a doodle a day

If I had the money I'd dress head to toe in Marimekko! They always seem to come up with the most creative ways of showing off latest fabrics too, watch out for the wobbly chinese cyclist...Browse Marimekko products & find out about their designers HERE .. I'm quite fond of Maija Louekari myself.

better late than never?

..continuing from the last post, 2 weeks ago... my new year's resolution is to be a better blogger.

Having chosen a location I then went about researching into the buildings history for inspiration. Googling and rummaging through directories at the records office I found out it had once been home to a number of electrical engineering companies but most successfully ran as a restaurant by a couple in the 80's... the wife had once been an air hostess and husband still a pilot who bought back food from local markets around the world to cook with.. mmm. With this in mind I went about observing social situations, people eating, drinking and talking as they once would have at Rhinegold.

Some initial drawings...

p.s. .. abit difficult to get people to stay still when they don't know your drawing them, hence the lack of faces! I also took alot sneaky photos.. i'd upload the funnies but would probably be breaking quite a few laws and go to jail.

5:33 am

..yawn. I put myself to bed extra early last night to be fresh for a big day at the studio, back-fired and I'm now sat awake 3 hours too soon. Wanting something productive to do without having to move from the comfort of my duve I remembered how badly I'd been treating my blog.. so here's the latest..

Back to DARTS..

Besides an ongoing drawing project we have only been given one brief this term, a commission project focusing on design for a specific location and client - the public. Given the option of a location around the university campus or to find our own, I choose to look for a place myself.. thinking the audience would be too obvious and difficult to come up with anything particularly new if I stuck to uni grounds. Walking around Nottingham I always notice how many buildings and shops are boarded up, I think it's such a shame and a waste of space and good architecture! With this in mind I decided to design artwork to fill boarded up windows and bring attention back to an area or particular building which I thought needed noticing again.

Chosen location

Rhinegold Resturant, 10 King Johns Chambers, Bridlesmith Gate

to be continued... this evening.. maybe..

The Debenhams music get's a little cringey after 12 minutes but worth a watch..

Contemporary Days: The Designs of Lucienne & Robin Day from Design Onscreen on Vimeo.

Latest likes..

Lucienne Day

Kate Morgan

Amigurumi

welcome back motivation..SO keen to get started with 2nd year after seeing these sketchbook examples from last years drawing module! All of my art materials (and scanner) are stored away in Notts at the moment whilst I find space for them here at home but I'm itching to sketch. Back pages of old a-level sketchbooks are having to do .. uploads when I have a scanner handy again.

A few Florence drawings/final piece examples from last term's embroidery project will do for now..

Incase you were wondering what on earth Decorative Arts is all about the third years have put together a film explaining all.. mint!

my kinda cribs episode... I want to grow up quicker and own a house to decorate.

I have been neglecting the ol' blog for a while, deadlines keeping me busy. What I've been up to...

Ceramics

Changing my mind at least 3 times about what I wanted to make as a final outcome for this project didn't seem helpful at the time, however, it did teach me ALOT about clay which on reflection made it worthwhile. Originally I wanted to make a series of napkin rings.. sacked that idea after realizing it'd take me about 5 minutes and wasn't really that challenging. Next I decided on making 3 plates which would stack to form a cake stand.. things were going well until the clay started to dry out way too quickly whilst I was building. Cracks at 2am the morning before the kiln went on wasn't ideal.. lesson learnt, I decided to smash up everything I'd done over the last 3 days and start over. In an attempt to fix things I sketched anything that came into my head for an hour and ended with some pot designs I liked. I thought about what it was I'd enjoyed doing over the last 2 tester weeks and picked the teacup I'd made as inspiration. I'm happy with what I've made now, although the medium sized pot is my least favourite...

Wood

Magazine rack is fini! I wouldn't actually pick this for my own home.. I think it looks a little too clunky.. if that's a word. Similar to ceramics I learnt a lot from this project. Having not thought about anything mathematical since my GCSE's this was tough.. you HAVE to work to the closest mil with woodwork, the technicians were a huge help. The two techniques I ended up using the most were routing (similar to using a jigsaw but involves making templates to follow) and woodturning which is tougher than it looks, once you've got the knack though it's quite fun.

Glass

I've just about completed this project, after a bit of drilling and gluing I will (fingers crossed) have a working glass clock. I kept the design quite simple as 8 days really isn't that much time to get anything substantial done, particularly when relying on kilns and glass orders. I started with about 60 random shapes/colours of bullseye glass and narrowed them down to those which I thought complimented each other. Next, I photographed various arrangements and picked my final design to fuse together in the kiln. For the base I cut out a circle of float glass and sandblasted a basic clock design onto it.. voila!