menu 3 or 4 times, eventually my ears are greeted with a joyous ringing tone and my spirits are lifted only to be dropped and smashed into a thousand pieces by an automated voice telling me cooly to, 'please hold' because all of their agents are busy.
For some reason, people seem to think that the best way to appease the situation is to play a constant stream of frustratingly 'mellow' music. Their 'concern' for your patience, is akin to being smothered with a heaping pile of blankets when you are already overheating. What's more to add is that they always choose to drown your ears with a tune that has no definitive start, finish or climax and just loops in an endless cycle of lazy jazz that literally has the power to slow down time. From time to time, the 'melody' sounds like it is reaching a conclusion and you come out of your dozy elevator music induced trance, full of hope and expectation only to be told once more, 'All of our agents are busy right now, please hold.'
Yes I'm sorry, I realise that a lot of my posts start with 'I haven't written in a while because I've been very busy.' This is true, I have been busy, but also when I do get the occasional free time frankly I'd rather spend it at the pub or down at the climbing wall or better yet, as far away as possible from here and real life.
The reason I'm writing this now is not because I have finished all my work and done all of the above but because I have definitely not finished all my work and am procrastinating. Not to worry, I will soon finish my internship with EUSA and hopefully a few of my freelance projects which means that I will no longer be working 7 days a week and I will have all the time in the world to not tell you about all the exciting things I am not doing!
On the 13th, I will be going to see my family in Switzerland and while I am there I will attempt to do something creative or experimental every day and will write about it here. At the moment, I have been doing plenty of things but I can't show you everything just yet...
There are some things I am able to show you however, and so I will do that now while you listen to the endless loop of terrible music.
A little while ago now I finished some merchandise illustrations for Couthie, a Scottish giftware company who was taken by my detailed pen and ink drawings at the degree show. They wanted 3 illustrations to print on some of their products, a stag, a thistle and some kind of Scottish bird. I suggested drawing a capercaillie as the bird. Also known as the wood grouse, the Scottish population had at one point gone completely extinct but they have been reintorduced from Sweden. These birds are still threatened however and so its good that they get a chance in the spotlight.
Capercaillie
Red Stag
Thistle
So there you are, that's that.
I've also been doing some work on the figurines which inspired my anthology of the 'Great' Outdoors. You remember the little bleps? Well as I might have said before, my illustration, 'Obligatory Viewpoint' was shortlisted in the AOI Illustration awards and so the image, alongside the 2 others I created in the series so far will be in a travelling exhibition starting with Somerset House in London from October 2nd to 27th. You will also be able to see the exhibition at Swansea Metropolitan University, Blackpool and Fylde College, Nuneaton Museum and Art Gallery and Guilford House Gallery later in the year.
Obligatory Viewpoint, Don't Feed the Bears, Everest Circus
Alongside these illustrations I will also be displaying the figurines which were part of the inspiration for the idea. In an effort to make these stand out I have been working on making a display environment for them from paper. Here are some photos of a mock up!
That's all I have time to say and show for now but if you would like to see more of my work in the future, please press 1. If you think I should give up my career and start a job as a magician's assistant, please press 2. If you would like to know what the meaning of life is, hang up, go find out and phone me back when you have the answer.
It isn't because I fell down a deep dark hole and got lost in the bowels of the earth only to become adopted by a family of giant moles. Nor is it because I ran away to India and moved into an opium den where I've spent the last two months pondering life, the universe and the 'eternal nothingness'.
But you can put your worst fears aside, I have NOT ceased to be a minion for illustration and design services. I have been so busy beavering away at this that I have hardly had time to do really important things like paint my toenails to look like fruit, sort my sock drawer and count the number of hairs on my hairbrush this week.
Alas... the time for those necessities of my life shall come. Let me tell you about the adventures I have been having and why you might be wondering 'Where the diggity dog darn have you been?'
So after having a short break after the May 10th deadline of my final year submission, I've been thrown into a whirlwind which has seen no point in stopping. This is probably a good thing in my profession because as many people know if is highly competetive and not everyone has the good fortune of finding work! Luckily for me and my close friends we have actually had far too much going on to worry about these things. It bodes to be a promising future.
So starting with where I left off, the illustration degree show had a very successful kick-off. Both the business viewing and private viewing were packed pretty full and I spoke to lots of people at both. During the following week I also had many compliments on my work and really good positive feedback which was a nice way to end my final year of the degree. Another good thing that came out of it was that I was able to make a start on my illustration as a career by selling some prints and cards and getting interest for a few commissions.
After the degree show ended, I got accepted for a summer internship doing design and illustration work for Edinburgh University's student association (EUSA). I have been creating a lot of exciting work with them so when I get the chance to show some of the projects I have been doing. As a full time job it is keeping me very busy, but it is nice to be making a bit of money and gaining a lot of valuable experience.
Alongside this I have been taking part in a couple of other things. To start with I entered a competition to design a whisky label for Bunnahabhain who have partnered up with the charity, Fishermans Mission to create limited edition bottles of their famous 12 year blend. Although my entry ended up being a race to get it done and I am not entirely certain it can be called 'finished', I figured I would post it up here anyway so that you have a picture to look at rather than just words, words and more words which I don't think anyone is actually going to bother reading. Here is my entry:
There were a couple of restrictions on this brief, such as the fact that it had to include nautical themes, a figurative representation of the legendary helmsman and the appropriate text. Rather than create something quite conceptually different I decided to try and incorporate all the design elements in an aesthetically pleasing way. I was quite inspired by the character of the helmsman and I love drawing beardy old men so he is still the main focus as in the original Bunnahabhain label. Where my label has room for improvements: text (this was done very last minute, literally) and colour - although I like the colours I went with I probably could have tried some different things with more time. I also found out that my laptops screen makes colours a lot more muted than on other computers, which is really annoying as now I realise that everything I've been positing on the internet appears in colours that are practically fluorescent in their luminosity. Just in case you are experiencing this right now, this label should not appear as ultramarine blue and turmeric yellow but rather a gold-ochre yellow and navy. If you have any suggestions for what I should do about this colour calibration issue please tell me as I'm desperate to know.
I have also graduated! Yes I got to wear a cape and a fluffy hood and got patted on the head with Edinburgh University's special sorting hat made from John Knox's trousers. Here Danielle and I are standing looking graduated.
Image Credit: Anine Boesenberg
Some other things I participated in during recent weeks was a pop-up shop in dunfermeline called Show-Off organised by Paula Grubb, a pop-up gallery organised by Creative Meadows which was a lovely event with a great turnout. It ended up being a bit of a disaster for me because my work had an issue with gravity and apparently preferred to be displayed face down on the floor rather than the wall. I also have a picture up in an exhibition in Six Foot Gallery in Glasgow which is featuring the 'Best of Degree Show' work from around Scotland.
Some up coming things that are happening for me, Danielle and I are launching our new collective of nature artists called Totem Collective with our first appearance at Craft Scotland's Summer Show! This will be taking place in White Stuff on George Street in August, and Danielle and I will be selling some great nature themed paper crafts alongside excellent goods from other craft-makers so come on down and have a look!
This is all I shall write for now, I promise that my next post will have more pictures in it, but for now I will satisfy your hunger for imagery with a small doodle.
