Overdue Update #3: And the rest

And so to the rest of my life. Whilst I am spending a large amount of my time working to save myself some money, I've been preoccupying myself with various little endeavours so I'll share with you some of the main ones.

I have spent a lot of my time making jewellery (including the bracelets for Always Present.) Soon, I hope I'll feel comfortable enough to open an Etsy shop; I just want a tiny bit more practice! Most of the items I have been making have been earrings:

Lego Darth Vader and Yoda earrings.

Lego Gandalf and Gimli earrings, modelled by yours truly.

A selection of items. Owls often feature.

I've been indulging in nail art too, mainly Pacman and moustaches.

As a present to her, I painted Charlesworth with her cat, Salem.

And here are two little sloths, because I very much like sloths.

I have also been knitting. I am gradually getting better at knitting. Hopefully I won't become too preoccupied with knitting that I will neglect this space for too long again.

Overdue Update #2: Hallé music times

In the midst of all the exciting arts and crafts happenings, the Hallé got back in touch with me. They had invited alumni members of the Youth Choir to take part in their performance and recording of Elgar's The Apostles and I said yes in a heartbeat. After a few weeks of intensive rehearsal, we performed the piece at the beginning of May with the majority of the recording coming from the concert performance.

Section from The Apostles that was solely Hallé Youth Choir girls. Once again, I was an Alto 2 :)

It was so wonderful to be back in the Hallé, back singing such challenging and beautiful music, back under Sir Mark Elder's instruction. The concert was well praised, including this 5 star review from the Guardian. If the promise of the CD in September wasn't enough to excite me, the Hallé then got back in touch to say that they had been invited to perform The Apostles at the Royal Albert Hall as Prom 37 in this year's BBC Proms.

I don't need to tell you how excited I was. I'd performed with the Hallé in two BBC Proms in the Royal Albert Hall in 2009 and they were the best nights of my life. I took part in the concert and it was magical. Here I am onstage as rehearsals were about to begin:

Here we are during rehearsals. I am the head next to the line of squares on the organ:

Lovingly nicked from the Hallé's Facebook page.

Also lovingly nicked from the Hallé's Facebook page.

The Prom was a joy. The recording of The Apostles was released in September:

Now Gramophone critics have cited the recording as the CD of 2012. Pretty exciting. A couple of weeks ago, the Hallé were back in touch again to ask if I wished to take part in a performance in February and then the Youth Ensembles' 10th anniversary shortly after that. Also pretty exciting (this is an understatement.)

Overdue Update #1: Arts and Crafts

Well, hello there. I realise I've neglected this little corner of the internet for a while and for that I apologise. I've been meaning to inform you of these things but then other things have got in the way, so here they are now. First up, arts and crafts.

For three months earlier this year, I was the Arts and Crafts tutor at Stockdales in Sale. I took two weekly classes where I set projects for people with varying disabilities. It was rather hectic but so rewarding and a lot of fun when the projects went well. I often made some of the projects too in order to help direct the sessions so here are some of the things we got up to:

We decorated little plant pots and made paper flowers to put in them.

We decorated birdhouses to encourage birds to visit our gardens.

We made tissue paper collages of various animals and shapes. This is Frank the Frog (his full name is Francis.)

We painted using animal stencils and I made a rather vibrant wallpaper pattern with the tiger painting I did.

We made masks and this is how I greeted my mum when she came home that day.

We also made Jubilee crowns, Jubilee and Olympic decorations and one of my personal favourite projects: The Little Book of Me. I asked everyone to draw different things on pieces of paper of equal size, including a self-portrait, something that is their favourite colour, their favourite weather/season, their favourite belonging, etc. We then tied the eight drawings together and that became their Little Book of Me; they could hand the book to anyone and we would learn lots of things about them. I also ended up in the summer play as Simon Cowell, as you do.

Stockdales was a great experience but unfortunately quite a trek for me to get to (a good 90 minutes on public transport) so I had to leave. However, for the past six and a half months I've been volunteering at Mahdlo, the new youth centre in Oldham. My colleage, Debbie, and I have been named as a creative force to be reckoned with and keep blitzing out some pretty awesome arts and crafts with the young people at the centre. These projects have included this Eid Mubarak banner which yours truly designed:

In the past couple of months, Debbie and myself have been supporting a few Arts and Crafts regulars in setting up their own little gift shop enterprise, Always Present. We had our first sale at the Halloween parties where we made profit straightaway which not many businesses can say! We were so proud! I spent a lot of time making bracelets to sell for those parties:

For Christmas, we designed some Christmas cards and had them printed professionally. They turned out a treat and the office snapped up nearly half our stock before they went on sale! I am responsible for the snowmen card (which was based on my lead worker's idea.)

The cards have been bundled up in packs of six tied up with ribbon. We are super pleased with them. Now we're working on more Christmassy things, like these golden reindeer I made yesterday:

I have made all nine reindeer, I just couldn't fit them all in one photo.

So that's the arts and crafts side of things for the moment. Always Present have got some exciting projects coming up soon and we're so proud of the way the young people are working hard for the best possible end results :)

Wondrous facial hair for all!

I need to bring all my Art Attack inclinations to the forefront again. I'm currently leading arts and crafts sessions for people with learning difficulties and fun little projects similar to those that Mr. Neil Buchanan spent so much of my childhood making seem to be ideal. It should be exciting!

I've had good fun recently drawing a mock Lord Kitchener "Your Country Needs You" poster for my boyfriend's birthday. My main aim was to give him a small taste of his delusions of world domination so his dream wouldn't be completely crushed in the end. However, I don't think that plan worked very well, because the A1 print of the drawing that I gave him has made him even more determined to devise takeover plans and grow a glorious moustache (neither or which will ever occur.)

 

Bless him. I too would be gutted if I couldn't grow such magical facial hair. Then again, one of my life ambitions is to become Hercule Poirot, which I think is quite unlikely. Maybe we can both aspire to a moustache such as this:

Steve Perry wonders if we could ever match his moustache...

"No! No one can match my wonderfully 80s moustache!"

(I blatantly wanted an excuse to use some of my Journey GIFs.)

Resolving to be awesome.

I don't often have New Year resolutions. I often think that if I want to make a change to my life like "eat more healthily" or "budget my money better" then I can start them at any point in the year. I don't have to sit about waiting for New Year to give me the kick-start for any resolution I wish to make. It just so happens that a resolution I have undertaken coincided around the start of this, the year of our Lord, 2012.

My resolution isn't original by any stretch of the imagination. It's been done countless times before (and no doubt better than I will manage) but I thought I'd give it a whirl and see how much it helps me. I have decided to make sure I complete one drawing every day for a year.

Now, I know that as an art graduate I shouldn't really have to set myself a drawing task. However, having said that, I've been rather disillusioned with drawing recently. I don't know why but I thought that if I set myself this task then I will have at least one drawing for each day. Some days might be like a visual diary, some days might just be random rubbish that falls out of my brain, some days might be experimenting with techniques. Some days might be an unintelligible mess, some days might be something of a masterpiece (I should be so lucky). This is also not to say that I'm limiting myself to one drawing per day, that would be silly. I'm just trying to ease myself out of this drawing lull.

I have bought myself two little books that have enough pages between the two of them to cover the 366 days of 2012 (and the few days of 2013 I'll have to do; I started on January 9th). This will also ensure that every drawing is on the same size of paper. Here are the first three days, though I will apologise now as I do not have a working scanner:

Monday 9th January 2012

I discovered I need a new super fine fineliner whilst drawing this. Mine has gotten too flat so I can't quite get the definition I would like.

Tuesday 10th January 2012

I couldn't take a picture of this with the flash on as the pencil would just reflect the light.

Wednesday 11th January 2012

This is why I love Shadow.

So we'll see how well this resolution goes. Poirot continues to entertain me no end, and I cannot wait until the complete collection with David Suchet will be released on DVD sometime near the end of the year. Here's a gif that I made tother day because this moment amused me so much:

The chap leaning against the wall is Michael Fassbender.

One of my life ambitions is to come up with as many Poirot/David Suchet related tongue twisters as possible. So far, I have come up with two completely by accident, which are the basis of aforementioned life ambition.


Oh, and Happy Mavis Day.

And it burns, burns, burns, this baptism of fire... this baptism of fire.

I am currently undoing a baptism of fire with Illustrator as I'm having to redraw work I'd done in Photoshop ASAP for commission purposes. Methinks I'm getting the hang of it. If not, I'll go mad. Either or.

Until I have the time to post something more interesting (read: long and rambly) here I am with Santa Claus during his college years:

Photo credit goes to the wonderful Charlesworth.

I saw the last Hallé Carol Concert of the year so I am significantly in the Christmas spirit now - my Christmas never feels quite right unless I hear the Hallé Orchestra play Sleigh Ride but I have this year and this pleases me greatly.

So, if I'm not back here beforehand then I leave you with a Bill Bailey styled Merry Christmas: Happy Primary Gifting Period and an Excellent Auxiliary Generosity Zone to all. I hope tis spiffing.

I live. For now...

Long time, no speak. Many apologies.

So, I graduated from Edinburgh College of Art. Proof:

Or at least proof that I had a nice photograph taken with a fake degree.

Just before that, I did my first paid singing gig back in The Ham of Old. Proof:

This is about the only photo where I'm not pulling a silly face from singing.

I finished my scarf. It just needs the loose ends hiding and tassels adding to it. Proof:

Methinks it's about 7 and a half feet in length.

I did my final Fringe festival as an Edinburgh resident (for now, at least). I met some very ace people. Proof:

Charlesworth and I with The Axis of Awesome.

Charlesworth and I with Norman Lovett, most famously known as Holly from Red Dwarf

.

(I got very excited about this. Red Dwarf is my favourite TV programme and therefore its cast are some of my favourite people ever so to finally meet one of them and finally see his stand-up made me extremely happy indeed.)

Charlesworth and I with Jon Richardson. He wished me good luck job hunting.

Excellent times all round.

I have also just been paid for my first illustration commission. I would put proof but I'm not sure the drawings have been fully approved yet (they are instructional drawings).

Now I have entered my final month of living in Edinburgh before I move back home. I have been reading, catching up with my book of Codewords for every day of the year (I've only just got to the beginning of May) and other such stuff before my boxes and bubble wrap arrive tomorrow and the packing begins. In the meantime, here's a drawing of my dear friend Kay and myself and the possible conspiracy theory we may have uncovered:

I have no working scanner currently. Apologies.

Stuff what is going on.

This has been my life recently:

Degree Show

The front of my postcards and business cards:

The back of my postcards and business cards:

The Animation exhibit on the Business Opening:

Note my hand in the 'Making Of' projected on the screen.

My station in the exhibit:

My brother, Morgan, and I (aka Jay and Lori in my film) on the Family and Friends Opening night:

The degree show's been going really well, us animation folks have had a lot of positive feedback, which is grand. The whole degree show is pretty damned strong so I highly recommend people around and about Edinburgh having a gander before it closes on Sunday evening!

Other than that, I've been drawing and doodling again now that I don't have to draw Jay and Lori a bazillion times over.

Drawings

A couple of parent and kiddywinkle sketches. I shall be colouring them soon. I'm thinking of doing two different coloured versions for each, one digital, one traditional.

A Forest by The Cure came on the radio whilst I was drawing in Starbucks, so I was compelled to draw this as I do love that song a great deal:

Whilst I've been invigilating I've been sketching to stop myself from going a bit spare staring at the same bit of wall for 5 hours, so this is what spilled out of my brain whilst on duty yesterday:

Because I am small.

I saw a girl with knee socks watching one of our films so I suddenly felt compelled to draw socks.

Knitting
I've also been knitting. I am working on a scarf, and this is how it's looking currently:

Singing

Tis time to practice the songs for the gig next week again. I'm singing Complainte De La Butte by Rufus Wainwright, Walk On The Wild Side by Lou Reed, Port of Amsterdam originally by Jacques Brel but I shall by singing a Brel/David Bowie hybrid and El Tango De Roxanne from Moulin Rouge!. Practice is going... alright. Some of them are not too bad but some of them *cough*Port of Amsterdam*cough* are proving to be a bit of a nightmare. Plus, I seem to be developing a sore throat and that is exactly NOT what you need for singing times. Here's hoping it'll be gone for next Friday...

Anywho, now to more tidying and packing. Charlesworth is arriving tomorrow to see the degree show and then I will be traveling back to Oldham with her in order to watch my brother's last Showcase concerts with Oldham Music Centre. Then back to Edinburgh to graduate.
So... next time I'm back here I might have a funny picture of me wearing a mortar board to share.

Two Little Ducks

Well, hello again. Just a little update of what's going on before the degree show occurs.

Well, first of all, I turned 22. My mum was in Edinburgh visiting for my birthday and we had a rather good time. The night before my birthday (well, I say the night before, it had turned midnight and therefore was actually my birthday) my friends and I went to see Neil, my sound designer, play drums for one of his many bands which was much fun. I had to inform Neil that we had just been told we needed adjusted cuts of the films in four days time which wasn't fun but Neil, being the excellent chap he is, made the changes I asked for and everything was superb. Later on my birthday, my mum and I went on a charity shop raid and came away with loads of stuff. Methinks my favourite purchase was one that felt as though it was fate.
I had said to my mum and brother that a present I would rather like for my 22nd birthday would be two little ducks. This is because the bingo call for 22 is 'two little ducks' and therefore is the best bingo call, in my eyes. It was suggested that my brother should buy me the two little ducks seen as I seem to have a tradition of buying him duck and/or penguin themed presents for his birthday/Christmas.
Whilst we were on our charity shop raid, my mum and I stopped outside one of the charity shops and looked in the window. What should be there but two identical ducks and a larger duck in the same style. My mum naturally bought all of them for me (we said that the two little ducks are my brother and I whilst the larger duck is our mum). Here are the two little ones:

Two little ducks, with the two little ducks card that Christina gave me.

Twas fate, I tells thee.
Other than that, my mum and I went to two concerts in Glasgow that were the main part of my birthday present. One was to see the Groundhogs, whose lead singer and lead guitarist, the legendary Tony McPhee, had a severe stroke two years ago. I was blown away by how phenomenal his guitar playing remains. He was sensational. He only sung three of the songs as he still clearly struggles with speech; he lost the ability to speak when he first had the stroke. Considering that, he's come on leaps and bounds and although his singing was quite mumbly there were moments were you could hear his amazing gravelly voice shine through. At this point, I found everything rather bittersweet but the band then informed the crowd that they intend to release a new album soon. The material is all ready, they are just waiting on Tony's voice to be better for recording. So hazaar, he is confident he will be back to business soon! If you've never heard of the Groundhogs before (and I'm sure you probably haven't), you should check them out. The next day, we went to see Roger Hodgson, formerly of Supertramp. I didn't realise how steep the gallery seats in the Pavillion theatre are, so my crippling fear of heights and vertigo didn't take very long to kick in. Thankfully, Roger and the band were such an excellent distraction. The most wonderful thing about this gig was, just after the interval, Roger came on and informed the audience that he'd just found out he'd become a grandfather two hours previously and then played what he said was one of his favourite songs he's written, which is one of mine too. Congratulations to Roger!

Finally, on the music front, I am currently in the process of rehearsing for The Blind Tiger Burlesque: Vice Night with special guest Anna Fur Laxis. Before you ask, no, I will not be doing any burlesque dancing. I shall leave that to Charlesworth's older sister, who is the one behind the event. She needed a singer so I was asked to perform so that is what I shall be doing, singing about the cheery subject of whores! No better way to pass the time! This will be my first paid gig too, for every concert I've ever done has been with a choir or school so obviously I've never been paid. Should be pretty good!

So now that my obligatory music ramble is over, back to degree show stuff. Just under a week to go and it's getting pretty exciting. It would seem that eca have picked me to be the representative of Animation and be mentioned in the press:

• eca website
• The Trend Boutique

This stuff was also mentioned in a newspaper apparently, though I do not know which one. This is the Animation section on the official 2011 degree show website and here is We Are Animation, a website that the wonderful Sarah Keeling has put together for us, so be sure to check that out!

Finally, what we've been working towards: The Filmhouse!


Lots of links for you to enjoy there, so get to it! I'm going to get back to practicing my songs. Adieu!

Lengthy post is lengthy.

I just realised I haven't posted anything here in a while and I thought I should rectify that. So bonsoir.

Well, what's been happening the past couple of weeks? I went home for a few days which was good fun and super useful. When I arrived back I needed to nip into my old primary school as my mum volunteers there a couple of days a week and she had my house keys. When I arrived my mum said she would just go and gather her things and we could go (twas the end of the school day when I arrived) but we could look at the bells before we left. Now, a couple of days beforehand, I had asked my mum if the school still had the old handbell they used to signify the end of breaktime as I need a bell ringing in my film when the charity shop door opens. My mum had then apparently asked one of my old teachers, Mrs. Robertshaw, if I could borrow this bell to which she said that I could borrow these:

MUST OWN. You can also see the old handbell in the top left.

How adorable are they?! An octave of rainbow bells! Being a musical person obsessed with rainbow/multi-coloured things I got very excited. I need to own my own set of these one day. They make such lovely sounds as well. The first one I tried was one of the red bells, which happened to be a low C and the tone of the note was gorgeous! I then preceded to spend fifteen minutes trying to decide which note I wanted to use (read: playing the bells because I was having so much fun), before being torn between low C and F. My mum then said she couldn't see a problem with me borrowing both and asked at reception if this was OK. There was no problem at all so I took both the low C and F bells, after having a quick chat with Mrs. Robertshaw and thanking her for being so kind.

C and F happen to be two of my favourite notes, the other being A. Yes, I have favourite notes...

So I recorded those and they sounded spiffy. Methinks I'm genuinely a bit overexcited for this one sound effect.
What else happened at home... went to the opticians (the optician who conducted my eyetest was also called Natasha... that's right, we're cool), learnt I have gotten more blind in my right eye and now have new eyeshields. Twas a BOGOF deal so I now have two pairs which I can swap and change: my brother and I said that whenever our mother's back is turned I should change the pair of glasses I'm wearing and not tell her, just to catch her out. Also, speaking of my brother, I recorded Morgan playing his clarinets for my soundtrack. He did some lovely improvisation for me whilst he practiced for his Grade 8 exam (which he got a Merit in, hazaar!).

Here is Morgan playing Bass Clarinet in a concert. He is most excellent.

My spiffing composer chap Neil and I have had a sit down and talked about how these recordings can be used and it's looking positive, so that's something. Can't wait to see what Neil comes up with!
Finishing off my time at home, I went to see a heavy metal band called Marseille at my local. One distinguishing feature this band has other than the fact that they were originally called AC/DC before some Aussies got a bit more famous than they did is that Neil Buchanan from Art Attack is their lead guitarist. You know, this fellow? This promised to be an awesome evening, even more so considering that quite a few of my friends and I partially have this chap to thank for our interest in art.
Now, first things first, the band are really good. My friends and I were by the bassist's side who was enjoying a bit of banter with us in between songs. When it came to their encore, whilst the singer and Neil were talking to the audience, the bassist turned to me and said "Do you want to come and sing with us?" I thought he was joking but it would seem that the members of the band each pick someone (i.e. a girl) to join them onstage and sing the chorus of the encore. So I ended up singing with Neil Buchanan's band. Here I am onstage with them:

My friend also videoed the whole thing. So bizarre yet completely awesome. We then met Neil:

Charlesworth and I with NEIL BUCHANAN.

So that was a lot of fun.

And then I returned to Edinburgh and the grim prospect that was my dissertation. Thankfully it is ALL OVER now. I made sure I handed in on April 1st as I enjoy the idea of my two hand-in days being April Fool's Day and Friday 13th May. If it all goes wrong, I can blame the dates. The Baftas were fun too, though neither Nuria nor Will won, but Anna who was in last year's graduating class with Nuria won Best Animation so congrats to her!
But now I am back to animating and this is good! Here are some linetests you can look at:

Methinks Mr. Runnicles has turned out quite well here, though this was NOT fun to animate. Ah well, as long as it's worth it.

Finally, to finish off this oh-so-lengthy ramble, here's the other drawing Turnerface asked me to do for her.

Before I shaded the face, Faustus looked like Paul Stanley from Kiss in Starchild mode without the star...


I'll shut up now.