Crescendo

Undo the locks and throw away the keys -

Last week my boyfriend and I celebrated our one year anniversary :D We had a lovely evening. I painted a picture of us for him on a canvas, I'll post pictures of it soon, and he got me the most beautiful necklace. No doubt I shan't be able to resist posting pictures of that too. ;) We also had our first barbecue of the summer, I love barbecues. I must buy one and learn to use it. And this weekend was the Summer Fayre at my old school, which was nice to visit. I bought this dress from Topshop last week, intending to wear it for our anniversary dinner - I didn't in the end but we forgot to take photos of the night :( It's nice and summery and light and the weather was lovely today so I decided to take some photos in the garden.

Mirror, mirror -

I can never stick to a brief.

I always end up doing whatever I want and relying on cleverly worded annotations to try and link what I did to what I was actually supposed to do. This was my final piece for "Heads, Faces and Figures" and it's actually unusually appropriate for me.

I was feeling inspired by a poem called "The Lady of Shallot" by Alfred Lord Tennyson, which looks painfully boring but it's really quite pretty if you read it through. It's about a woman who has a curse put on her so that she can't look directly at the village of Camelot (I think) and so she is confined to her tower, but she has a magic mirror which she uses to watch the people go by in Camelot. She also weaves soemthing, I think, I can't remember because I did all this about a year ago. But eventually she sees Lancelot and falls in love with him and wants to look at him properly, so she does and the mirror breaks and she dies.

The piece was loosely based around that, with the theme of the mirror, but I tried to make it slightly more modern. The first image with the blue background is the girl's sadness, the second is her surprise, the green is her jealousy, the red is her anger, she smashes the mirror and then she dies. I threw in a little passage about a mirror and there's some Lichtenstein in there too. It was quite fun to make, I took pictures of myself doing all the expressions and then drew over them on the computer in PhotoDraw :-)


Who is this? And what is here?
And in the lighted palace near
Died the sound of royal cheer;
And they crossed themselves for fear,
All the Knights at Camelot;
But Lancelot mused a little space
He said, "She has a lovely face;
God in his mercy lend her grace,
The Lady of Shalott.

Deadline

I have neglected my blog for the past week or so because I've been so busy trying to get all my art coursework sorted and handed in. But, the deadline was yesterday and it's all done! Over now until next year.
Thank you for all your lovely comments and for reading my blog, I'll be posting regularly as normal from now on :)

Here are three of the canvases I did for my AS Level:



Elvis, Glitter and Oil on Canvas, 50cm x 50cm
I really like this one, he looks much more impressive in person though, I think so anyway :)



Fruit De La Mode, can't remember the size but it's big, acrylic, glitter (cigarette end) and nail polish (on her nails) on canvas.



Vogue Covers, Acrylic on Canvas, can't remember the size again but you can see from my A3 sketchbook that they're only small :)

I can now do art and photography for me rather than for the examboard which is a rather exciting prospect, I just hope all my hard work pays off!

Had we but world enough, and time -

Ragdoll -

Some photos of me as a ragdoll for my "figurative toys" art project. Took loads, not many were successful, haha. But I like these, the top one is my favourite :)

Take only what you need from it -

1) I am an artist.
2) I have very strong right brain dominance.
3) I wish I could sing like Laura Marling.
4) I love retro / vintage things.
5) I love travelling.
6) I don't think twice about what I eat.
7) I am insupressibly messy.
8) I am an only child.



9) I cannot cook, or make nice cups of tea :(
10) I leave everything until the last minute.
11) I am generous and I like to help people.
12) Usually, if I just let things roll, everything seems to work out.
13) I have a lot of lucid dreams.
14) I would love a retro VW campervan.
15) I think I was born a few decades too late.
16) I speak French, but I should practice more often.



17) I don't watch much TV.
19) I am awful at saving money.
20) I believe in soul mates.
21) I am lazy.
22) I love the Summer.
23) I never plan things.
24) I should read more classic novels.
25) I walk or run when I'm angry or sad.
26) I never let people know when I'm angry or sad.
27) I have seen the pyramids.
28) I have been to Aushwitz.



29)I love to dance.
30) I secretly love to be tickled.
31) I don't have a big family.
32) I like being in other peoples homes, I like how loud they are compared to mine.
33) I can never keep a diary.
34) I love flowers.
35) I find other people laughing hilarious.
36) I really REALLY want a kitten.
37) I beleive in Karma.

Red sky at night -

I love night time because it's so peaceful and quiet and calm and everything just stops. It lulls you into the sense that everything and eveyone is sleeping but you. And I like the idea of being out there when everyone else is safely inside. I love Summer nights when the sky is clear and the air's warm and you can see the stars. Not that I was warm taking these photos, I was furreezing and my camera in night mode takes about 10 seconds to take the picture, so I was out there playing statues trying not to shiver. I didn't do a very good job in the above photo ;)
My boyfriend took these with the aid of a tripod on loan from my father.

And here's some of my boyfriend and I, yay for autocapture :)

I paint things -

Pulp Fiction, Acrylic on Canvas, 24" by 30"
I think this was the first canvas painting I ever did :')



Marilyn, Acrylic on Canvas, 20" by 30"
And the second :) I do appologise for the picture quality. My old school have still got this on display in their art corridor, I haven't seen it in a while. :(



Self Portrait, Mixed Media on Canvas, 30" by 24"
Mainly acrylic, but I also used some water soluble pencil and stuck some photo prints on. I experimented with nail polish and applying paint with a fork too. Again, I appologise for the picture quality. This was my final piece for my Art GCSE, took around ten hours including the evaluation I had to do. Quite proud of it I think, my school won't give me this one back either until October. :(



Jenny, Oil and Acrylic on Canvas, 20" by 30"
(Also stuck black feathers on)
Final piece for the first module of my Art A Level. Bought oil paint accidently instead of acrylic and was then horrified when it wasn't dry the next day. :') I like how it turned out though. I'm thinking of softening the edges up a little but to give it justice it does look better in person. :)

I've got loads more to come, but this is enough for now I think. There are also lots of pieces still in the idea stages but they'll have to be put off until i finish my damn sketchbook work. :(
Deadline in two weeks.

Vanity is my favourite sin -

Some pictures I did a while ago for my art project. Kind of in the style of Cecil Beaton...




Not quite as extravagant :) but I was going the vintagey kind of feel.

April Fool

Last Summer was incredible. Poland, Krakow in May. Auschwitz. The horror of something so powerful, and so inexplicable, so alive even now. Something that turned out to be a life lesson rather than a history lesson. But despite our visit to Auschwitz, we had an amazing time. One of the best weekends of my life. Poland, the people, the place, the atmosphere was electric. Something I'll never forget. Leaving High School, the tears, saying goodbye, the prom. The perfect night to end the best 5 years of my life. I'm at college now and I miss school like hell. Exams, walk-through GCSE's - the exams seemed more of a social event than something to worry about. Then the holidays, parties, sleepovers, picnics in the park. Long walks and lazy, light nights. Going to France with my boyfriend. At 16 going abroad alone is quite an adventure. We sat on the beach all night, we swam, ate crepes and seafood platters for the hell of it, drank French beer and even saw a French acoustic band in a quiet little bar one night. Magical. I'm looking forward to this Summer and whatever it may bring.



Autumn, Autumn brought the start of college and the tearful goodbye's to my boyfriend who moved to Australia. Never did I think it possible to miss someone so much. It was like half of my soul was missing. Thankfully, Autumn also brought him back.


Winter? Is there ever much to say about Winter? I am somewhat of a recluse during the Winter months because I hate being cold / wet / blown about by the wind or all of the above. But it snowed! Absolutely gutted that my local toyshop sold out of sledges before I got there but we managed to borrow a friend's. Christmas. I had quite a good Christmas, nothing special. New Years Eve was eventful but fun. And back to college to face another seemingly endless term of English / Philosophy essays, art coursework and psychology... well okay, not really anything to do for psychology.



And Spring! This one had to be in colour. Spring brought me driving lessons, which i am still having and so far so good, an excuse to wear those ridiculously big sunglasses I always have on, and the realisation that I am not actually as tall I thought I was. I can now wear high heels and not feel like a giant. Unfortunately, where I live in the West Midlands, UK, you tend to look like a bit of an idiot if you wear anything remotely fashionable. It is now April and the weather has been exceptionally kind to us so far, I hope this is setting us up for a long hot Summer...



I'm Sophie, 17, it's nice to meet you.