New painting : The Lizzi show

This is my latest painting. It's my friend Lizzi.

She's my most depicted friend in my art work.

I think this is partly because she lives the closest to me, so I can quickly pop round to get a photo or draw her, and partly because of the hair.

Here's some of my previous Lizzi art.

This was a drawing I did for my A-level art work.

Lizzi sat for me and I think we put a The OC dvd on to keep her occupied.

This was another A level piece.

We had a lot of fun taking photos for this piece.

Every so often we talk about doing an updated version now that her shoe collection is way bigger.

This was a piece I did for fun to experiment with adding textures on the painting.

See what I mean about the hair?

This painting was done during my first year at university.

This is the only painting Lizzi's actually asked me to do, a portrait of her and her boyfriend for his birthday.

I think I should start painting my other friends or I might start getting accused of favouritism.

This Week I...

This week I've either been modelling...

...or painting.

Can't wait to show y'all when this one's finished.

And I've been watching The George Jones Show, because I need the education.

Though I've never really listened to his music - not surprising since I've only been listening to country music for about 5 years - a lot of the artists I listen to did and were inspired by him.

Plus, Billy Ray in 1998? Lol.

Matchstick Pendants

When I was at uni I bought a bag of these wooden matchsticks one weekend thinking they would be useful for my model making, only to find that my friend Natalie had bought me the same thing.

I thought it was about time I did something with my abundance of matchsticks.

Ok, this project only used 18 of them, but it's a start.

I started experimenting with shapes that I could make using the sticks, and UHU'd them together.

I also added some E6000 to make sure they didn't fall apart.

I painted them black, added a jump ring, and hey presto; geometric pendant.

I think they look pretty cool.

I picked black because my outfits tend to be black + another colour, so I figured they pendants would go with most things I wear.

I don't know how long they'll last, because they are just glued together, but they're doing all right for now.

My own Disney colouring pages

 Here are some true facts:

1) Colouring is fun

2) High-fiving Disney characters and trying to capture it on camera is fun

So I present to you the 'High-5 Disney Character Colouring pages' (it's a working title)

I used these photos from my trip to Disneyland last year of my friend Lizzi high-fiving, or trying to high-five, Disney characters.

Minnie Mouse was loving it. The Queen of Hearts on the other hand totally blanked Lizzi. Not cool!

I put the photos into a programme called Revelation Art. Sure, there's probably a way to do this on Photoshop but I don't have that on my computer.

I layered a blank page over the photo and used 'onion skins' to alter the transparency. Then I used the 'simple spline' tool to draw curved lines, tracing the picture.

This is the same method I used to make my Colour Me Magnets

I think these are so funny, and now I just need to take Lizzi back to Disneyland to get a full set!

Yay colouring!

This Week I...

This week I had another dentist appointment to tighten up my braces.

A danger of my dentist being right behind Oxford Street is that often wander into H&M before my appointment.

This time I wandered out with these shoes! They were reduced down to only £3 so there was no way I could leave them in the shop.

I also helped my sister move, which included fitting in to the cupboards. Standard.

And the rest of the week was spent working on a miniature.

Gotta keep my skills in check.

Are you filming?

Just a video for you today. Enjoy!

This is something I've wanted to put together for a while, and finally got around to doing it.

I had to look through 3 years of videos, but that was fun.

It's a lot of people asking the same question.

My highlights are:

* My old housemate Lucy getting scared by a knock at the window

* My sister doing 'Mr Napkin Head'

* And my friend Robyn's observations at the begin and end of the video. Well Robyn, it isn't just you who says it.

Maybe I should just buy a camcorder and then there'd be no question as to whether I was filming.

But then I wouldn't get these laughs.

Magnify Exhibition

I currently have some of my work on display at the Letchworth Arts Centre.

They had a gap in their calender for April and offered me the space.

I'm showing six of my miniature models.

I've put them on plinths and arranged them so they can be walked around as much as possible.

It's like a creepy model village!

I had thought about putting them on the shelf but I like them on plinths better.

It also means a lot less drilling into the wall.

I was given the cafe gallery which has some nice wall space, but they only work for 2D art.

So instead of displaying some of the my paintings which would have been unrelated to my miniatures I invited my friend Natalie to exhibit with me.

Natalie is my friend from uni, we shared a studio space, and I thought her miniature portraits would work well with my miniature models.

We even made it into the paper.

This Week I...

This week I had a job interview with an artist to help him paint tiny figures so I painted some of my Dad's model railway people as practice.

(Spoiler: I didn't get the job. The search continues)

My sister saw the drawings I did of my friends and requested one of her, so I started work on that.

On Friday night some friends and I went to see Josh Widdecome and Charlie Baker do stand-up at the Radlett Centre. Hilarious times indeed.

New Miniature

The wall I showed you earlier was for this new miniature piece.

Like most of my other pieces it has a dark narrative.

The wall is screwed to the base which is two layers of MDF; one for the road and one for the pavement, making this probably my sturdiest piece ever. 

The road is cork as it has a similar texture to tarmac. It painted it grey and then went over it will chalk and charcoal. I also dug at it with a craft knife to create cracks and potholes.

The hedge round the corner is made from another kind of foam with dried tea and mixed herbs glued to it to create a leafy texture, which has then been painted all kinds of green.

I weathered the bouquets of flowers I'd made by crushing them a little and dripping brown paint water on them.

What do you think?

Illustration inspiration

I recently found this image online. After a bit of digging I found it's by illustrator and graphic journalist Wendy Macnaughton.

I really liked the style and to try my own version I decided to use images of my friends.

(I've blurred out some of the words just because I don't know how much personal information my friends would want on the internet)

I traced the images from photos using my light box. Yes, I traced them. I wanted to get straight to the colouring and not spend ages trying to get the faces looking right. So I used tracing as a shortcut.

I coloured them in using coloured pencils.

I've never really done realistic colouring with pencils before, but i think I'm getting the hang of it.

Though apologies to my friends if you think I made your face look wonky or discoloured!

Coming out from the faces I wrote my friends' full names, their birthdays and things I associate with each of them.

Next I want to try something with more words so they're blocks of text coming out from the image, so many something with song lyrics. 

This Week I...

... tidied and organized my bedroom and my art space.

What a difference labelling makes!

I started a new painting. This is just a part of it.

Can you guess what it is yet?

On Saturday my friends and I took a spontaneous trip to Wimpole Hall, as one of my friends volunteers there.

The phone invite went something like;

'Do you want to come to Wimpole Hall with us?'

'Sure, when?'

'We'll pick you up in two minutes!'

It was an actual sunny day so I decided to leave my coat in the car.

I know, a risky move, but I did it anyway.

How was your week?

Check out my wall

After my Scale Model  Making course I wanted to use one of the techniques I learnt so I made this wall.

Bricks I've done before, but flint cobbles? New territory time.

Here's how I did it

I took this photo by balancing the camera on my wrist. Fun fact.

The key is Sculpey!

Mark out the pattern in a lump of Sculpey.

I also molded the back of the Sculpey to fit my fingers for easy grippin'.

Once the Sculpey has been baked it's ready to imprint into the kapa-line foam.

This stuff is amazing.

When I tried the Sculpey on a test piece I may have leapt about exclaiming, 'It worked! It worked!'

I'd already stuck the foam to a piece of MDF so then I built the rest of the wall around it; the tiles on the top and the brick pillar on the end.

I painted the entire thing a mortar colour, making sure to get into all of the cracks.

Then I used a dry brush to paint the stones as this would pick up the pattern.

When I was in 6th form my Dad built a brick wall in our back garden. For that time I was pretty much an abandoned child cos he loved that wall more than me. Then my friends got in on the act and one time came over to my house just to hang out with the wall. They even brought a brick in to school dressed up like me, and said they preferred brick-Lisa (yup, we were the cool kids in school, obvs). It was a tough time.

But now I get it. I love this tiny wall like a child and I'm proud of everything it's accomplished. 

Geez, I need a job.

Acme building

The Acme building is finished!

You can see progress of this project here and here.

I put a Kenny Chesney poster in the window because that's what was there when I saw the building in person.

I did my best to distress the brick work like the original building.

I think these are the best windows I've ever made. Might have something to do with using a super sharp scalpel for a change. 

The the roads signs I printed out the images from the internet (finding the right ones took a lot longer than I thought it would) and taped them to a thin brass rod which I stuck in holes that I'd drilled in the MDF base.

Now I'm off to put this in an exhibition with a few of my other pieces!