Bolton & Manchester Museums!

This week I went to a couple of museums. The Manchester University museum and the Bolton one which also has a little but fascinating Aquarium.As I like nature and animals in general, I was extremely fascinated by every little bit of them both. There were quite a few live exhibits which were incredibly fun to watch. I enjoyed looking around the animals a lot, however I was more interested in the extinct spiecies and old fossils. 
I could probably write a lot about each and every exhibit there was there, however I chose to do so about two in specific. Ever since I was a child, I always loved dinosaurs and their alleged behaviour. There was a cast of a few dinosaurs, the most interesting one was the skull of a Tyrannosaurus rex which was acquired in the 1900's. It was purchased from a museum in New York which holds the original specimen. It was the third ever found and named 'Tyrant lizard king'! There was another casting of a Tuojiangosaurus (a what!?) and it also had a very interesting name: 'Tuo River Lizard with many spikes' and as amazing as it sounds, that giant 7 meters long and 3 tons dinosaur only ate grass, unlike the T.Rex.
I am looking forward to visiting more museums in future after this incredible experience.

I also take interest in Taxidermy, I just find it so strange that dead animals can be made to look so alive, when I was a child i'd be around my granddads mansion in spain and there were always dead animals in glass cabinets and animal skins hung on the walls. Ever since then i've been intrigued. I know most people find it revolting but I just find it so interesting, i don't find it scary at all, and yet i'm scared by mannequins? I'm not really scared of them but well, lets say me in a room alone full of mannequins would not be an ideal situation! 

This bird along with many others became extinct because of man king in the 1900's :(

How cute is this!? Howkapow!

These pictures are where I got my goat horn ideas from, it's fascinating!

I know I ended up posting a lot of photos here, (about 40!) but i had a TON more, These were my favourites and I couldn't shorten my list!

Snuffie

At the Start of the university year, in september, I had decided to get what i had always wanted - a parrot. And I travelled all the way to Nottingham to get my dream one! I had bought a male green-cheek conure off a parrot breeder, and I couldn't wait to get to know my little parrot better! We called him snuffie, he was full of character and I began to train him, and not very long after we began to hold him in our hands! There was many times i used Snuffie for inspiration in my work and had been sitting with him whilst doing some university work. When he moulted i'd pick his bright green, red, purple and blue feathers out of his cage and use them in my work too. Snuffie was a sweet bird with a cheeky character and on Yesterday morning, I was shocked and devastated to find him drowned in a bucket of water someone had left out the previous day. It's been tough since, everywhere feels empty - so I decided to make, a sort of tribute, you could say, to him. 

Here is my picture, and also some of the best pictures I took of Snuffie:

This is the picture tribute i made, it reminds me of him, and it's hung up in my room :)

R.I.P little Snuffie

Howkapow!

With our new brief (which is awesome!) we have to design merchandise for an online shop called Howkapow, which includes tea towels, mugs, and a circular tray. We were given a choice of themes we could base our merchandise off, which were:

• Scandinavian fairytales
• Food

I chose scandinavian fairytales because I like working with things where i feel there are less limitations to go crazy and do whatever :) And plus I really like the story of 'The Three Billy Goats Gruff'! I know I want to illustrate goats, I just need to figure out how! Ka pow?

I started off by taking a trip to the farm to go and see some goats! 

I also did some landscape painting whilst I was there, I had a great view of the Derbyshire hills, which inspired me. It was a nice day towards the end!

Here is some progress of my goats :)

I should have worked in a bigger sketch book as this was only A5 but i feel safe when I work small!

Goat horns are so cool, i don't know why but i've been obsessed with horns since childhood!

A tundra!

That's it so far but im so impressed with how it's going so far!

Ben Jones

So Ben Jones, a stockport college graduate has been in over the past few weeks to learn about teaching and during his time here he's helped us all. He gave our class a really nice talk about the industry and what it's like out there once you've graduated from University. Ben is currently a freelance illustrator and has done many kinds of work after he graduated, like editorials for newspaper and magazines,which he is required to do in a really short space of time as they go to print as soon as the story is ready so that the paper can keep up with the news headline. It also needs to be eye-catching so that the article can grab your attention amongst many others. He's also done Book cover designs, and explained about those too. With book covers you are given a relatively long time to complete them in, from weeks to months. You stay in contact through e-mails and phone calls and the commissioners can choose to have your work changed if they do not like something or it is not ideal.

Another very good point that ben raised it to do with your roughs, he showed us some really poorly sketched roughs and explained as long as you can explain and the commissioner can see what you're trying to do, it doesn't matter how basic / bad the rough is. It's very useful to know this!

Ben gained recognition through competitions and urged us to take part in them, because they can really set a career off. He also explained that as well as his freelance job, he also had to keep another job on the side as freelance work can be unreliable.

Image from:

http://illustrationbenjones.blogspot.co.uk/2010_03_01_archive.html

Final Swan!

Sooo I've left it a little while now and I've managed to complete my swan.. I'll throw in a few details about how I got to the finals along the way :)

Templates

Printed and cut ready for sewing and stuffing!

And heres my swan hat, It's turned out not as good as i'd hoped it to be only because i literally ran out of time again. The hat did not fit properly on her head, the opening was too small so I had to balance it on top, it turned out alright on the final photos but i thought it was a bit silly to look at to begin with.

(sorry it's sideways!)

Aaaaand here come the Photographs!

This was my first choice, but when I had it photographed i thought the shots would be more from the exact front, when i looked through them they were all facing a bit side ways and kind of ruined some of the good images. We had to be careful placing the swan so it didn't just look like a bundle of cloth too.

And here is my final, I zoomed in to edit something on Photoshop and saw that it looks a lot better from  this angle and distance, i'm a bit disappointed because i really wanted to see the hat but I guess it's alright.