I haven't really done anything this month... I have more or less just been planning. I have been working away on my dinosaur wedding invitations that I spoke about last month. At the moment I am just having a geek moment, playing with typography. I have also been looking into the more specifics of the wording used and I came across this beauty;

I'm sure this is an oldy, but I honestly laughed my head off when I saw this. As my wedding invitations are just novelty. You can expect a simiar tone of whimsicalness.

Minus my dinosaur novelty wedding invitations. I have also redesigned some business cards and made a gift voucher. I have to admit I have never made a gift voucher before, which wasn't difficult. However due to my client wanting the design to match her business card, I found it a bit challenging.  

I however think I got this to work. The business cards I created are a lot plainer. Having a simple white background with my client’s logo on the side. As shown below (I have removed clients information, hence why there is so much white)

This also just the back of the new cards. My client wanted some space to actually write details on the card. The gift voucher also has a back with simply "To" and "From".

This pretty much all I have done this month. I am planning on buying a new toy to help with creating more art on the go. My christmas present to me, from me. The Surface Pro 4, I hopefully will get this toy before christmas.

SO EXCITED!!!!!!

I'd also like to take this moment to congratulate Morgan and Ashleigh on the birth of their baby boy today Jacques.

That's all from me, I guess we start getting christmasie

Little bit late with this months blog. I blame Halloween being way too awesome!

So I have actually been up to a lot of stuff this month, not only designing new random things, but...... yea you know what that is basically all I have been doing. So first thing, I am a huge fan of Rock n Roll Bride. and after seeing a photo from their facebook page. I decided to create something a little different.

You may or may not have seen this clue on my Instagram. (little bit of back story) I'm currently working at a printing company, we print a lot of designs for wedding stationery designers soooooooooooooo I thought I'd try my hand at it and after seeing the below picture from the Rock n Roll Bride magazine.  

So you've probably guessed it by now. I made dinosaur themed wedding invitations. Now I haven't yet finished it entirely but you get the idea 

SOOOOOOOOOO MUCH FUN MAKING THIS!!!

So yea hoping this month I will be able to get this finished as well as a few other designs I noticed I started and just due to life I haven't managed to get back to finish. So that is my goal for this month. 

So for Halloween I did a few different things.  

I went to the Crumblin Road Gaol paranormal tour in Belfast. I have to say I didn't see any ghosties, but it was.... interesting, but I have to admit it made me really want to do the actual tour. The most eerie thing that happened on the tour, and also turned out to be the funniest thing. We were standing in the hanging room where they had hung 15 of the 17 men to have been executed at the Gaol (I hope I remembered my numbers right) and when the tour guide began to call upon the last man who had been executed, the whole room fell silent waiting for any noise, any chance of a sign from beyond the grave. All we could hear was an ice cream truck's cheery music about a mile away from the gaol.

Of course there was also pumpkins to be had...... many many pumpkins

I basically sat the rest of Halloween carving pumpkins and watching scary movies. Speaking of scary movies, I even went to see John Carpenter's The Fog in the Barge in Belfast last night. I had never actually seen the movie before, I though it was pretty good. I think I more enjoyed going with my mates though and the atmosphere that was carefully created. 

Back to Dinosaurs!
I unfortunately I was unable to make it to a baby shower this month due to going to see Alien Ant Farm in the Empire in Belfast and pretending to be 15 again..... oops. However I was still asked to design a baby bib.... So I created a dinosaur wearing ox blood red DM boots, with the world ending and aliens coming down to save the dinosaurs........

I'm totally sane........ kinda.
Em..... I think that's really it for this month. literally a lot of dinosaur things and pumpkin carving. Hoping to keep this month just as mad, and as I said earlier hoping to slightly back track and have another look at designs I started a little while ago and just finish them off. 

Also want to wish my partner another Happy Birthday :D
​

So this month I actually did stuff, not as much as I would have liked but I have definitely done more. So I have been trying to really get back into my design, have actually been revisiting old work. I have also been experimenting a little bit

So not too sure if you will recognize any of the above. These are from my British classic design project from university a variation of originals shown below and you can also find them in my store:

Annnnnnnnd..... speaking of store, I added 4 of my multi coloured images to my shop, mainly cause I'm still not too happy with 2 of them here is a little snap of what I have added:

I also looked back a little to my think happy thoughts t-shirt. I tweaked it a little bit, I changed some of the colours round, I'm still not happy with it. I may even just re-draw the whole thing.

Before and After, I wanted to make it a little more warmer and I don't know why, but the moutashe colour was annoying me. I felt it had to be a closer colour to the unicorns natural hair colour. Yup.

As I said though I am still not too happy with it, I want to go back and play more with highlights and shadows, or as I said previously just start the drawing again from scratch.

I also went on holiday this month to Portugal.  Literally the first time I have been out of the UK and Ireland in 9 years. It was stunning.

I had a fantastic time, cool beer, hot weather and blue skies. I couldn't ask for anything more. I only wish I had gotten more photos. 

My partner and I are even starting to plan our next holiday to Vegas baby! which should be good. This month I plan on just continuing to design more things, I have realised my portfolio is seriously lacking in so many elements. So I am planning to fix that. I also have more work lined up in the form of labels for some local products. All negotiations are still on going so I can't really talk much about it at the moment, but I am very excited. That's all from me for this month. 

A LOT HAS HAPPENED THIS MONTH!
So, where to start. Logo design for M Mahood Music is done, currently still designing flyers but I am incredibly happy with the outcome, even my client is over the moon with it! Which is the most important thing!

Hopefully my watermark isn't too over powering. But yea, this is what we came up with in the end.  Very impressed it I don't say so myself ;) created using Illustrator and Photoshop. 

Here's a few of the logos that I played around with, before coming to the final:

As you can see some a lot better than others. But there are many different stages that you go through when designing a logo. I had a lot of fun doing this! 

My Silversmithing course, has been very off and on, as I am getting to the stage where, to be honest I don't feel like I'm learning. I have noticed there is a huge difference from being at university and doing a part time course. If you basically showed interest in learning a technique and asked tutors in university, or if it was a tutors specialism. They got super excited and were pretty much awesome with showing you how it worked.

So yea, I am getting to the point that YouTube is probably a better educator that any college or university, as well as cheaper! Which is a bit of a shame, but at the same time, it has made me hungry for knowledge! I've recently been experimenting with copper. Actually been very impressed with all the amazing colours and although I'm kind of doing it to waste time, I’m actually learning a lot from it:

The above is just little pieces I have been experimenting with. Still lots of other stuff I want to experiment with but I have to admit, even experimenting with the different colours that come from the copper. Is amazing, and all I am doing is applying heat in different areas and even experimenting by heating the metal through other pieces of metals.
​
It’s all still very small stuff, but I am starting to think about making sculptures, so who knows my next course could be a wielding course, or my YouTube will be full of wielding videos.


I've also been doing more patterns, I have already started my 2nd in the series. I haven't yet put these up on my red bubble, as I am wanting to have at least 3-4 different series of patterns before I do, so here's the first it all it's different variations of glory!

So that's basically what I've been up to this month, I have to admit June may be a bit slow as I am mainly just finishing off work and continuing to experiment with metal work. But I am also off to Glastonbury! So I shall also be putting up lots of pictures of that when I get back, But I think I will do my June blog before I leave for Glastonbury, we will see.

Thanks guys for stopping by, keep your eyes peeled for more pattern designs coming soon and more experiments. Please follow me on Instagram, as I am aiming to try and start posting more things on there!

Long, long time no speak. Firstly, HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!
So yea I have to admit I haven't been up to much. I have done a few wee bits and pieces designing some stuff for a few lovely people, and working my wee bum off in my none arty farty job, which suuuuuuuuuuucccckkkkkssss!!!! 
But we all gotta start from somewhere. So yea, I had a fantastic piece of news over the Christmas holidays that a few of my t-shirt designs sold from my RedBubble store! super happy about that! I have decided to kick my self up my own arse and get back to drawing again. Here are a few recent things I've done:

One of my closest fiends went to a wedding recently and asked if I could design a wedding present for the newly weds. What I love about this is it's so different, very much keeping up with pop culture. Breaking Bad, this was a lot of fun to do, I haven't experimented with using smoke brushes in a very long time.....7 years roughly.... So this was a lot of fun to get back to.

I also have been such a terrible friend, one of my oldest and dearest friends is in an amazing band and every single time he had a gig. I couldn't make it due to working. Sad faces all round :(
So to make up for my absence and still embarrass him as I have been doing over the years at his gigs. I made him a cheesy fan girl t-shirt. This is probably the first one of many that I have made that looks professional   

I actually got this printed on about 5 t-shirts and gave them to everyone at my friends annual Christmas gathering :) it was well worth it!
here's their Facebook page:  ​https://www.facebook.com/paperdogsband/?fref=ts
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/paperdogsband/
​

Please like, share, follow and fall in love.

I've even started to experiment with polymer clay. I have to admit I was very much inspired by Amanda Louise Spayd's dolls:

AMAZING AREN'T THEY!!!! So yea I decided to use polymer clay, watched a hell of a lot of youtube videos on it an thought, yea, I can sooooo do this. I even got glass eyes and fake resin teeth (Spayd actually uses real human teeth, I did hunt the web for them but couldn't find them, and then as soon as I said to my partner, 3 clicks and he found them.... had when that happens AND you've already purchased resin teeth....ANYWAY) I wanted to make my own monster.

When I got my polymer clay I was actually super surprised at how tough the clay was to work with. I have worked with clay before and fully loved it, but the polymer was very much a dry touch clay. Even plasticine is so much easier to use.
​But anyways I persevered and created my snot monster Edger:

Thought this was hilarious as the only good things about him such as his eye and teeth, I didn't even make.... LOL but yea I haven't done anymore polymer clay experiments, because of the clay being hard to work with, it has sort of put me off. I still have loads left over so I think once I come up with a better idea of a monster, Ill go back to it. Until then though I have really missed drawing and making the fan girl t-shirt made me realize that. So I have been thinking about going back to the Illustration Friday competitions.

BUT! I'm going to start off gentle, I really like the idea of a word and building on that, but due to not really having much of a social life, I don't know when Ill get it done so I make use one word for over a month, who knows. I've also been thinking back to my old art that I love and actually really miss doing. Been even thinking how I can improve on the ideas, So don't want to give too much away but, I will say that it will be more physical forms of work rather than a pretty picture. Probably more fine art actually when I really think about it. So yea. This year I will hopefully be more balanced art and work wise and who knows hopefully find another job more to do with my art :)

That's all from me hope you've enjoyed, I'm not even going to make a promise of when I will keep up with the blog. But until next time Happy New Year! :)

so, ok. I lied about blogging once a week. things have been a little hectic lately. I got a new job working at a call centre, I also just haven't really felt the want or need to design anything lately. still adjusting to life at home after four years of university, Aswell with the fact that I'm no longer wanting to stay in education. so, sadly I just haven't really done any design stuff..... until last night.

my partner is a gamer, like most folk. he has decided to make a twitch account and for people who don't know what twitch is:

twitch is basically an website/app that you can go onto and watch live streams of people playing a plethora of different games. if you find you like watching a certain player you can follow them and even donate money to them. as far as I'm aware some players are so popular that they actually are able to live off the donations.
Every little gamers dream right?
(I really hope I got all that info right or I'm in trouble..... I'm totally not a gamer)


sooooooooo, my partner asked me to design and create his profile picture, cover photo and any buttons that he has on his profile. Now, anyone who knows my partner, knows he's uppsessed with cats...... see where I'm going with this?

I actually had so much fun doing this.

I have managed to get his profile picture finished, I am currently working on getting his cover photo finished, here is a few of my enitial drawings

it's been a long time since I've last drawn but you get the idea, just imagine it all......waaaaayyyy less scary than my sketches.

so all the little drawings were my ideas for the profile picture. As (I.probably should have mentioned earlier) My partners name on twitch is
"ShleepyPete"

he also sleeps more than most humans... so the idea was basically to make him into a cat, he loves both his cats which are both pure white.

I think I have an image on my site, that i did a few years ago. A game of thrones style portrait. It's of my partner sitting on the iron throne with his two white dare-cats on either side of him.

I'm currently on my phone writing this blog (first time ever) so I don't have the image on my phone to upload, on here. if your interested. it should be on my commissions page.
here's an image however of my partner with one of his cats
(hopefully I won't get murdered for putting it up)

isn't he sooooooooo cute!
talking about the cat here guys... :P

so I based his cat on him, I however didn't include the beard. I sort of felt that the cat it's self had enough fur, never mind the beard.

So here's the finished product, I am actually so pleased with this, I now just have to get the cover photo done and then the buttons that will go on his Twitch account

That's all from me today :)

So, today I have been seriously finishing things off. I also have so many sketch books that I even weighted them all... 10 sketch books weighing in at 10 kg.......Mental.


So I went back and had a look at my shop, now if you were to click the shop tab on my website, it will actually take you to another website called "Red Bubble". This site is basically where I upload my images and I can apply the images not only as images them selves, like posters and things. You can buy my designs on mugs, t-shirts, bedding, pillows, scarves, leggings, phone covers. The list goes on! So today I went through and decided to put up an image of my cupcakes. I decided to actually put up the mixed image.


The image is all of the elements of all the suits as well as their symbols. I wasn't happy with the original image so I changed the colour of the back ground to blue, pink and grey. 

So the top 3 images are of what I uploaded. the single image above is the original.

This is just a screen shot from the website after I uploaded the pink image, you can see all the different products I can apply my work to. So yea, it's pretty interesting. I also have my final done for my main project. the final for the magazine cover:

Im actually so happy with this, and just to really scare you here are all of the finals from all the projects I did this year:

So yea, I have done a fair bit of work this year, and although it was by no means an easy year, I have actually enjoyed it. I want to keep experimenting and doing art. This is just a stepping stone for where I want to be, and yea I'm freaking out about leaving uni and being a real adult. So that's it from me today, Tomorrow will possibly be my last blog on university work for at least a week. 

I am hoping to keep my blog up, however I feel my life is very boring. We'll see though.

So I went into uni today due to my Photoshop and Illustrator prescription being out of date and as I am a poor student, soon to be just poor. I couldn't really afford to keep my subscription. Not going to lie, pretty heart broken about it.  So anyways, I had to re-do my portrait of the eyes open bar-code image. I have 10 different versions of the same image and some really funky looking edits from making the image. So here are my 10 different versions:

Some are very similar and there are little changes, but I am glad to say I have my final, although I know things aren't spelt right, I will make this right tomorrow when I go back to uni. here is my final though with all of the incorrect spellings:

I also want to do a little more detail with the type and make it more glossy and even 3D looking, as I want to give it the effect of it being a glossy gold. 

The rest of my day I have been writing up sketch books and making sure everything is in order, I am sure that tomorrow will be no different with getting my work to a standard that I am happy with.

Today I got a hell of a lot done, everything for the end of year show that I wanted to put up is now up. I had to re-cut some new vinyl for my wall. And now everything is beautiful! 

I now get to just concentrate on finishing off my sketch books and writing everything up that needs to be done before hand in. I feel like I'm in a very good position, I even feel that I could hand in all of my stuff on Monday. Everyone else in my class is currently panicking and therefore this makes me also panick a little more due to myself feeling calm. Don't you just hate that.

Although speaking of things that you hate most coming up to hand in, one of my class mates mentioned to me today was he "can't wait for this to be over, so he can stop feeling guilty about wasting time" Shit just got real!
Deadlines can be really good for people or you can crash and burn, I do have that feeling of panic and worry, trying to get things done. It is a little weird when you stop just to breathe and then feel guilty. 

So anyways on to a more productive and positive note. I have done what feels like a million different magazine covers:

As you can see I have been experimenting with a variety of different colours as well as text. I also went a step further with this I knew I wanted  to have a bit of colour within the black and white image. However I think the lips actually make it more sexulised. This could however be a poster or even a magazine cover for human trafficking or something within that sort of topic.

I however want a more generalized kind of image. So, I took the image from the above, went through all my photos I had taken from  this project, and photoshopped eyes in from a different photograph. This was unbelievably weird I can tell you that, straight off.   

I have to admit this I think worked out pretty well, I however think that this looks like me, but a little different..... I know it sounds weird but, yea a different version of me. Although when it really comes down to it, as long as it looks like a person, and gets the point across. That is the whole point. 

So my idea here is a little more self explanatory. I want the eyes to try and look into your soul!, no I just want to eyes to grab peoples attention, although I still want them to look along the lines as realistic, however the more I photoshop this the more and more unrealistic it looks. especially as the eyes are very much a small part of the image, the colour doesn't really pierce through very well, even with the lines of the bar code coming down the face. I however really like the 1st image on the 2nd row, as I think this does grab your attention. I am just currently a little unsure on how to take it further. I am also really unsure on what colours to have my text and I seem to be continuing the same argument with myself on which fonts look the best. I am continuing to work on this even as I write this blog, I have a feeling however I may need to sleep on things and see how I feel about it tomorrow. So yea, that's it from me today.

Today has been such a tiring day. So today I was to put up my work for the end of year show. 

I went to put my work up and then after speaking with tutors. They thought I should go back to my plan and edit it a little further, such a blow. I was hoping to have all of this done by today. So I went back to he drawing board and came up with these very similar ideas to show:

I decided to in the end go with the second image. So I then had to go and get my vinyl done. I have to admit I was very nervous about getting it done. I have never used the vinyl cutter, but thankfully I had another class mate who was just as clueless and we, I mean she. Figured most of it out. I have to admit I have been working so hard and trying to get all of my work done for hand in and then some. I was a total zombie most of today. 

So with my vinyl I had originally wanted to have under my facebook image, "If you're not paying for the product, the product is you." Under the Coca-Cola portrait "Open Happiness?" I wanted to plat on words for that. Then finally for my bar-code image "Just another price tag."

Due to my Coca-Cola and Bar-code slogans being one line, after a little bit of debate, and discussion. My self and the tutors all agreed on simply shortening down the slogan. "The product is you." The plan is to finally get all of these up tomorrow for the end of year show. I have to admit after all the running about I have done today, I definitely feel more prepared for putting all the portraits and everything up tomorrow. Also excited to see how the vinyl will look. 

Just a little miffed that I have left playing with the vinyl to literally the last week of university. Although I have to also admit I found that the process with vinyl is unbelievably tedious. Tomorrow will tell more however.

I also decided it was best to go a head and get another sketch book. As I plan to do a lot more editing and just in general more work. So that now brings me to having 10 sketch books to hand in next week. I am just hoping that tomorrow I will be able to really start in getting things done. I have also done a lot more of my sketch book write ups today. So I plan to finish it off hopefully tonight and then the rest of tonight I will be stuffing my face with chocolate and watching Netflix.

That's all from me today.