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HOME FOR CHRISTMAS HANGING WITH KEVIN AND THE CATS

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These are our two posters for the christmas market. Hopefully they say it all.

First on lovely rooftops by Alice, second one by me. 

HARVEST

This summer when we moved into our flat Jake and I started planting a vegetable patch. We were a bit late on in the year so success was limited...there was some rocket and chard and mibuna but not much else. UNTIL I had planted carrots but it got past carrot season and they still were tiny little things, so I left them in there with some hope of growing. I was weeding today and decided to see what was happening underneath the soil, and here we have, a tiny tiny carrot!!

Then also had a lovely lunch of our home grown salad, and picked one of the spring onions. A bit far from a smallholding but a start...

First of my five images for the exhibition. I got my gocco printer in the post today so will try this out on it tomorrow morning! Now it is time to SLEEP

nice

Queens rd peckham, saturday night. I love budlia. I love big square white buildings.

With two cats in the yard, life used to be so hard.

Jake and I have been collecting kitchenalia, this is part of our collection so far. I especially like the green enamel scales and the Corning Vision ware amber glass saucepans and frying pan.

This is basically my ideal chair. My dad's girlfriend Judy bought them on ebay. This is one of our cats, Sooty, living the dream.

The last of Helen Keller work

The last of my HK work. A drawing and an etching,

Exhibit.

We hung our work for the exhibition yesterday, it wasn't exactly chaos but there was this massive pile of rubbish still in the room.

This is Anna's work

And my work.

Exhibition is Thursday 4.30pm Camberwell College of Art.

Garden Cat

A neighbour's cat has taken a liking to the spot infront of our shed door. I can see it from my desk. It has a super white bib and likes sleeping.

You Make Loving Fun

Conte pastels are 5 for 1pound in the college shop.

Helen Keller

Before Easter we got given a new project- everyone in class was given a name  of someone of fame at random and had to research that person, with the end result of 5 images by next week for the end of year exhibition. I got Helen Keller, who was deaf and blind and learnt how to communicate, then went on to write very many books, go to university, get involved in radical politics and extreme activism.
Here's some work so far.

Laura Carlin

We had a super talk from LAURA CARLIN on Wednesday.

I have admired Laura's work for some time but haven't ever been able to see the full array as she doesn't put much work online, and as I have now found out, only released limited numbers of books and they all sell out at her exhibitions! Alas, alak.

So this was great as I got to see loads and loads of her work, and speak to her. It was great super great. Last year my tutor Amanda recommended I look at her really nice book about the night her dad was conceived, told from 4 perspectives. I finally got to see it which was great. 

I felt like the talk really re-enforced what i've been thinking about within my illustration work- the balance of putting your work in public and being ready to do that, having confidence in your work, playing on your strengths, the importance of drawing and of FUN, good advice on how to illustrate a text, 'style', ("Style is a word that should be banned"-LC). 

I have also wanted to use ceramics for quite some time- I don't know how or what but the ceramics department of Camberwell is shutting this year and I would love to try before then! And Laura showed us some really beautiful painted ceramics that she's been working on, which just re-enforced my wishes.

All in all, very inspiring. I left the lecture looking all around at the world like I want to draw THAT i want to draw THAT TOO oh i want to draw THAT ASWELL. Great.

"DEFINE WHAT YOUR OOOOMPH IS"

-Laura Carlin

MOKITA Symposium, Pick Me Up at Somerset House

On tuesday I went to MOKITA, a symposium around the subject of illustratior, held at Somerset House. VERY EXCITING.

http://mokita1.blogspot.com

A lot of things were said that you kind of already knew, but it was really interesting to hear it discussed. I guess that was part of the point. 

It was in three parts:

IS COMMERCE THE ONLY REAL CONTEXT FOR ILLUSTRATION?

(discussion between James Jarvis and Darryl Clifton)

ILLUSTRATOR AS AUTHOR, NEW PARADIGM OR THE DEATH OF THE AUTHOR?

(discussion between Luke Best and Roderick Mills)

DO WE NEED A THEORY OF ILLUSTRATION?

(discussion between Sam Arthur and Geoff Grandfield)

A small group of us helped film and record the event which was a bit out of my comfort zone but will hopefully be worth it if we can show what was said to others. All in all, I have lately felt like I'm really becoming to understand my place and route as an illustrator, I feel a lot more comfortable and sure of my own ideas on the subject, and why I am choosing to study and practise it.

No use crying over spilt milk.

"Spilt milk IS sad though. Think about the cow!" - Kim Smith.

Saw this on the way home last night. Tragic.

Sigmund Freud the Musical

I realised I never put an image of my final book for our chairs project. I wasn't too pleased with this outcome in terms of the whole project, but as I was originally going to do an animation, then left it until the last couple of weeks, I think it's okkkk for the time. It is a CD cover, then the inside pages of the book, then the back (poster).

I had to print it at home because I left doing anything until the last few days, and I tried to get the same colour- layering effect of a risograph machine on my home photocopier. It was very testing and used way too much ink, don't try it.

The closer that we get, the more you seem to bore me.

Did these today. Not sure about them, I can't seem to draw this image! Next monday will try with more transparent inks and not so last minute layers. 

Lithography

As a result of Freya bugging Darryl for months, a small group of us have been super lucky and have done a lithography course every friday for the last month. It's AMAZING. 

This is definately my favourite way to print, but so so complex. I can't remember all the stages and in the right order, and all the chemicals hurt your head, but it is all worth it. 

This was my first print in week one, on a big screen. There are lots of mistakes but it was good for showing me how mark making translates within this medium of printing. I am now working on a 3-colour print of the same image. 

When I was looking at Freya's blog for the address to link above, I also found she had this picture of me printing. Ta da!

Final Etching!

Final print of my etching plate. 

This could get mono-tonous

More Monoprints. I worked yesterday so was a tired wreck and couldn't go to open drawing, so I did my own workshop. 

Valentine Prints

Yesterday my friend Emma Brook and I did some Valentine's day prints. We wanted to use love song's as the base for the poster ideas, so this first one is a lyric from Elliot Smith's 'Thirteen', and the second is from a BIZZARE Oingo Boingo song called 'I love little girls'.

We designed the posters together, but split the drawing for each poster, on the first poster I drew the octopus, pool, and text, and Emma drew the girl sitting on the side. On the second poster I drew the creepy man and the text, and Emma drew all the little girls on the man's hands.

This was the result!

Monorail! No, Monoprint.

Yesterday in the Open Drawing evening workshops with Jeffrey Lee we did monoprinting! I had never done it before and it was wonderful. I made this for my friend Emma, about a boy called Curtis who was on wife swap, he loved chicken nuggets. I realise it's not a very sensitive print. Those are for next week!

Defecation, Defecation, Defecation, Defecation, Defecation, Defecation!

Defecation. from Kim Smith on Vimeo.

In class we have been working on our Author project. This week we had to get into groups of creatures that had similarities, and then we were given a word, and had to make a film about how all the creatures did that word. Our word was defecation. Lovely!

So we decided to look more down the semiology route of the effects of our surroundings and how we edit what we intake, get rid of 'waste' ideas and then what comes out.

We have been working hard in Kim's flat for the past two days making this animation, tra la!

Riitta Inkonen and Marie O'Connor Costume Workshops

Yesterday, tomorrow and Friday we have awsome costume workshops with Riitta Inkonen and Marie O'Connor!

These are super useful in terms of thinking and creating. Yesterday we went round the class and explained our primary needs and costume designs. It became obvious that thinking needed to extend past what things/doing you 'need' to WHY that is. For example, people said a primary need was their laptop, when really it's company, communication, information, comfort.

These two ladies give such good advice and input. I feel like we would improve as people if they were around more.

We did exercises like drawing ideas and connections from a word from our list of needs for five minutes solid, on paper stuck to the wall, fast. Or getting in groups and acting out a word, and the rest of the group had to guess what the word was.

http://www.riittaikonen.com/projects/house-martin/

Primary Needs

We have a new project at Camberwell to design a costume based on our five primary needs.

I can't quite sum up my needs but there's a rough list (in black the need, in colour what this includes)

Mobility Health, Intellect, Communication, Travel +Knowledge
Company//Communication// Interaction Health, situation, knowledge and intellect, response to environment, progress and development, identity
Comfort Health, vision, hearing, senses in general, warmth, company, food, situation
Fun//Creating identity, company, progress
Nature// Organic food, situation,environment, health


As you can see they all cross over quite a lot. The more I think these over, the more they could be narrowed and narrowed. Well being, company, progress, identity could sum it up rather well. Maybe these needs will need re-listing. The thing is, these needs have to be translated visually into a costume, so maybe mentally it makes sense to refine and refine them, but as they are already quite refined maybe my original list is far enough in terms of having ideas left to work with that aren't so BROAD.

ETCHASKETCH

Today I did my first etching ever. It was super. But I only had time to make one print, and it needs to dry for a week so I can't show you yet.

Treasure Hunting

I babysat on Thursday. We drew a treasure map.

Boyz

I'm a bit tired of naked ladies now.