Tattoo's

This will be an ongoing post as I find new ones all the time. Tattoo's have always been a fascination of mine and sometimes when I have lost that spark doing a project, I will put it to one side and look through my tattoo scrapbooks. I do find some good inspiration most of the time. I do like to design my own tattoo's too. These ones are not mine but some I have found recently that I like:

Jane Crowther: G F Smiths paper

For our Parkinson's live brief project, as I have mentioned previously, we have to raise funds so that we can purchase equipment and such to actually produce the publication we intend on. So my job as one of the planners, I tried my luck at finding donations in return for an advert in the book. I just had to blog about the fantastic woman I spoke to from G F Smiths (paper suppliers), Jane Crowther. I explained the brief and she, without hesitation offered the supply of paper to produce our publication. Jane was coming into university last Friday (21st November) to give a talk to the level 6 graphic designers, so I sat in on the talk. It was very informative i must say. Jane didn't want me to put her picture in this blog so I will respect that but i can show you what she supplied us with, amazing. These are the swatches and samples in beautiful packaging. And just to confirm, our high quality paper order from Jane arrived yesterday (27th) as promised. The best thing about it is that Jane did not accept payment as it was for a worthy cause, so thank you very much Jane.

Paper cutting

I am currently working on my paper cutting skills as I have found a strong fondness for this discipline. There are many paper cutters out there in the world and I like and respect most but my favourite right now is Helen mussel-White. She seems to just have the ease of choice for her commissions. In that comment I mean that she always knows what image to create which is best for her brief. That is I think the hardest part of using this media. I am currently building up my collection of cutting tools, yet to find the 'PERFECT' one. Here are just a few I have done to date, (that are finished anyway):

Second unit; Project 1

This project was about social awareness. It involved us to apply our illustrators skills on a piece of news, past or present. We could pick 1 issue and create 4 illustrations for the 1 or pick 4 different issues and illustrate them individually. I chose to do the 4 for 1. The issue i chose was, 'Crime attached to drugs'. I found an old news article from the NY Times. Here is what I came up with:

3D Printing event

Yesterday, (22nd November), I took my youngest out on another train ride and ended up going to the science and industry museum in Manchester. Scarlett loves to get involved and have a go at new things, which she did and we had hours of fun. We then stumbled across an event they have on at the moment about 3D printing. I have been looking around this new trend recently as I am always interested in finding new ways to produce work, so this was a nice find. Here are just a few thing's that can be made with the printer's. Oh and yes the bike has been done on the printer too.

Musical inspiration

I think every artist has some kind of inspiration or influence from another source other than design. Mine is music, especially 'Bob Marley'. I don't know why him for sure but I do know that when i have some work to do, I put a bit of 'Bob' on and it helps to clear my mind of distractions and really helps when I hit that dreaded 'WALL'. So here's some 'Marley' art that i really like.

Update meeting with Ray Wegrzyn (Parkinson's Equip)

On Thursday (20th November), we had another meeting with Ray Wegrzyn (Parkinson's equip leader) basically for him to look over the work we as a group have done so far. I don't think he was expecting quite as much as we had to show him but he was absolutely over the moon. When you are doing something for such a gentleman it becomes a lot easier to put a greater effort into the work.

Street art

I don't condone graffiti at all but I do like a bit of street art done well. Here is just a few I have found along the way and quite like:

8x8 Book launch event

Last Wednesday, (19th November), was the long awaited 8x8 book launch that i have previously blogged about. I finally have an illustration published. It was a great evening at the MMU where we got to meet the authors of the stories we had illustrated. I felt very proud of myself and my friends from uni who also got into the book.