I’ve got a bit of a headache

I’m really not in the mood for communicating right now. Here’s a picture. Don’t say I never give you anything. blurgh.

t-shirt designs

Hello

This week I’ve entered a couple of designs at Bang Bang t-shirts. If you get a minute you should take a look, give them a rating and generally try and get them turned into a t-shirt reality! Click on the picture to take you to the page!

A lot of love to give…

I made this picture for valentines day, everyone on my mailing list got a link to a printable card sized version. Lucky lucky lucky mailees. I think it’s nice. If you want to print the card you can too! www.peskyvarmint.co.uk/peskyvalentinecard.jpg. A bit late for valentines but when isn’t a good time to show you love with a picture of siamese hands?

My competition entry rocks, rocks I tell you.

I’ve been busy busy busy! Too busy to blog? Yes indeed.

Recently I have: applied to RCA Communication Art and Design, not heard nowt yet, but no news is delayed bad news…

I have taken a very short visit to Paris where I took 389 photos (oh how I love digital cameras), an edited selection of 24 can be found on facebook, but you gotta know me first (ha ha, as if anyone who doesn’t already know me reads this. Gareth, I believe you may be my only reader!). I am going to do some kind of Paris project in the near future, that’ll be exciting wont it.

I’ve entered a competition with a poster for Manchester Pride, below (lots of fun learning Photoshop had by all) and I’m working on some logo designs for a conference I’m event managing on the side. In fact due to the conference gig I shouldn’t have to worry about finding a proper job until at least September! Hurrah!

Right, gotta go. laters x

click the thumbnail to see a bigger picture!

birdy breakthrough!

very short post today – I’ve had a epiphany! I’ve been trying to figure out how to get my print work (which I love) and my drawing stuff (which just sort of falls out of me without any real effort on my part – this is a good thing) to play nicely together. Having come across Rex Ray in a magazine today it suddenly sort of dawned on me that collage is ace. I knew that already, I’ve done a bit of paper cut out stuff in the past, but suddenly it all seems to make sense. Anyway, here’s my very first, very quick, try at making something cool. It’s not much but I love it already!

You may also be interested in a drawing I made for my loyal fans in new year festive spirit. You can save and print a rather fetching resolution reminder from my website, go to www.peskyvarmint.co.uk/2008says.jpg.

Made in Medway book launch and wicked stuff for sale

So a book I’m in was launched yesterday – you can see visit the website of the book at www.madeinmedway.com – and upon perusal of my entry I realised I’d told them about this blog and remembered that I haven’t written in it for a very long time indeed. Hmmm. Can’t go back in time so here’s a brief overview of what I’ve been up to:

In October I took a Saturday class in Editorial Illustration at Saint Martins. It was lots of fun and I met a couple of illustrators whose work is great and we’re going to try setting up a collective together.

I’ve also been doing a couple of websites but I’m putting that stuff on hold until February when I can concentrate on it properly. My own website has been redesigned but looks just awful in Explorer so needs fixing before I let it out into the world. Today, hopefully.

I got back into sewing when I made the packaging illustrations for Wendy Daws’ Emergency Jewellery Kits (pictures of final designs below) and I’ve since been making hand sewn jewellery of my own, now on sale at www.peskyvarmint.etsy.com. There’s also some cool Christmas cards that double as frameable prints with titles such as ‘Burglar Claus’ and ‘Asbo Choir’ (my personal favourites). I’m putting more stuff up everyday so keep checking until you find something you like!

I think that’s about it. Enough for now anyway. Laters x

Print Matters, I Love Design and What do you think you’re doing – a busy week for danielle…

It has to be said I’m not very good at this blogging malarkey. It’s been a week since I last wrote, but in my defence I have been rubbish. Maybe writing everyday was a little ambitious of me?

Anyway, I can catch up.

Saturday 15 September

I went to the Design Museum to attend the Print Matters independent publishers event thing. There were a few independent magazines to flick through – Nude magazine was my favorite (there wasn’t any actual nudity, as far as I noticed) – and the day was filled with interesting talks about what it’s like to make your own magazine. I met some interesting people who produce lovely zines (no.18 and The Ghost Girls Guide to Living). I don’t think I’ll be starting my own mag or zine just yet – one thing I got from the day was an idea of how very time consuming it is, while remaining distinctly unprofitable (unless you include advertising, a necessary evil that would be more hassle than it’s worth, if it weren’t for the fact that it’s the only part of the project that’s – financially at least – worth anything!)

After all the talking and listening and learning about the history of zines there was free vodka. a good time was had by me.

Wednesday 19 September

I went to the press evening for FuseUK’s ‘I Love Design’ at Partridge Fine Art, Mayfair. It was great! If I weren’t so poor I’d have bought most of the show! My particular favorites included super cute ceramic figurines of pigs and cherubs, a knitting light, lovely, ecologically friendly lampshades and of course the fabulous acrylic dress, designed by Wendy Daws and Elisabeth Edlbauer and modelled by the gorgeous, fearless Zara.

Also at the show there were some unnecessarily expensive tables (£1,000,000 for a table! really!) and some unpleasant glass hedges that kept us amused as people walked past and made them crunch/clang/make little breaking noises. Even posh people look scared and run away when they think they’ve just broken something worth £65,000! The champaign weren’t too bad and anyone who know anything knows I love a good canape.

On Thursday morning I went to my gym to get a fitness test and exercise programme for the next 3 months. I thought I might throw up when finding out how many sit ups I can do in 30 seconds (26) and was advised that I might want to try drinking less. Pah.

Friday 21 September

Yesterday I went to the Design Museum again to see the Zaha Hadid and Jonathan Barnbrook exhibitions and to attend the evening panel discussion, ‘What do you think you’re doing’, which was about graphic designers and ethics.

The Zaha Hadid exhibition was a lot more interesting than I was expecting. I’m not a big fan of her architecture but I was not expecting the truly amazing paintings produced to describe her vision. Vibrant colours on black or muted back grounds, dynamic angles and flowing organic forms combining to make crazy abstract patterns (I know there’s more to them than that but I don’t care, I thought they were beautiful abstracts, not confusing schematics!). I also really liked the more technical drawings on tracing paper. The fact that I have no idea how building works meant I could appreciate the drawings for drawings, lovely liney drawings. Have I missed the point? Maybe, but I don’t care. So there. Nur.

Friendly Fire, the Jonathan Barnbrook exhibition was a little more disappointing. The VirusFont foundry stuff was cool, I’ve gotten quite into typography recently. I didn’t agree with some of the explanations though, like when they produced a font that uses just 6 basic shapes, rotated and flipped to form all the letters. It was described as intended to promote communication, which it doesn’t do, because you can’t easily read what it’s trying to say. In fact I found it difficult to work out what the words were in a lot of the designs shown. It’s just a personally preference really but I don’t like not really understanding the communication being foisted on me, even if it does look pretty (though a little noisy for my delicate eyes). However the political design issue is interesting and worthy, if a little, hmmm, I don’t know, I can’t think of the word.

The panel discussion was interesting. Jonathan Barnbrook, Adrian Shaughnessy (wrote ‘How to be a graphic designer without losing your soul’ – good book) and a woman who’s name I’ve forgotten but teaches at the London College of Communication, I think on the MA Design Writing/Criticism course. It was interesting to hear the different opinions on graphic design and it’s relationship with ethics, one woman was very into her sustainability pitch, which seemed a little off point but she kept coming back to it, a student in the audience thought that being a designer is about being creative, which apparently it’s just not. One guy suggested that if we wanted creative freedom we should be fine artists, not graphic designers, which is of course rubbish and thankfully Jonathan pointed out why. In general I agreed with what the panel were saying but didn’t learn anything new. The closing opinion that we must be ethical as graphic designers, while in one sense true, seemed a bit condesending. As grown ups following our own careers it is entirely up to us as individuals to decide how to behave, as grown ups we shouldn’t be pressured into ‘being good’ or be judged for our decisions. That’s not to say I’m going to go for any old arms dealers graphics project, but that is my choice – I shouldn’t be told not to do it!

Anyway, that’s my week. I did some other stuff but that’s not so interesting… No picture today, can’t be bothered.

laundry, my enemy, my demise

I haven’t really done any work at all today. Why? Because washing clothes takes an inordinate amount of time, especially when you have to get your parents to pick you up and take you to their washing machine because yours wont arrive for another 2 weeks. At least there’s still another 4 working hours in the day!

Here’s some scans of things I made a long time ago that I found in a drawer yesterday. I think they’re pretty cool, and go with the laundry theme for the day, what with being fabric and all.

what i’ve learned over the last couple of days…

I’ve learned that if I leave my blog until the very end of the day the chances are I wont write it.

I’ve learned that my scanner gets all its information from the centre of the page, so i can get pictures of 3D objects at different angles, like these:

I’ve learned that with Etsy I might just be ok, as long as I actually manage to get some drawing done soon!

I’ve learned that my choice of printer comes down to 3 options. They are all expensive, but I knew that already.

Well, that’s all not very exciting. I’ve learned some really interesting things about blogging from Lorelle at WordPress (essential information, I knew nothing before) and I learned all I needed to know about printers from Vincent Oliver. There, sharing the knowledge.

Here are some cute skulls I drew yesterday while I should have been drawing something else. Laters.

p.s. I just learned that I could have used learnt all along and didn’t really have to go and change them all to learned. Stupid spell check. I knew learnt was a word…

time to go home

I’ve had a long day learning about blogging. Here’s a picture of bunny rabbits on other worlds. Could you love these rabbits?