The Sunday Head****

Thanks to our friends at the ever-reliable Mighty Optical Illusions for this week's head-scratcher.

This is Horizons, a work by Neil Dawson, photographed in a large private art park in New Zealand. Here it is from another angle.

Hang on... the bits that were at the left are now at the right but how come the bits that were at the back aren't now at the front?

Surely this is just drawn on the photos? No, it's definitely a sculpture. Here it is from a third angle.

Now the shaded bits are much bigger but the unshaded bit looks just like it did in photo 1!

Ah... it's that word "sculpture" that's throwing you, isn't it? Sculpture automatically makes you think in 3 dimensions, especially something like this with the creases and shading implying the shape folds back on itself.

Actually, it's as flat as a pancake. It's just steel tubing and mesh, stuck on top of a hill. The clue is in the trees.

Thanks to Matt Brubeck finding an aerial shot of the park and posting it on The Grip blog. I've added some clues as to roughly where the photos must have been taken. Once you can orientate yourself around that, you can start to make sense of what you're seeing.

These are very clever photos of a fascinating sculpture. In fact I think the photos would work better than seeing the real thing!

PS: Sorry I'm rubbish at identifying trees!

The Octopus On Artylizer

This week I've set up an account with Artylizer, the micro-blogging network for anyone who works with art, design or fashion.

The site uses a Twitter-style system for short messages (up to 333 characters), with the bonus that you can add graphics to them. This makes it perfect for creating a mini-portolio where clients can see a lot of your work at a glance.

Also you get the usual social networking facilities of making friends, subscribing to other people's feeds and discovering lots of great new artists.

There's no mistaking who that yellow & pink belongs to!

I'm currently in the process of archiving all my best old work on there so I hope you'll check there often to find out even more about what I do.

If you're a creative person too, why not set up a free profile of your own, show your talents to the world and let's hook up!

My Artylizer page.

Artylizer on Facebook.

Spring Fair 2010 - Part 2: Beef Up Your Walls

The thing I like to do most when I visit Spring and Autumn Fairs is to just wander up and down the aisles and take in an overview of what the season's design trends are. Last autumn was brightened up by huge colourful flowers. The flavour for this season is...

...beef.

It seemed like every other art stall was overflowing with paintings of cows.

Spotty cows...

Brown Cow? by Jennifer Brereton at Collier and Dobson, prints from £105

...hairy cows...

I Spy by Thuline at Alpha 1 Marketing, £99

...cheeky cows...

Friesian Orange by James Bartholomew at The Mill House Gallery, prints from £95

...moody cows.

The Black Angus by Angela Davidson, prints from £50

If cows aren't your pick of the farmyard, there were plenty of other tasty animals to choose from.

Cocktail by Mary Ann Rogers at Alpha 1 Marketing, £66

Grazing Sheep by Timmy Mallett - yes, THAT Timmy Mallett - at Buckingham Fine Art Publishers

Foxes were also popular...

The Fox by Gary Benfield at Buckingham Fine Art Publishers, giclée print £153

...hares even more so.

Brown Hare by Nigel Artingstall, £395

On The Run by Kate Osborne at Artreo, giclée print £82.25

But mostly it was cows.

Cliffs and Cows by Michael Embden at Artreo, giclée print from £70

All images are for illustrative purposes only and link to the site of origin. All copyrights respected.

Dusting Off The Archives

I've got artwork floating around on various sites around cyberspace, so this is a good place to pull them all together, either linking to them or reposting them for your benefit.

You'll notice I've added a DeviantShare widget, which you can see scrolling away on the left of the page. This has samples from the college work I've posted on my DeviantArt portfolio. Click on the widget's link and you'll be able to see the rest. It's a great showcase of the different styles I can create and I've added quite detailed descriptions of my working methods. You can also buy many of the images printed onto canvas, mugs, mousemats and other products.

I also have some personal projects archived on my cobwebby old MySpace page, so I'm bringing the best of them across here. A group of them are T-shirt designs, which I'll keep for their own post. Here are the "bits and bobs", personal projects and one-offs.

WATERGLADE

Photo restoration - personal project

Adobe PhotoShop & Nova Art Explosion clip art, 2003

I was lent this postcard by my auntie in 2003, who had been quoted a small fortune to get it restored professionally.

It shows an allotment by a local pub called The Waterglade and is dated 1911. The woman and the man on the right are my mum's parents, and the baby is another one of my many aunties.

Tatty, torn, faded and stained by old Sellotape, the only way to rescue it was to hack it to pieces using PhotoShop (I think I was running version 5 at the time) and recreate it in the spirit of the original. The sky, path and bush on the left hand side were taken from clip art and blended in.

The postcard was a black and white photo hand-coloured in a limited palette. Therefore I had to reduce the image to greyscale, brighten it up and colour it all in again. The colours had to be a flat wash of one shade, matching the original palette as closely as possible.

Minor creases were easily ironed out using the Clone tool and the text was recreated over the original.

The final piece was printed on good quality photo paper, framed and hung with love on my auntie's wall. :)

415

Illustration - online art project

PhotoShop & Bryce, 2008

In April 2008, a guy named Adam Box launched The Count High Project, with the aim of making a film. It was to consist of illustrations of numbers, running sequentially from 1 up to however many submissions he could collect in exactly 12 months.

Anyone was welcome to have a go. All you had to do was Email Adam and he would send you your number (issued in strict first-come-first-served order). You could then illustrate it any way you wanted - drawing, painting, modelling, photography or just scribbling it on a piece of paper. Talent wasn't the important thing, he just wanted to see the variety of ideas and people (from professional designers to schoolkids) his wacky project would attract.

The target was 100,000 but I don't believe he received anywhere near that. Indeed the website disappeared before the 12 month deadline expired. I still like my contribution though, so here it is.

I was assigned 415 which, when I researched it, turned out to be a very boring number! The most interesting thing I could find out was it's the telephone area code for San Francisco. So somehow that led to this earthquake-inspired illustration.

I created the ground and sky in the Bryce 3D landscape generating software. I'm not an experienced user though and I couldn't find my manual. I'd forgotten how to import a greyscale image and turn it into a landscape, so instead I did the 415-shaped holes in PhotoShop. Adding graduated browns and a grain effect gave a convincing 3D appearance.

HUNGARIAN PULI - A BEGINNER'S GUIDE

Personal bit of daftness

PhotoShop, 2007

Finally for now, something I did in one of my silly moods! I'm a bit obsessed with Hungarian Pulis and I found this amazing photo on Wikipedia. I thought people might like a bit of help working out what it was!

The Sunday Head****

This amazing painting has been in the newspapers this week, together with photos of how it was made.

If you missed out on seeing it, head on over to this page at the Mighty Optical Illusions site and you'll see exactly how it was done.

The painting is the work of Craig Tracy and here are some of his other masterpieces. Without knowing how the images were created, these will really make you question exactly what you're looking at.

Coil

Glory

Immaculate

Kaleido

Schizo

If you have a look at Craig's website, you'll find fascinating insights into his motivations and technique. There are also plenty of behind-the-scenes photos and videos which will help you make sense of it all. Even then, you still might not believe what you're seeing is true.

The Sunday Head****

Today, a celebration of the king of the pavement head****, Julian Beever.

Since the 1990s, Julian has shifted the image of pavement drawing from being just chalk graffiti done by starving students into an amazing new artform. His photo realistic skills and ability to render distorted perspective (oblique anamorphosis, to give it its technical name) have propelled him into being one of the best-loved artists of the 21st century. His popularity has been helped no end by the power of the internet, as people emailed photos of his work to their friends, unable to believe what they were looking at or how the effect was achieved.

As it's just chalk, his work has a fleeting nature to it. He often has to erect a canopy whilst working to protect it from the rain, and once revealed it's at the mercy of the elements and pedestrians' feet (who'd want to walk over it, though?) The work can only be preserved and appreciated at its best through photography, as the perspective is designed to be viewed from just one angle and Julian can often be seen checking his progress through his viewfinder (having erected his camera on a tripod before starting work) to make sure he's getting exactly the effect he needs. Watching the artist at work, though, is like a performance in itself, and there are plenty of "How Do They Do That" videos on YouTube, including this one:

As you will have noticed if you watched that video, Julian's work lends itself brilliantly to viral marketing, and a lot of his work these days is promoting well known brands. You tend not to notice the advert in there and just want all your friends to see how amazing the art is.

So here's to Julian Beever, ****ing with your head in more ways than one.

Advent Calendar - December 19th

Some little works of art for you today. I've actually had to put some effort into this one, so apologies for the lateness.

Click the... oh you know how it works by now.

Work In Progress - Button Bags 1

So, after I was rudely interrupted by gorgeous sci-fi logos (oh and don't get me started on the new Will Young video - wowza!) it's time to get down to what this blog's really about - discussing my latest projects.  You know the sort of thing: ideas, inspirations, plans, progress, snags, hopes and fears (aargh, enough with the Will thoughts!)

They say you should look for a gap in the market, and I've been looking at making something that everyone is being encouraged to carry with them these days - reusable shopping bags.

I found this site, carrierbagshop.co.uk, which sells a wide range of blank bags.  I bought 5 samples of their cotton shopping carrier bags and I'm currently experimenting with decorating them with buttons, beads and sequins.  Then I'm going to carry them round town, firstly to test out how well they hold up to being manhandled, but it'll also give me a yummy warm glow to walk about showing off my work!  I'd love it if someone stopped me and asked me where I got it from, in which case I could say I made it and give them my card, but we're all far too British for that to happen.

What I love about this idea is that each bag would be entirely unique.  The bags cost just a few pence, as do the decorations.  The real cost of the item would be the labour needed to create it.  That's where I fall down because I always think people would be put off paying too much if I was to charge the full hourly rate for the time I spent making it.  So more research needed into similar items on the market and how much they sell for, methinks.

The nice thing about this product, though, is I can make it in my spare time, watching the telly.  It's not like I need to devote a 9-5 career in an office with loads of specialist equipment.

So here are the designs I'm working on (click on the photos to see the details more clearly).  Now you can see why I'm a bit obsessed with Union Jacks:

As well as the red sequins in the diagonals, there will be red buttons in the St George's cross part and blue beads/sequins/small buttons in the triangles.  The white parts will be left blank, to let the design breathe.

I've been sewing the sequins on in short horizontal rows on this bag.  For the next one I'll try long diagonal rows and see which one I prefer.

This format also lends itself to two other backgrounds, onto which I've just tacked the shape for now:

The blue bag will have the red and white sections filled in and the red bag will have the blue and white sections filled in.

I can extend this idea to many other flags, providing they're quite a simple geometric design.  So that can be tricolours such as France, Germany and several other European countries, crosses like the Scandinavian flags, or those which consist of diagonals, circles, etc.  If I can find some star shaped buttons of an appropriate size, that would allow me to tackle other countries such as the USA and Australia.  More complex flags could be a possibility if I could find sew-on motifs for the country's crest or whatever it is I need.

My second design is a heart which is a simple shape but which would be very eyecatching when you see it in the street:

I've just put a line of pink buttons on for now because I thought it might look a bit flat if I did it all in red.  So the pink acts as highlights, I'll add some dark red/purple down the opposite edges as shadows, and fill the rest in bright red.

The final design in my test batch is a flower based on a Dandelion I created using the Bodoni Objects font at college:

 

Bodoni Dandelion by ~ValWoodhouse on deviantART

Bodoni Dandelion: The Bag.

This one will be slightly different because it's following a line rather than filling in a shape.  So for this I'll probably be more consistent about the size of buttons I use.  As you can see, it's based around 2 large fancy buttons for the base of the stalk and the centre of the flower.  The rest will be just be small green buttons for the stalk and leaves, with yellow, pink, orange, red, purple or whatever else takes my fancy for the petals.  Each petal will hopefully be 2 small buttons with a matching medium sized button in the middle.

Except for the flags, other designs can be put onto any colour background.  I just happened to have ordered samples in black and natural.

One of the joys of creating these bags is the randomness of sticking my hand in the button bag and seeing what comes out.  There's so much geometry and planning that goes into the designs, I like something totally unpredictable to balance it out.  Some parts, such as getting into small corners, are dictated by the size I need to fill.  Other than that it's just going to be the fun of letting the pattern do its own thing.

My red buttons, including teddy bears and ladybirds off my niece's old baby clothes - aah!

Once I've created the bag I need to test its durability.  As I mentioned, I'll be using it to do the job it was intended for, so I can check how well it works as a shopping bag.  I'm a bit concerned about the stitching on the inside of the bags, this may snag or fray with use, leading to decorations falling off.  For that reason I'm contemplating adding a lining to the bag once it's decorated.  This means I'll have to source some material - either full sized pieces or maybe scraps which I could turn into a patchwork.  This has the bonus of adding to the recycled, eco-friendly feel of the bag, but has the downside that it's extra work and therefore extra labour costs to pass on!

As for the decorations themselves, for now I'm buying some cheap stuff from the greetings card shop.  Strictly speaking they're for use in paper craft so it remains to be seen how durable they are.  If the idea takes off I may splash out on some metal sequins, in particular.  (I had to test out how well those red plastic sequins coped with hand washing, when the white bag had a close encounter with some ham and beetroot on toast.  A couple of them got a little creased but the bag stands up to some gentle cleaning, I'm glad to say!)  Other than that, job lots of buttons and beads will serve me fine.  Ebay seems to be the best place to get them from, a lovely big random bag for a couple of quid.

Ideally, though, I would love to be able to use recycled materials as much as possible.  So if you have a tatty shirt with reusable buttons you're chucking out, a box of beads or some old sequins that could be given a new life, please get in touch with me and I'd be happy to take them off your hands.  I can't pay a lot but I'd certainly refund your postage.  In particular, I need them in bright/dark red, white, royal/navy blue, yellow, green, pink and purple.

If anyone has any experience in bag making or sewing in general (i.e. more than me, which is none) I'd appreciate some feedback about my ideas.  Any tips on how to make them practical, rather than just a work of art, would be especially welcome!  If you can point me in the direction of similar products so I can check how much they retail for, that would be very useful too.  Of course, if you like what you see and want to place an order or discuss how to take the idea further, I would do the cyber equivalent of kissing your feet, whatever that may be.

The comment box is down there somewhere, waiting for you.  Thanks!

College Was An Education

Having spent over 10 years doing freelance desk top publishing, I thought that would be my niche on the Graphic Design course.  As it turned out, I found that my DTP was actually hampered by various bad habits I'd picked up over the years.  To my surprise, I mostly enjoyed doing the more illustrative briefs.  I tackled a lot of different techniques and, although I wouldn't say I have a signature style, I do like stuff that's brightly coloured and geometric or uses creative typography.  I have a quirky sense of humour which I like to shoehorn in as much as possible, but I also enjoy projects that tackle hard-hitting messages.

I'd already been using Adobe PhotoShop since 1994, so I'm really proficient in that.  At college I got introduced to Adobe Illustrator and now I find that's my software of choice.  During my desk top publishing career I used Quark XPress but their licences were too expensive for the college, so they used Adobe InDesign.  It may have been more convenient, but I don't think it equipped us well enough, as most job advertisements specify Quark.  My knowledge of Quark is rusty, having used nothing more advanced than version 5, but I'm confident that I could get back up to speed with it pretty quickly if required.

We did an introduction to web design, so I know the basics of Dreamweaver, Flash and ImageReady.  We didn't really get into HTML though, or look at anything more complex, so I don't feel well equipped to go into a job in that field, unless it was something pretty junior that I could learn the rest of the process from.  I'd still like to do some web work of my own, such as an online portfolio and shop.

If I had to pick a weak spot I'd say it was 3D.  It always has been.  I could never get the hang of woodwork and metalwork during the brief introduction we got of them during my 1st year at senior school ("There you are girlies, that's a chisel.  Now get back to the kitchen and don't call us sexist.")  At college we did one 3D packaging project.  I had a great idea but it kept dropping to bits so don't expect to find that in my portfolio.

My freehand drawing's also a bit too rusty.  Surprisingly for an arts course they didn't actually teach traditional art techniques, they just expected us to know them (although the younger students who came up through the National Diploma course did get that training).  I'd like to get back up to speed with my drawing and painting, because I've got some ideas that will require it.  For now, though, I find I have to prioritise my digital work because it's quicker to do and I can easily upload it to whichever site it's aimed at.

I'm also dabbling in a bit of sewing.  Again I'm no expert but I do enjoy the tactile nature of fixing on a button or doing various embroidery stitches.

Val's On The Blog (OK that's the lame joke out of my system)

Hello and welcome to my shiny new blog.  A place of creativity, positive thinking, ambition and hope for the future.

Which is why I'm going to start off with a bloomin' good rant.

I'm good, dammit.

Talented, creative, hardworking, likeable, reliable, witty, intelligent, articulate, sympathetic, a quick learner, an all round good egg and the most gobsmackingly beautiful female never to have won Miss World.

Okay, one of the above is a lie.  But all the rest hold true.

So why is it that I haven't had any work for over 12 months?  (I'm not going to count that crummy typing job that expected me to be on call 24 hours a day and have the speed of some sort of Typomatic 3000 robot.)

Cue wibbly-wobbly effect as I take you back to the start of the story...

"Val, you're a good typist, fancy helping me out with a job?"

Back in 1991, those were the fateful words from my friend that started me out on my love affair with desk top publishing on the Apple Mac.  The job happened to be a monthly circular for the local council that my friend had ended up doing as part of his community arts work,  but he wasn't very fond of it and was keen to pass it on.  I liked the smell of his money, managed to perfect the job within a couple of tries and very soon found myself handling the whole account.

I got on brilliantly with my client.  He got me more work from his own team and also passed me on to another department who gave me a welcome couple of months' work every year.

So that's how the 90's passed.  A small but loyal band of clients, keeping me busy enough for my liking and really appreciating what I did.  It wasn't a spectacular career, but I made a reasonable living.  The wolf always kept well away from the door.

I can hold my hands up now and admit I got complacent.  I should have spent more time advertising for new customers, but I didn't.  So when all my word-of-mouth work dried up around the same time I struggled to get anything else because I'd learned all my skills on the job and hadn't got the bit of paper to say I was qualified to do it.

Bills needed to be paid so, when my last client did the dirty on me in quite spectacular fashion, I couldn't afford to carry on and I turned to the good old world of office temping.

Again, I didn't have qualifications for the job, just loads of typing practice, the ability to pick up new skills quickly and a massive dollop of common sense.  Soon I was one of the most in-demand temps in town.  Someone who could turn up, get the hang of what was being asked and get on with it.  For one job, I got hired for a day and ended up staying 15 months.  For another, I was the only temp who didn't quit after a couple of days.

Temping was a nice compromise.  When I wasn't earning the corporate buck, I could stay at home, do arty things and plan to get back into the world I really loved.  Eventually, though, family difficulties meant I had to get something more reliable and I found myself in a permanent part time job with The Government Department That Shall Remain Nameless.

The job itself was fine... when I was allowed to do it.  In the 13 long months I was there, it changed completely, to the point where we were expected to sign new job descriptions.  Life was one long diktat passed down from On High, the staff turnover rate was astronomical and any sign of initiative from an underling like me was stamped on like a bug.

When it got to the point where Those On High told over 20 of us they couldn't guarantee where we were going to be working or what job we'd be doing in a couple of months' time, more than half of us put in our resignations.

I'd always planned to leave at that point, anyway.  I wasn't enjoying the job, I desperately wanted to go back to college and I'd saved up enough money to cushion me a bit through the course.  It was August and I wouldn't get another chance for 12 months so I took the plunge and enrolled at my local college for a HND Graphic Design course.

Going back to full time education was a daunting prospect.  How would I get on with all those youngsters?  I'd come from a workplace where I was considered something of an outsider, the arty one who didn't have a lot in common with anyone else so they didn't exactly bust a gut to find ways to relate to me.

I'm glad to say that, very quickly, I realised going on this course was the best thing I could have ever done.  It was a brilliant group to work with, everyone was really accepting and I wasn't even the only mature student.  I loved all the projects and considered myself to be a pretty good all-rounder.  It was so liberating to get my creative juices flowing properly again!

I'll skim over what I learnt for now as I think that deserves a chapter in itself.  Let's just say that, 2 years later I emerged, armed with a HND in Graphic Design, sharper, more confident, totally clued up, inspired and ready to take on the world.

Meanwhile, over in America...

A bunch of greedy bankers (in both the literal and rhyming slang senses of the word) were busy lending money they couldn't afford to people they knew wouldn't be able to pay it back.

The credit crunch (and which smart alec thought of THAT name?  It doesn't soften the blow if you make it sound like a biscuit) had well and truly taken hold.  Jobs like Graphic Design were now seen as a luxury and it was totally an employer's market.  They could pick and choose who they wanted and the one thing they could insist on was experience.  So how, pray, are you supposed to get that precious 2 years' studio experience if you can't find anyone willing to take on someone straight out of college?

I always had the feeling I was going to find it an ageist industry so I never really set my heart on getting into some swanky top-end design agency.  I now get the feeling I fall between two stools, having done both design and admin.  If I apply for a design job, they could be thinking, "if she was THAT good she wouldn't have had to spend time office temping and going back to college in her 40s."  If I apply for an admin job, they could be thinking, "her heart won't be in it, she'd rather be designing."

The truth is, the one thing I've NEVER lost faith in is my ability as an artist.  I go back to my opening statement.  I'm good, dammit.  I'm not arrogant when I say that, I'm confident.  I know I could walk into any of those jobs and do them brilliantly.  I can say with 100% certainty if only someone would show a little bit of faith in me, they would never regret it.

So whenever I send off an application and never hear back about an interview (because companies are so rude these days - if I've taken time to craft you my best letter, it's the least you could do to mail-merge a standard "thanks but no thanks" rejection to allow me to move on), all I can do is chant out the mantra...

...it's...

...their...

...loss.

I don't want to be sitting here waiting for someone to embrace me to their corporate bosom.  I want to be DOING something.  I've been self employed before, I'd love to do it again.  The thing is, I've a debt the size of a small African country so it's impossible for me to get a loan or take too many gambles.

So that's why I'm here.  This is me doing something.  This is where I'll be telling you what I'm doing and you, hopefully, will respond with encouragement and suggestions and cold hard cash.

Next time I'll tell you a bit more about what I can do, and in the top left hand corner of this page you'll find details of where you can see and buy some stuff already.  For now, I've taken up enough of your precious time.

Rant over.  Thank you for reading.  Have a nice day.