Mindmap

Concept Development Inspired

Here's a preview of the Frogboy concept I'm working on - trying to nail down some details with a lesser ambiguous flourish of the pentel mech.

I started this sketch in Concept Development, a lectorial (lecture/tutorial apparently) taken by Belinda Langlands. Went fairly well and I've been working on it since - though I have been tackling with using my scanner thus the delay in posting this.

Honours Year is going more or less as I imagined, yet at the same time completely differently because I soon realise what I had imagined was very little. A lot of the academic side and involvement wasn't really taken into my consideration, and its coming as a bit of a surprise, though welcome.

Well, until I wake again, y'all have a good night!

Windows Live Writer??

I mean, what the hell is this?

This updating system is spectacularly irregular, it mimics the very style and visual representation of my blog - boundary by boundary, image by image. I get to see clearly the very construct of the blog itself - pre-publication. From an external source? Craziness yet it here it exists.

Uh... blogging, ah yes blogging.

Today was the first day of the rest of 4th year - Honours - Skadoosh. 12 o'clock surprise lecture - hurried walk into University up to the 3rd floor - which is now an open plan  madness. I'm trying to fathom how possible it will be to concentrate in an environment where you can have -anyone- walking passed your classroom at any given moment.

I'm liking the whole free thought roaming aspect, I'm digging that. I'm just weighing it in hand with the implications of student involvement. They will come and go as they please, they will more than likely make noise - maintain focus then, I ask you.

In other news - my Western Digital has fled inside it's shell and refuses to utilise its own USB 2.0 cable. It also nearly fried my computer...

I'm very wary of it now. Currently living in the irony that on the packaging for the MyBook it implicitly states "Put your life on it." And I did. If you evaluate that my art is my life, and my art is digital.

Having ordered a new cable, I await the farfetched possibility that it will work only when I have fed it a replacement lifeline. Time will tell on that one.

Moving Along

Time is passing, one beat and one moment trailing after the other - its pace is constant in so far as we wish to quantify and measure it. Yet retrospectfully it can travel by us, if we let it. Like a river from an indistinguishable source, it collides with us in rushes of tense action and then subsides as quickly. I feel like I'm caught in this rush again. Everything takes upon itself a surreality, as though moving fatally in slow motion.

I'm moving into another new flat - I haven't spent longer than a year in any one place for the last three years. Pretty normal for a student I'd assume though. However this is the first time that I will have been my choice to move, that is, it would have been if my landlord had given me the option. I assume, that he assumed, that I didn't wish to continue the lease. I didn't, so why still do I find a problem in this situation? I was not given the choice I'd sought for, but indirectly I'd made it in my silence.

Due to the move, packing has been essential. A life jigsaw - like 3 dimensional tetris, I've watched and been involved in the packing of my life into boxes. Neat, snug, ordered comfort. All the trimmings of home. There are the books I've yet to read, taken from the book case I've yet to move. There are the dozens of half filled sketchbooks to cart around - an essential collection. There is the console I hardly play, along with the tv I never have time to watch. There are the countless garments that have lost sight of fashion, and continued to haunt my carpeted floor. I keep forgetting what colour my carpet is.

We move on Saturday. We pay the money we don't have, to the friendly people we've only just met. So much trust is gathered in their plentiful smiles and polite demeanour. Benevolent Belvoir. Letting Life Savers. They hold the keys to the rest of our lives.

I can't wait to set up my new office/study/art room. Having constantly blended my surroundings into both recreation and workspace for the last 3 years, it'll be a change to have walls seperate these areas of my life. Plus I'll now have a lounge to lounge in, score.

That's about it for now - Uni begins in September - Honours Horrors commence after that. Hoozah.

Mainland Escape and Prelude Panic

Whoa there! How fortunate it is to stumble upon thee, I bid you stall for a moment and read on. Some adventures mark my words are not for the faint of heart, lest an attack prey upon thee. I've been been stranded by the MacBrayne skuttle boat for the last two weeks with little more company than sheep! Here I took a picture for you..



Of course I couldn't understand the locals that well. So then, I've spent the duration of 3rd July to 16th July in an offshore region of my own country of Scotland, taking in the sights, enjoying the motorhome routine of moving out of everyone's way just to get anywhere, and being witness to 3 generations of my other halves' Clan just 'getting along'. Frightful. Let me chart for you the course of my journeys...

Anyways with my Panasonic Lumix in hand, I tried to document the way there from waiting out in the Train Station in Perth for an hour for our connecting booked train up to Inverness, documenting our stops along the way.

Inverness was another play-a-wander-round, visiting places like the Victorian Market, which I didn't happen to photograph -_-. Very cool, quaint and had little shops in streets under a taller ceiling skylight. This otherworld was a neccessary detour for our search was driven by the hunger in our bellies. I found myself a bacon san'wich which lacked vital qualities like a taste... and nutrition. It happened to taste exactly like the butties from Aberdeen on Three Kirk street, and they weren't very good either. Unlike those to appear in my life later on! Skadoosh!

Skipping to the interesting moments now:

From the wake our ferry left in the scottish waters, we could spot the grellow smog rising from the mainland, and take lungfuls of fresh sea air. Spotting porpoises off the port side!

Windfarms on Lewis, is this the beginning?

I hope it is the end. No more, leave not the taint of modernity on the soils of our fathers. These leeching endeavours ruin the place which I've come to respect. Visitors remember and beware, the place is as it is for a reason, and wandering there you must remember that it will be, without our influence. Take only pictures, and leave nothing but footprints in the sand of the wondrous ever changing beaches.

The skies to welcome us in Lewis were magnificent, magical and mysterious.



Cliff saw fit to deliver unto us a sunset unique, and we stopped upon the Valtos Viewpoint which I remember well from my first visit.



Motorhoming Missile - Skaplow!



I spent After much pestering I finally managed to get a cycle run organised and it was - Amazing. I don't think Violet really understood why I wanted to. To me cycling presented a thrill, of exploring Lewis in a greater, more free sense away from the suggestion and insistence of parent control. It was quicker than walking, again more of a thrill, an exhiliration, it was a true joy ride. Picking up pace on the downhills, channeling focus into the uphill struggles, ever wary that a car might appear from around the next bend, the scenery, the sky above and all the pedalling one could muster. I have to say I didn't quite manage it all the way up the Cliff hill, but next year I will. Alone if I have to... it will be done. I want to cycle more, take just a day and a bike and go to places I've never been driven to, to see things I'll never see otherwise. I want to place more thought on what to do while there, with specific weather for them, so that when that weather comes, we can match up the activity... get it done, experience Lewis fully.

I have to say, over 2 weeks there were some points where I felt lethargic, and I did just want the comfort of sitting down and doodling, or jotting down some thoughts. All the activity was a bit overwhelming, and the indecision and choice there was staggering... that often I could not decide.

Calanais - standing stones. These were inspirational for the Dougie Maclean Project I've put on the back burner for way too long. I seen him by the by at the Uig Gala Day, but felt too intimidated to actually go up and say hi properly. Blah... here's a photo. I think my lens got splashed! Oh noes!

I'd like to invest in a tripod, I nice one that'll strap to my back so I can be kitted out and look impressive. It's a vain, naive little wish stirring at the back of my if-only list. Just to get a better focus on these images... sigh.

During the Gala day I'm reminded was a spectucular aerial display from a helicopter pilots' nerve. He held out, and was able to guide this daredevil to the hilltop summit.






On our walk to a rocky beach to go tresaure hunting for washed up wonders I spotted this lagoon of sorts, snapping it up while I could, and hurrying to catch up again.

And what were we searching for? Firewood, for a grand fire upon the beach, with help from a little lighter fluid of course. Extra toasty. We even managed to set the sand on fire for moments. Then someone had the bright idea to channel sea water down into the blaze to put it out... not an action I'd like to see repeated, the stench which rose up was amazing.

Dig, Dug, Dang!

I've been staying with Violet's parents over this weekend, so I've been forced to work in pencil only for the time being. Speaking of which I should mention my appreciation for a couple I met on the train to Haymarket. One Colin and Elizabeth, who bought from me a couple of quick portraits I done of them as a souvenir of their trip. I hope the castle wasn't too draughty!

I feel more like an archeologist than a pencil artist at the moment. I've unearthed a number of sketchbooks which have remained dormant on the discarded level of my bookcase in the corner. They hold dates like '2005-06' on them. This is history. Not only history, but my history. The evolution of my ideas and the lines my hands crafted once.

A great many of them are unfinished. And this is where my work begins, and the point of this entry finds itself. I must learn to finish what I begin. This is the lesson I have seeking to learn. I lack the patience to see a task through to its' completion. I came up with a character who is the personification of such a trait. He is the antithesis of all that I am.

If you have ever reached that point in an endeavour, where the interest wanes and your attention begins to split under the pressure, then you know where I'm coming. If you want to deal with this, then you're going where I want to be. So I've been going through these sketchbooks, and adding the lines which need to be there to achieve things like clarity, and lose the ambiguity of diminished focus. To some part of my mind this has become blasphemous. 'What are you doing!? These are snapshots of how you were at that time! Why the hell are you ruining them!' I feel like some heretic in the halls of my own making, scrawling on the walls, 'WRONG!'

I'm not doing it to all the drawings, that would be counter effective. Only those which deserve that something, that drive. This has led me to the creation of a To Do Folder. So much more than a list, it contains the items in question. They're not prioritised yet, they have no order, I jump between them. I'm wondering if this is a way of working which suits me. Project hopping, like a frog on electrified skittles.

So far I have finished 0/16.... getting there!

Something to share with you

Enjoy.

Flying the flags, invisible banners

I thought I would mention as an update that I was working on the header of this blog, the frogboy image that I crafted for my 3rd year end of year presentation. Hopes you all like it. Working on the trasnparency of it so it blends in nicely.. getting there I feel, see how it works out with more tinkering.

More updating to come I feel.