I thought I'd share a quick doodle I did last night!
Was feeling a bit blue this week and needed some cheering up. After reading 2 inspiring posts by fellow bloggers Gisele and Leanne, I picked myself up, found a funny post on my other half's Rival Animation Facebook group and drew this.
I have to say, I've not been happier with one of my own creations for a while. I've been happy with commissions, but not my personal work. I find this amazing, that something so daft and silly can make me a happy bunny again!
I had a breakthrough with some designs for my jewellery ideas while on the train to visit my Mum in Leicestershire. So I came back and got stuck in making them.
Unfortunately something went wrong with the first batch and then again with the 2nd batch, but I got 5 good ones lol! I keep telling myself that practice makes perfect and its all about experimentation they're not ready for sale yet and the ideas keep popping into my brain faster than I can sketch them, but I'm determined to perfect this and get them up on my Folksy or Misi site.
Behold the reject pile... I think it had something to do with the paper so I think I'll buy some heavier weight paper. (and maybe let the glue set lol)
This one was an accident after it had set slightly I dropped a pen and it got stuck. Once I lifted it up the resin came with it and kind of swirled over the top. It looks a mess, but I'm sure if I did it a little artistically it might work with a design.
The good ones came out ok. I still need to perfect them and possibly print the designs off at a higher resolution.
These are only 2 of the designs I've done, but I have a few more with different collections in mind too. I've also got some ideas with using shrink plastic as well, so fun times ahead.
As for my seminars and workshops. I've got this week. One tomorrow on becoming self employed and 2 on Thursday for business planning and marketing, I'm really looking forward to them. The first one I went to was a business awareness one, basically designed to make us aware of everything that could crop up while starting up. It was really interesting although quite scary lol.
Got loads going ont his week heading to the 3 workshops and then at the weekend myself and Peter are heading to the Merchant City for the 3 Years to GoSports Challenge for the Commonwealth Games, there's a possibility that Peter's work for the Tontine Building will be on display too which is exciting!! Then we're heading to the Britannia Bazaar in the The Britannia Panopticon Music Hall, a building I've never been in, but am looking forward to after seeing the website and hearing about it. So many things to see in Glasgow :D
So I finished my Rita Hayworth portrait, yay! It was fun to finally get stuck in to some serious vectoring in Illustrator as I've wanted to do the portrait for ages, not too sure about the hair though, but practice makes perfect I guess.
I also designed a tee for my brothers birthday, he hasnt seen it yet, but I dont think he'll be reading this so I think its ok lol!
He's a musician with a love of old sounds and cassette tapes and was born in 87, hence the "Rare Mix '87". Hope he likes it!
Got a busy day ahead, already I've been working on a top secret gift for my Grandma, soon I'll have to leave for work and later I have a resin jewellery class. I'm pretty excited as I've wanted to use resin for a while and my own experiments failed miserably so I thought a little tutoring wouldn't go amiss.
My class is in The Life Craft in Glasgow. They do a load of different classes so if anyone is interested check the website.
What a lovely post London time I've had. After getting burnt while away and using a certain so called "natural sensitive skin" cream I ended up with a swollen face and looking like Rocky's sparring partner. I don't know why I bought the cream considering I've had a reaction before, but hey I was knackered!
So although I've had an itchy, burnt, swollen face and had to take a few days off work, I have caught up on some design stuff and today started a vector project that I've been wanting to do for ages.
Can you guess who it is? Hint: I finally decided to start it after watching a certain movie with the wonderful Glenn Ford and some gratuitous hair flicking.
So now I've been watching old movies all week while off and todays film is The Haunting.
ooooh its creepy, much better than the ridculous remake. And what is it that makes it so creepy?? Its that you dont see a thing, its all in your own head and if you have an over active imagination like myself, this is the best/worst type of film to watch! That and some classic camera angles and sound effects. Trying to think of some other old horror films to watch after it, so if anyone has any ideas of movies for me to check out please comment :D
Also its the last day to vote on my Threadless submission so I'd really appreciate anyone who hasn't voted already to do go have a wee peek.
As for tattoo designs, I've finished work for Leanne and Chris. Leanne wanted a small cluster of stars and Chris wanted a Saltire flag. Here are the finished designs.
I really liked the thistles in this one so I might need to use them as a base for another design in the future.
Hello folks, just back from an odd trip to London to see the Royal Philharmonic's Film Music Gala. I say odd because myself and Peter spent most of the time in a trance of exhaustion from an uncomfortable bus journey overnight on the dreaded Megabus! The concert itself was amazing, the Royal Albert Hall was a beautiful building and the orchestra were incredible. However, London itself was a haze.
When we arrived at 7am we could do nothing but walk about to kill time. So we headed to a local Sainsbury's near our Easy Hotel and sat for a while probably looking quite strange and rough to the locals. We dumped our bags in the hotel that wouldn't let us check in til 3pm and then headed out for the 5 hour wait til check in and a decent sleep. We walked around Kensington Gardens and Hyde Park with Ice Cream at 10 in the morning which was lovely and relaxing UNITL... were accosted by squirrels.
The squirrels were quite intimidating and funny, they came right up to us and almost jumped up on Peter's shoulder ready to pounce on his 99 cone and run off with it! This did make us a bit freaked out and paranoid though as we were really tired and began to think the squirrels were stalking us, I'm pretty sure it was the same one that followed us all over Hyde Park.
We eventually relaxed at the Princess Diana Memorial Fountain as we lost the squirrel and fell asleep on the grass. Half an hour later I awoke to slight burning feeling on my face and realised I had not put any suncream on!!! Being Scottish and of the (slightly) ginger/fair-skinned persuasion, it is fair to say that the sun and I are not the best of friends. Of course I was lying with my head to one side and am now sunburnt down the left side of my face with a lovely white streak where my glsses were, thank God the Albert Hall was dark.
So we eventually were allowed into the hotel where we got a couple of hours sleep and then right back out again to the Albert Hall. It's such an amazing building and I really fell in love with it, especially the ceiling.
The orchestra were great, it all sunk in when they played te main theme to Gladiator as the brass section was AMAZING lol! Got a bit teary eyed when they played the Out of Africa theme too it was just incredible, we both loved it.
So now we're back home very tired, but having to dive straight back into work mode as we both have projects to be getting on with.
The most exciting email awaited me as I got back. My Tattoo Me design was put up for scoring on Threadless while I was away, pretty excited to see how it goes. You can see and vote for the design by clinking the linkydoo below or the button on the side bar.
From lovely sunny days to horrible rainy ones, I really hope that isn't our summer over and done with!
While it's been raining I've been working away on a few projects, mainly reading the Hobbit on my new gadget :D I bought myself a Kindle as a late birthday present to myself. I justified it by the amount of weight I would save when reading Lord of the Rings again, well thats my excuse and I'm sticking to it!
But first some amazing news, my lovely other half has only gone and got himself a new job in a computer games company, he's on a wee trial at the moment so lots and lots of luck to him, we're both so very excited although I think he's more nervous than I am lol!
I've also been planning my Mum's 50th birthday cake for the past wee while and on Thursday night (very late) I finished it as well as 24 cupcakes, well 23 as I ended up eating one to test how sticky it was with foil wrappers as I've never used them before, again thats my excuse and I'm sticking to it :P
All the cakes were vanilla with vanilla buttercream. The main cake had three layers of sponge, 2 purple and 1 plain. I used fondant icing to make the roses and I glued them to the cake with a wee bit water. I really enjoyed making it, more the decorating than the baking, but it was lots of fun.
It all went down well and everyone seemed to like it so happy days!
I've also been working on a few tattoos and some stuff of my own. I recently finished Dan's tattoo which was a triskele with an edge and a lot of fun to do. He wanted the triskele to have thorns and be a bit thicker than my usual ones.
I think it looks pretty cool and I can't wait to see it done, was really chuffed with it!
I also started Carrie's celtic turtle tattoo. This took me a while to figure out in Illustrator, probably because of the awkward way I did it, but I got there in the end.
As I said earlier I've been reading The Hobbit recently and have got a lot of inspiration from it. I've been wanting to work in Illustrator for a while now, creating something totally vector so I thought mixing both these ideas would be a start! The chapter in the book that involves Mirkwood was my greatest inspiration and I wanted to use that image for the vector piece.
I had fun doing it and really getting into Illustrator and all the things it can do. Planning other works too when I have the time to sit down and work on them.
And last but not least the most important news of the day *cough* Tangled has just arrived, thank you postie!
Got a lovely email today from a previous client, Aaron who got in touch at the start of the year asking me to design him a triskele. Aaron was only my second male client so I was pretty nervous about getting it right. I usually design for lady folk so I thought my designs might be too feminine.
As pretty much all of my designs are personal to the client I won't really be spilling the beans on all meanings and reasonings behind the tattoos. What I will talk about is the design aspects. Aaron wanted the design NOT to be feminine obviously, so this was my challenge. I've designed a male tattoo before with my Derek design, but this was different as it was a triskele, something I've only done for women!
Aaron also wanted each arm to have an organic tendril look and have the appearance of living plants, but with a celtic feel.
Here are a few of the original sketches:
These were a couple from the first rounds of designing. They were very celtic with knots all over the place, so much fun! I tried to keep the plant like appearance too, using thin vine-like lines for the arms.
These were the 2 versions Aaron choose to have a look at for the final design. He also wanted a green colour, which works really well!
This was the final design drawn up digitally.
It was pretty refeshing to design for Aaron, as with Derek I was totally out of my comfort zone and having to think differently "what would a man like?" I kept asking myself! Overall I'm really happy with the finished design and so was Aaron, so much so that he put it on his skin!
It looks amazing and the size really does it justice. I'm so happy with it and I can't wait to see it when it heals. Thanks Aaron!!!!!
I've been commission for 4 other designs too, a cluster of stars, a celtic turtle, a celtic version of Superman and a top secret design that will be a gift. There are also a few other design jobs possibly in the works so I'll keep you posted!
Here I am again and have already broken my promise to write more often lol. Thinking about just merging my 2 blogs together again. Its getting way to difficult to keep track of everything. Although I will have to redo the backgrounds and everything again... much fun! :D
Anyway, I have found some more brilliant tattoos to share, so here we go.
Ok so I haven't been updating as much as I should, but I'm going to make more of an effort to share with the lovely folks who read my blog (Thank you :D) I'm going to be updating with a few of my favourite tattoos that I've seen around the web. I'd love to do one of those 1 post a day every day for a year things, but unfortunately I dont have time every day to do that. If I ever do however, I will definitely be giving it a bash! Its going to be more like at least 3 a week with the odd feature post along the way. Most of the designs will come from DeviantArt to help promote my fellow DA Members, but if anyone see's anything else then please feel free to leave a comment and share more amazing designs! I'll post 3 designs in each post; 1 sketch, 1 black ink piece and 1 coloured piece. This will most likey change over time, but thats my idea to start with anyway.
Sam has a whole load of amazing pieces over on DA, I especially love his dragon designs. The shading is just stunning!
The next piece is not technically inked on skin, its a photomanip (I think) that the designer has done to show how the design would look. Its a design by Shepush, again on DA and he sells his designs via Inkspired.
This design is amazing and one of my favs from DA. It has the perfect balance of black and white space, something I found really difficult to acheive when designing Derek's Kirituhi/Celtic inspired piece. Love it!!
I'm absolutely in love with Maori and polynesian styles at the moment and how they are used within Maori culture. There are strict rules in using Maori designs in that you would never, ever, ever get a real design done as they are sacred to the Maori as part of their cultural heritage. So pretty much any design you see is known as Kirituhi. If you're interested, do some research into the history of Maori Ta Moko, its really interesting!
And now finally the colour piece...
The Geisha Tattoo by Hatefulss is absolutely beautiful! The colour is just incredible. Hatefulss has other great pieces on his DA page all equally as good, his portraits are really amazing. How anyone can catch a likeness like that using a needle is beyond me!
Anyways thats it for my first Fav's of the Day post, I'd love it if you'd check back later on in the week for more.
In honour of Tangled being released last Friday, I thought it fitting to do a wee Disney Tribute. So here is a small collection of Tattoos from around the interweb! Enjoy...
The first 3 are from http://sometimessweet.blogspot.com/ A lovely blog run by Danielle who has a tattoo feature every Tuesday, go check it out.
The owner of these lovely tattoos however is Tiffany who can be found here:
In honour of the Patron Saint of my lovely homeland, I've raided the net in search of some ink with a Scottish influence. However to give myself a wee bit of a challenge I've decided to stay away from traditional Celtic designs, I'll cover these sometime next year. (Oh and no Mel Gibson tattoos allowed!)
First though to get me in the mood for some good auld Scottish Pride, I thought I'd post some images that say Scotland to me!
First, the scenery:
I took this image in Scourie when camping, obviously a wee bit of post work here, but you get the idea!
This beautiful image is from Am Bothan, the blog of my good freind Anna. Go check out her blog!
The Castles of course
Not minding the mud at a festival
And of course the most beautiful Ginger in the world, The Good Bru!
Okay, with that out the way here we go! I've ended up with a thistle theme, cos I love thistles, Enjoy!
So thats the St Andrews day collection, hope you liked the images. Also hope you have yourselves a great St Andrews Day. Until next time... Alba Gu Brath
Happy bunny (Photo credit: charenton)
I had fun doing it and really getting into Illustrator and all the things it can do. Planning other works too when I have the time to sit down and work on them.
The detail and colour are incredible! Love it!
