Website Redesign!

As another weekend comes to a close, I have some links to share with you today.

Very excitedly I have been redesigning my DottyNoggin website for the past few days. It's a very slow and tedious process but I feel like I am making progress, so that's good!

I've been meaning to do this for some time now, but have struggled to find the time. So I told myself it must be done before the end of February. (Funny how targets make us leap into action!)

I have completed a few pages, which I'd love you to take a look at. Any feedback is always appreciated!

http://dottynoggin.co.uk/aboutMe.html

http://www.dottynoggin.co.uk/art.html

http://www.dottynoggin.co.uk/diary.html

Probably should wait until it's all done, but hey.

Hope you all had a very lovely productive but restful weekend!

Retrospective: Diary Project (Some!) of the Final Pieces

Good afternoon from a cold little corner of Norwich-brrrrrr!

A trip to the shops with the Pup for some dogfood turned into a morning/afternoon of visiting Grandparents and Parents. Now very tired! So here I am, all ready to add a follow-up to my previous post. These are some of the final Illustrations which were exhibited Spring 2007 at St Margarets Church of Art.

I spent a large amount of time planning how my work would be hung, what it would be hung in and my area of display as a whole. So you could say that the Illustration development was influenced by my exhibitions plans and vice versa.

The Illustrations were mounted in a various array of frames which were either given to me, bought in Charity Shops or found. Which was much like the materials I used within the drawings.

At this point I was honing my skills on Adobe Photoshop, which is something I very rarely use now (an Adobe Illustrator convert....how did I mage to complete my whole degree without it?!). Using layers I would build up the line drawing into something which resembled applique, which for the sake of it having a name I called 'Digital Applique'. I don't even know if that's a technical term for it, but basically it does what it says on the tin! A lot of the textiles I used were scanned and catalogued from various sources including fabric shops, very kind upholstery shop owners, family members and old clothes. So I had a really expansive collection of pattern and colour to use in each piece of work.

The fact that there was no initial selection process when it came to the materials was very exciting for me, because inevitably I ended up with swatches which I would never have dreamed of picking but ended up working really well. Of course, a lot of them were pretty awful and never saw the light of day, but I think that's part of the fun!

Some of the Illustrations are very heavily built up with colour and fabric, while others are very sparsely coloured. Also I had a few which were screenprinted outline on fabric which you could pick out in some if the applique Illustrations.

I have photos of the exhibition that I will add to this post when I can aquire them from my little degree laptop which has been exiled to the back of a cupboard.

But for now hope you like!

'Bar Art'




'Gayglow 700'

'Lampshade Ironswitch'

'Counter'

'The Awkward Chair'

'Warming Up'

'Hanging Out'

Retrospective: Diary Project (Sketchbook)

As mentioned, and as promised - looking at Projects Past!

These drawings formed the basis of one of my BA (Hons) units/terms (whichever you want to call it!) way back when in 2007 (Eeek! Time definitely does fly!)

I am very fond of these drawings because they catalogue the surroundings which were closest to me during that period of time in my life. My intention was to document the ordinary, 'mundane' scenes which we tend not to take an interest in, because we see them every day. They certainly aren't things we'd take photographs of either, which I think is quite sad. One of the things I love about looking at old photographs is what I can spot in the background...be it my Nan's stripey curtains, the brown flocked wallpaper which graced my parent's living room walls, the tree which once proudly sat in the front garden or the wooden Singer sowing machine hood I'm using as a makeshift stool to pose for an impromptu photo aged Five. Years later, these transient details change and become harder for us to recall without a token of visual stimulant.

I know I'm terrible for my choice of subject when it comes to things like holidays...not even kidding I have almost a whole reel of photos of ducks from a trip to France! I am a snap happy fiend, and a lot of the time I have the tendancy to document things that play a relatively insignificant part of my life. It seems to be something we all do, and while I'm not saying it's a bad thing, I also think it's important to honour the things we take for granted and which may seem insignificant now, but that we will enjoy remembering later.

These drawings are in their most basic form. I worked into these using something I coined as 'Digital Applique', which was something very new and exciting at the time (Think Lauren Child's 'Charlie and Lola'). I'll post those seperately with further thoughts and information on techniques and such at a later date! I still look back at these drawings and pick some out for screenprinting and further development depending on what I have in mind for making. You might recognise a few from the framed screenprints that were a great success at the Christmas Clutter City (look for a posting further down from December 2010).

I shall leave you there - hope you enjoy looking at them :)

Colour Blitz

Had some downtime today, so found myself in my little studio scanning various bits and having fun with Illustrator. Not sure if it's something that is noticable to other people but I use colour very sparingly in my illustrations and I'm not a huge fan of collage/layering. The same goes for my day job, as the company I design for have a very simple, crisp and sophisticated philosophy. But sometimes I think you just have to go there with the colour and see what you come up with! Even if it turns out to not be 'you', it's always fun to experiment and either find a new direction or re-affirm your style. Sometimes it's about building it up to strip it all back again, which is an interesting way of going about things.

I loosely worked on the Vogue image...here it is, two times..








I'm quite pleased with the outcome, although it's taken me a while to come around to it! Probably prefer it without the writing. Would love to translate this design into something more tactile on actual wood...could be interesting!

Happy New Year!

Hope whoever reads this had a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Things got off to a hectic start for me with an addition to the household in the form of a little ball of fluff called Marty! He's a little ocker Spaniel Puppy with bundles of energy and a tail which never ceases to wag...very adorable!

Here's a few pics of him...

Have also been to Heimtextil in Frankfurt this week for work (Margaret Muir) which was great fun. And despite my awful sense of direction I managed to get myself there and back without getting myself lost, which was a bonus!

Just now going to start putting pen to paper again, as my drawing has taken a bit of a hiatus over the Christmas period thanks to decorating, agreeing to cook Christmas Dinner for seven people, Marty, travel and other general time consuming things!

Have been invited to join in on an exhibition next month which I'm very excited about...should have some details to share on that very soon.

Other than that I've been planning for my website facelift and leafing through sketchbooks, as I'd like to backtrack a bit on my blog and add some older projects which are (at the moment) a little bit difficult to view on my website.

Here's a procrastination doodle I did a little while ago that I tore out and kept to one side. Wanted to prove to myself I could still draw people after a long time spent jotting down windows and other lovely architectural bits and pieces. I used to LOVE fashion drawing in my early teens and spend many a evening scribbling away and designing all kinds of weird and wonderful outfits. So much fun!

This one is just a quick biro doodle from Vogue...