Tuesday 22 February 2011

Remember me


Everyday at work I come across a website I am interested in.. but it's blocked! So I email myself a link. This isn't the best way to go about things so I thought I would start a bookmarking system on Google Bookmarks instead of filling up my own inbox.
Feel free to follow!
Remember me on Google Bookmarks

Thursday 17 February 2011

Beard Sea

This week I have been hand cutting a woodblock based on one of the doodles from our Co:Lab February Doodle Week. (Sketch below)

More about the doodle: The idea of doodle week is to come up with ideas everyday for possible prints. I stretched the rules a little bit - in that on doodle week Tuesday - I sketched the wavy lines which I wanted to be a rough sea, but wasn't sure where it was going so gave up for the day. When I revisited it on the Wednesday I instantly saw a beard - I must have been inspired a little bit by Up Helly Aa season and Vikings. So - Beard Sea!

For me the idea was screaming out to be a woodblock print so I got carving...

Inked up and ready to print:

The final prints:


Hip hip hooray!!

Buy Beard Sea on Etsy:

Wednesday 16 February 2011

Too Fast


Anyone looking out of their windows in the early hours of this morning may have been shocked to see a man running around waving his arms. I'd like to say thank you for not phoning the police, and it was not a mad man, but it was me... at work..?

Shetland Youth Theatre are putting on a production of "Too Fast", By Douglas Maxwell, directed by John Haswell - part of The National Theatre Connections. (more info and tickets)

Having only 24 hours to do the artwork for the promotional material, the director John Haswell and myself sat down and did some research into ideas for the poster. After a while we came up with the idea of using light graffiti to create a surreal, artificial look, mixed with a real world scene.

But with no stock photography on hand, the challenge was to get this ready overnight. At 4.30pm I ran over to the nearest DIY store, Frank Williamson's, and found a cheap LED torch. Just one of them ones that can connect to your keys.

The problem with this being a rushed project, I had already made plans for my Tuesday night. Leaving no time to work at night. My plan was to get up at 6am Wednesday to catch the last bit of darkness before sunrise at 7.41am. But came 3am I was wide awake in bed ready to go - so I just got up and started with some indoor (warm) tests.

I got the camera ready inside - and after I was happy with the technique I was ready to move outside and for more space to experiment and have fun.
A selection of some of the different options we had for the poster.







Co:Lab - Doodle Week 2

The second of our now monthly doodle weeks over on the co:lab blog.