handmade by me.

a mobile cut from wool and cotton material into heart shapes. i was just decorating with this piece.

this is a lavender smelly that i made from the same materials, stuffed it with cotton wool and dried lavender. they are selling for £7.50 each for xmas prezzies :)

Broken

These images where taken with a nikon D90 and a macro lens. I was capturing a bonfire our landlord had created outside our house, from old mattresses and furniture. My theme from a uni brief was broken.

Year 2

So i have been back at uni for a good month now, working on mainly typographic work and screen print. Nothing to put up yet though, as its mainly book work for now. I am at a very exciting time at the moment as we start our major projects very soon for this year, with the theme to be given out soon!

Charlene Soraia and a stunning video!

Just to finish off, i wanted to share with you a wonderful example of moving image and an artist i'm enjoying at the moment. give it a watch...

Pinhole Photography

Stunning examples of the variations you can produce literally just by the roughness of the hole cut out, or the exposure time (some seconds, some minutes.) The last image was entitled, 'mistake pinhole' on the blog that i found it on. Maybe its because i am a complete novice in photography but i think that the white shapes in the foreground adds something beautiful. For me it suggests the idea that we are looking through a key hole, which shows something hidden and secret.

How to make a pinhole camera

Here is mine, granted it isn't that neat but it all dose its purpose! After reading an article about pinhole photography in 'Oh Comley' magazine, i decided i wanted to give it a go over the summer. Apparently you can use pretty much anything to make one, but i wanted something that wouldn't just take one image then i had to go in the dark and change it over. So here are the instructions and i will add some cool examples!


Required Materials

• 
  
• A large piece of 5mm thick foam core board
• A 2cm x 2cm flat piece of thin metal from a tin can
• Three 35mm spools (ask your local developer for spent rolls that you can pull the spools out of)
• A tubual, plastic, cheap ballpoint pen (the tube will be cut and used in the camera)
• Black acrylic paint
• A strong craft glue
• A sharp knife for cutting the foam core board
• A metric ruler
• A needle
• A fine-grit sandpaper
• A flashlight or electric torch
• A metal straight edge to aid in cutting
• Constructing the Outer Shell

The camera, once completed, can be pulled apart into two main pieces. I’m going to call these pieces the pinhole side and the outer shell. Below are two images. The first is a not-to-scale pattern for all the pieces of the outer shell. The second images show the completed outer shell with all of the individual pieces labeled. All of the pieces of this project are connected with glue.

Constructing the Rewind Knob

This knob can be completely separated from the camera when the outer shell and pinhole side of the camera are separated. But the rewind knob slot, as shown in the construction of the outer shell keeps the rewind knob in while the outer shell and pinhole side are together.

Constructing the Pinhole Side

This is the most complex piece of the camera. The initial construction resembles the outer shell, but then the take-up spool, the pinhole itself, and the shutter. The images below show the not-to-scale pattern for the pieces needed for the initial construction, and the pieces assembled and labeled.

Installing the Take-up Spool

This is the trickest part of the entire construction. You have to glue two pieces together through a hole in the pinhole side of the camera. Use the glue sparingly, because you want the spool to be able to rotate freely in its hole. You don’t want to accidentally glue the take-up spool to the camera itself.

Making and Installing the Pinhole

Making and Installing the Shutter

In the 2cm x 2cm piece of metal, you’re going to need to use the needle to poke a small whole. You want this hole to be as small as possible. If you’re using a standard sewing needle, this means you just want to put just the very tip through the metal. Use a small hammer and be sure to place something underneath the metal to protect your work surface. Once you make the hole, sand both sides of it with the sandpaper. This not only evens out your hole, it makes the metal thinner, which also is good. After that, glue the metal on theinside of the pinhole side of the camera between the two spacers completely covering the square hole completely.

The first image below shows the not-to-scale pieces needed for the image. The two small, curved spacer pieces and the ring will be glued onto the camera. The shutter itself is not glued to anything. The shutter and the two spacers can be from a circular piece the same size as the ring, but remember to leave a tab on the edge for the handle. After gluing the edge pieces and the ring on, let the glue dry before sliding the shutter in. If the shutter is tight, feel free to trim it slightly, or squeeze it hard to make it thinner. The second image shows the shutter installed on the camera with the piece labeled.

Finishing the Camera

Take your flashlight or electric torch and your camera into a darkroom. Use the light to check all of the joints you glued together. Chances are light will shine through at least a few of them. Don’t worry though. Use the black paint to fill in cracks and cover light leaks. It make take several coats. For extra big cracks, use some of your glue to fill them in before painting them.

extra notes see:

http://photo.tutsplus.com/tutorials/the-ultimate-guide-to-create-your-own-35mm-pinhole-camera/

Back to work!

Right. I just started my second year at Bath so its time for me to get back into posting things up here and stop being lazy, after a long summer! Firstly, I will be posting some things i have done over the the holidays, such as how to make a pin hole camera and some collage work I have completed. I then have plans to put up some typography work and perhaps some photography or illustration from my degree.

After this, i want to introduce some material to do with things that are happening today that inspire my work. So all useful and interesting stuff...!

the time is in all objects around you

Disorganization

Here are some new images i took today. I think my project may go in the direction of organisation- in which i will 4 final images. These will all link in some way but how, i'm not sure as of yet.

Disorganization

A photography brief of 'The Everyday' led me to research a photographer named Bastiem Schnidt who produced some beautiful work around the idea of, Identity in Narrative of the Everyday. 

A quotation of hers i used to stem my idea was, 'disorganization makes itself at home.' I looked into how I could show organisation around me thats really just an organised mess, and hopefully turn that into a narritve piece of uni life. Here are some initial photographs to start me off.

These are taken of areas around my room, i photographed how i found it and changed the images to black and white. 

My Commission

I have now finished my commission for the Christmas carol book I was asked to do. I was asked to draw 30 images, one each chapter and the front cover. i really enjoyed doing this as it was a taste of what i shall be doing after uni and a challenge to get it all done in time!

I like just taking photography when its not staged, so i can get it as natural as possible. I generally like taking photos of people who i know and are friends with. I think it adds more of a narrative to my images compared to when i try to plan a photo. These where taken in Bath where i live on hot day where we were relaxing on our roof.

Lucy Selina Hall

 This was a self written brief in which she researched the life of a battery hen and then made 30 chickens which where sold to make money for the Battery Hen Welfare Trust.

This was a four way music based image designed by Lucy Selina Hall and 3 other artists based in Suffolk.

Created for LLoyds TSB art competition and exhibited at London Regional Final in Dilfina Art Gallery.

I have just finished an essay for one of my modules at my uni in which I spoke about the publishing company, My Dance The Skull and Lucy Selina Hall. Working as an illustrator based in Suffolk, Lucy Hall works with textiles and hand drawn or digital images. Her work is heavily driven by environmental issues which was a subject she focused on in her third year at the University of the Arts London.  

 I loved her work and idea behind it all because its so beautiful in a way that is simple but hard to achieve. The way in which she combines fabric and drawn elements seems to add so much more texture and vibrance to each piece. 

She has worked with many organisations such as the Battery Hen Welfare Trust, the Suffolk Recycling Council and Ipswich Hospital to create nature based work that promotes environmental issues.