Monday 27 July 2015

Painfully tedious new things

I hate doing some new things.

That sounds sacrilegious for a creative person, but some things are long and tedious.
What I am about to make is a pleating sheet. Its basically a really large piece of cardboard with straight folds on it.

It's so boring.

I can also think of it as an investment. Once I have made this really long piece of cardboard, I'll never have to make it again.

As a bonus, I can now watch that 5 or so hours in my 'watch later' list on YouTube.

Happy blogging!

Monday 20 July 2015

How to make a gallery

This is something that I really ought to get onto doing. People keep on asking me: do you have your work online, can you give me an example of your work, etc. It's something vitally important for being an artist. Unfortunately, I have very little interest in being tech nor photography savvy. Photoshop isn't too bad to learn, but still, I have to get the pictures on the computer, then onto the internet. It's something that I will either have to overcome or get lots of help for.

Either way, to remind myself I've saved this video onto my blog so I won't lose it.

(It seems to be the first one google has anyway, and really the only one worth watching from the one's I've seen)

Friday 17 July 2015

Successful First Exhibition

Last night was my first exhibition. All my friends came late (I may have given them the wrong time,) I was sick with an ear infection, and I didn't win any encouragement awards, but I count it as a success.

A picture taken by a lovely friend of mine of me being proud of my unframed artworks, and hoping that the artist of the painting below them won't sue me.


One of my favourite local artists was there, and I told him which of the paintings were mine. I just so happened to be in view of him when he looked at my paintings, yet out of earshot, so my commentary sounded a little like this:
"He's walking towards my paintings.
Look at my paintings.
Do it.
Looook at them!
YES! He's looking at them!
OH MY GOSH HE POINTED AT THEM.
HE SMILED AT THEM.
HE DOUBLE CHECKED THE NUMBERS TO MAKE SURE THEY WERE MINE."

One thing that someone keeps on asking me is if my works are online, particularly as I invest in more and more stalls. My regular reply is that I have a blog, but not really any of my works up there. It's definitely something I'll need to work on - one page for paintings and sketches and another page for costume. I should make it a priority, but it gets hard when I'm really not a photographer.

Also I sold a painting.

Yes, it was the cheapest painting on sale, and yes, it did sell to my boyfriends housemate, and yes, I had no emotional attachment to it, but it sold. When he said he wanted to buy it, and as I watched him exchange money via card for a piece of my soul, I felt like I was going to cry.

The small blue one in the bottom right corner that one. What's more exciting is when I eventually create a gallery, that one will have a lovely "SOLD" across it. (Or in the description, either or.)

Overall, it was a lovely night. After the event ended, my friends shouted me chai. I felt so loved and celebrated and even though the earnings of the painting will pay for approximately one third of my semester, it made me feel like I am succeeding at life.

Sunday 12 July 2015

Steampunk Skirt design

I have started to develop a steampunk style skirt, which when in it's original form, looks like a simple victorian or edwardian skirt, but has many styles im which it can be strung up. It's a skirt that's really fun to play with.

I'm waiting and putting it out there to the public about getting it properly photographed, because right now it doesn't look as amazing as it actually is. I'm asking the public for assistance in this area, mostly students who are after experience due to money.

For now, these pictures from my phone taken by my musician housemate will have to do.

Monday 6 July 2015

My Maze Addiction

When at work, and it's quiet, I find myself with a pen and a paper, doodling.
Not just any doodles though. Mazes.
It started out just looking for something to fill the quiet times when there were no customers. When the home improvement store first opened, there were many of these. Firstly, I would bring in a maze to do. Then a harder maze. Then an impossible maze. After I grew bored with that, I started drawing them. They started out rather poorly, but as I kept on drawing and googling techniques, they became more and more intricate.

Something that I am slowly mastering is the art of drawing a maze without pencil marks - pen only. No second chance. No 'undo' button. You may be thinking that I'm doing this as some sort of challenge - to force my brain to think in different ways, to be resourceful, to think before I draw, to map out and plan in my head before I act.

Mostly it's because I use what I have available to me.

It's always a bonus knowing that I might have been an architect in Maze Runner, or, if given the challenge in Inception, I would totally be able to draw a maze in under ten minutes, (not that I've completely seen either of these movies.)

When I started, it was rather difficult for me. Firstly I started just drawing lines with openings, much like the girl in Inception started, but it became hard to keep up with which path lead were. Then, I began to draw the dead-ends first, then the path would be created around them. After I read this article here, I began to use the bottleneck technique, along-side the dead-ends-first technique, which so far have made me my most difficult mazes.



The one on the bottom right was one of my earlier ones - though the tree one is far more simple, the square one required the least lateral thinking. Also, I used pencil before using pen, which caused my free-hand lines to appear much more parallel.

The curvy, non-angular, all-over-the-shop maze wasn't my first attempt at this maze. Actually, these ones are the most difficult, as it's easy to lose yourself in the squiggles, even for the person drawing it.

These ones are earlier still. The one on the bottom left was an attempt to make a more artistic, pattern-y maze.


HOW TO TEST A MAZE

Generally, when I test a maze, I test it thoroughly. (Mostly it's because the entire purpose of doing this is to kill time) How I do this is very simple - photocopy the maze onto another sheet of paper and highlight all the dead ends.

This one that I highlighted in green* highlighter shows me that to the left, there are more than one ways of getting to the exit. The path to the right is a loop - that is something I would fill in later.



This is one from work on scrap paper. As you can see, I have notes down the side of the paper, and down the bottom shows the piece of paper was originally used for something else (one of those, "they printed out an extra bit of paper just with the website on it" situations)

Basically, what I'm doing as described above is isolating the dead ends. I start out with the obvious dead ends - ones were  there's a hallway that leads to no-where. Now, what we define as a dead-end is an area with only one entrance no matter how many loops it may have.


Block dead-ends can be easily detected and highlighted all at once.


(This is so professional, you can even see my drink bottle at the top there...)


The whole section above is one giant loop - it loops itself around and comes out again. Remember, our definition of a dead-end isn't somewhere where you hit a brick wall, but an area with only one entrance.


Once you get to this stage, you can really see where the dead-ends are, and you vaguely know where you're going.


Tada! When you've highlighted all the possible dead-ends, and you only have one path, you know you've made a proper maze.

Happy mazing!