Being a Media/Stash Rep is frustrating....

So, as part of my role as Media/Stash Rep for choir committee at uni, I have been tasked with designing some fun, casual t-shirts for us to wear for socials and societies sports etc...

I'm honestly quite enjoying this process but it is simultaneously making me want to pull my hair out trying to keep my ideas affordable.

The current favourite concept voted on by committee - that has ultimately been scrapped as it is also the most expensive to produce for choir - is this one:

I was annoyingly attached to the final black design so I have been much less motivated since being told it wasn't possible to make...

Typography

For the first three weeks of GC&I this year we have been studying typography as a gentle introduction to the course (and when I say gentle I mean it's still a lot of work but it wasn't overly complicated).

We went through processes such as cutting Alpha (Aa) characters out of different materials - foil, cling film and cardboard - as well as drawing them. 

We also studied the shape of the mouth while saying the word "handgloves"....

... and illustrated 6 words from a provided list, using only lowercase futura font.

The final part of the three weeks led to producing a logotype in a similar manner to the 6 illustrated words for "Design in an Era of Disruption".

First Year - Graphic Communication and Illustration

Finally back at Loughborough to study Graphic Communication and Illustration (aka Viscom or GC&I)!
I'm sincerely looking forward to the course and our first project is based around typography - boring to some, but I enjoy it :) It is a group project which is intense for a first project - especially as the turnaround is one week and we have to produce a typography matrix by the end...
However I am content with my group (aside from one member who we couldn't identify for 3 days of searching as he was determined not to be found.... we have him now though thankfully!)

For our first day of studio work though we were given very simple tasks of; draw a page of circles, draw a page of triangles and squares, draw letters, and draw a full upper and lower case alphabet...

(they never specified the english alphabet so I used Greek)

So I Work Freelance Now...

It's been a long while since I've had much of anything to post but to end my summer holiday I have been sent a couple of photos from Linguamatics' recruiting at Agile Cambridge - using my posters, fliers and cupcake decoration designs :)

I hope they get a good response!

I am continuing to work for Linguamatics on a freelance basis so I can hopefully do some projects around my uni work! It's definitely nicer being able to work from bed than sitting in an office all day...

The cats that came to tea...

They may be tabbies but they're, thankfully, not tigers... Although PJ (pale tabby) may disagree - she seems to think quite highly of herself and her claws most of the time!

I kept my distance and took a few photos with my Nikon D5200 - it's been too long since I've really done any photography, I'm glad I got something nice to photograph this evening :)

 They make a lovely pair.

So I got a summer job...

I did not realise how time-consuming a summer job could be but, thankfully for my bank account and CV, I was able to start a relevant and well-paid job a few weeks ago. I've been helping out the marketing team of my dad's company reformat some of their old literature.
It's been great! But also exhausting and quite a bit of art got put on hold....

However, despite being tired from work I've been able to do a few small things. One of the things I've done is an illustration for Loughborough students' magazine - Label. It's just four simple sketches to be used in a facebook cover photo for the section, but it was good to do something as simple as sketching I think.

Honestly... It took ages to finish those sound waves and I regretted choosing to draw that when I got about a third of the way through meticulously drawing those tiny little rectangles!!

Watercolour pastimes

So, while I am looking for a job (because, unfortunately I do need to earn money and get experience for life) I figured I would start sketching and using watercolour more.
Haven't done any fine pencil sketching or watercolour painting for a while, so I thought it would be good to get my eye in again! Starting small with a simple stag and I'm hoping to do something most days.

New LSU Sing! Website

So, I've officially become the media and stash rep for choir (LSU Sing!) at Loughborough. I was a bit late to the party, becoming part of committee about a month after the others, but I think I'm catching up now I've updated the whole website and graphics for their online profiles!

Unfortunately I'm still waiting on admin rights to the facebook and twitter profiles, but I've made use of my time with the Youtube, Google+ and official LSU Sing! page. 

All have an updated logo and new banner/cover images to update our image. (Though youtube still needs some work...) The main website itself has had a complete makeover, from being a single page - which was a complete mess of bold, pink and purple fonts, and was all a bit in your face... - to now having separate pages, to help organise us and make it easier for our new freshlings next year!!

Later on I'll be in charge of stash (hoodies and polos for everyone!) and I'm hoping to argue better hoodie quality this year as the old ones are a little bit cheap.... But then for students I suppose cheaper is preferable.

Ah well, hopefully I'll have a good run as media rep - it's all great experience for a future graphic designer/illustrator!!

A Level Memories

So I managed to make an unexpected visit to school yesterday evening, to see their private view of work from GCSE to A Level/IB work, and it was definitely strange...
Reminded me how much I miss the teachers as well (especially Mr Keeble who was probably a major factor in me choosing to study art)!
Either way I ended up looking through some of my old A Level work and thought I'd show off a couple of things I did at school

AS Level Work

(I have two other posts showing my A2 Coursework and Final Project as well)

Further AS Level Work
GCSE/Misc Work

 (below are etchings - right hand image using chine colle technique)

(below are hand-drawn monoprints)

(below is an oil painting on paper)

(below is a selection of mixed media pieces using a mixture of; ink, bleach, watercolour, chalk, charcoal, fine line pen and pencil)