Kidney's story

                   A selection of pages from my book which I have entitled 'Kidney's story'

I wish my brain was actually blue

These are the final illustrations for my book. I have only shown one of the kidneys but within the book there are several that are slowly changing colour and shape as the illness progresses.

Sorry about how badly laid out this post is but Blogger wasn't having any of it and this was the best I could do. Bloomin' thing. Feel free to let me know what you think of these illustrations, I know they are very very basic, but the whole idea of my book was to be almost like a Mr Men book. I experimented a stupid amount too to get to these final images/colour choices.

Challenge accepted!

Starting next month on the 1st March myself and Sacha will be starting this 30 day drawing challenge in one of our many unused notebooks/sketchbooks (I have waaay too many and need to do something productive with them). I'm quite excited to start it because hopefully it will make me feel more creative than I have been lately and hopefully I'll start to see some visual style to my work, I'll keep this updated as I go along with it.

Leeds in a day?

Hi
This is what my face is looking like nowadays. I've been growing my hair for a lonnnnng time now and it seems to be slowly getting there, just can't wait till it's much longer. Proud.

Yesterday I went into Leeds with Frankie whilst she was back from London and we did everything we used to do in one day, the only thing missing was a piercing. We went and bought new tapers for stretching our ears (pretty leopard print aah) and I got a teeny tiny nose ring. Then we went and had shisha which was nice because I haven't been in so long, got grape + mint and mango + mint. It's always nice just to chill out and chat there because it's so relaxed aah. After that we headed to Wagamama for some noodles, haven't been there in so long either so that was amazing. I had Yaki Soba like I always do which is thin noodles with chicken, shrimps, peppers, ginger and loads more in it, so tasty! As always taking the easy way out with children's chopsticks (which are like little tweezers) but what can you do. Next on the 'Leeds in a day' agenda was Carpe Diem, who thank god had lemonade this time so I got the cocktail (x3 oops) that I wanted. It's called raspberry freeze and urgh it's just everything I want in a cocktail, it looks and tastes like slush but it's got Absolut rasperri vodka in it. We will meet again in the near future. After that Frankie went to Lee's and I came back to the flat and watched 'The ringer' with some mini cheddars and went to bed, party animal!

Today I went into Leeds again (keep saying Leeds when really I could just say town because I do live here but it's a city but urgh nevermind, you know where I mean) to meet Sacha with the intention of getting piercings but we've put them on hold for a bit longer. We had a good look round Paperchase (we bloody love Paperchase!) and a few other shops, had some food from Boots whilst we waited for Sacha's photos to be developed and I finally bought this t-shirt that I've had my eye on in New Looks for ages so that was nice, it's blue and speckly and baggy and I can't wait to wear it, hurrah! Now I'm trying to do what work can be done without a scanner, printer Photoshop or Indesign for my deadline tomorrow. Fun fun fun. Think I'll be going into uni for the 7.30am opening or failing that 8am. Painful but it needs to be done. Hope I finish in time.

also here is a photo of me since I've taken the plunge and switched from a spike to a ring in my nose piercing:

Once upon a time

Our new brief for uni is to produce an illustrated book based on an existing news story. (180mmx180mm) We then take the news story and turn it into more of a story book, including choosing the protagonist and fabricating their feelings and emotions etc. The facts of the story still need to be the original ones, but we are allowed to 'embellish' them. This is an independent project, followed by making a collaborative film in a group also based on a developed news story. We are still on the book part and the deadline for the digital work is in 3 days, well it's less than 3 days now and as it stands I'm not quite there yet. I do know what I'm doing, I've just still got some drawings and work on InDesign to do, which is my task for the remainder of today and tomorrow. It's taken me a long time to even get into this brief and my heart's still not completely in it, but I think a lot of that is down to me doubting my work, especially my ability to draw, which is necessary for this brief as photography is not an option because of my chosen story. The story I chose to use could have been recreated in either a very morbid and grotesque horror style, or alternatively a much softer, more subtle approach where the reader has more to think about. I chose the latter.

My chosen news story is the story of Amy Francis, a 77 year old woman who died from a fatal heart attack from blood loss after an experienced surgeon unintentionally removed the wrong organ during a theatre complication. Mrs Francis was having routine keyhole surgery to remove her cancerous right kidney when her liver was unintentionally removed, causing her blood loss, resulting in death. It is a tragic story and not one to be taken lightly at all which ledme to really think about how I wanted to tell this story. I didn't wanted a grim blood covered horror story told from the doctor's or Mrs Francis' point of view, I wanted to take the audience by surprise. That's when I decided to write the story from the kidney's point if view, Kidney as the protagonist (I did also toy with the liver as the protagonist, or alternatively both the liver and the kidney both as protagonists). Visually I want the book to be in a way like a grown ups Mr Men, in the way it is very simple in both story length, typeface and imagery. Like the Mr Men books I am having text on the left hand pages with all images (fingers crossed) on the right hand ones. The concept of my story is that the body of Mrs Francis is the organs' house and that they are all brothers and sisters within that house, Kidney and Liver are closest (both relationship and anatomically). The book follows Kidney as she becomes more and more ill with what Brain tells her is called 'Cancer', her decision to let herself be taken away and the awful realisation on the day she is to leave that Liver is gone and the house has been turned upside down, Heart has been attacked and all the lights in the house are slowly shutting off to represent the death of Mrs Francis. Each page only has about 3 lines of text. I am using Arial as Mr Men books use Sans Serif fonts.

I chose to create very simple images to go with the simple story. Using fineliners and copic markers I have been working on the 'characters' of Kidney, Liver, Brain, Stomach and Heart. The photo quality isn't great as they are from my phone but I will scan my drawings in at some point and post screen shots of the finished pages when I'm done. The idea is the Kidney gets paler and paler as the story goes on, which isn't as easy as it looks with these markers, it's endless swatches and tests but it's worth it for the end results, the colours are really rich and solid. They also look a hell of a lot better in real life as opposed to these photos.

The 2 images of the heart are not the line image I will be using for the final book, they were purely practice. The fineliner elements of the image needs to be much simpler to keep with the continuity of the other organs. I will also be using different colours; I have a bright red and quite a darker one which I have also been using for the kidney. So next tasks are: create a more simple heart and work on the colourings, repeat but with stomach and also with liver. Hopefully the InDseign side won't take me too long, I wish I wasn't such a bloody perfectionist or so doubtful of my work all the time, I might get more done and quicker that way.

Enough rambling about poorly organs now, I'll keep this updated (fingers crossed) as the project progresses over the next couple of days. Also need to think of a name and cover idea.

Let's never be parted again

Yesterday I wore these Docs for the first time in months and it felt great. I have no idea why I didn't wear them more over winter but I'm glad they've made their way back into my wardrobe life. My babies aah.

Plumbers are red, hedgehogs are blue, now press start, to be my player 2.

The above is what my Valentine's day card from Tim said, you can definitely tell that my boyfriend is a gamer and does computer games design but aww it was cute and I really liked it, and my presents from him too.

I was in Stafford for 9 days as I had reading week and wanted to get away for a bit and one of those days happened to fall on Valentine's day. Now I know Valentine's day is a load of crap and just a way to get loads of money out of saps who think that there's only one day in the year to show how much you really care about someone, even though you should do it every day but we still did it, just not the way Hallmark wanted us to. We started our day by going to town and to the old fashioned sweet shop where I was allowed to pick anything I wanted :D I went for this bright pink chocolate with little white chocolate crunchy nuggets on top, smells amazing. Tim got something similar but a minty one. They both taste amazing, but you can only manage about a square at a time, so rich but so good.

We then went back to Tim's flat where we had an indoor picnic which was really nice. We had tuna sandwiches, scotch eggs, bbq chicken, mini sausages, crisps and fondant fancies. So tasty, definitely want to do that again. Later on in the day we cooked a tuna pasta bake together and watched Harry Potter and it was just lovely. Didn't need to do all those stupid soppy expensive things, I was just perfectly happy being with Tim, now that is soppy. Oh well.

My lovely little blue fox is nearly as lovely as my boyfriend for getting him for me, he's so little and just aw <3

I will never learn

One day I will update this blog more regularly, but for now allow me to be useless. I can't believe it's been so long since I posted on this, and also that I haven't really done much new of interest either. That isn't to say I haven't been having fun, it's just I've been less arty/crafty as of late. Note to self: start actually doing things again. For a change I'm going to do a few small(er) posts rather a great big long one to make it less of a ramble, hurrah!

Since I've last posted I've started back at uni with a new project (which I'll tell you about in the next post), it's been my birthday and Valentine's day, as well as a couple of trips to Stafford and there's been a lot of burgers.
                                                                  
                                                                     
                                                                   Birthday - 26th January
On my birthday I had a deadline for an essay which wasn't great but regardless I did quite a lot and had a good time and saw a lot of different people. Frankie came up from Wycombe (London) for the weekend so she could be here on my birthday and Tim came after uni, so what did I do whilst we waited for them to arrive? Handed in my essay then went to the pub of course. Yates on a Thursday = 2 for 1 cocktails and such pretty colours.Sacha bought me the pretty blue cocktail below, it's Blue Lagoon and I love it.It was nice to just be there with people, and I got some lovely presents, and Skittles which I had asked for the night before.

We stayed in Yates for a couple of hours before heading back up to the flat for some party food (mini sausages, pizza, crisps etc). A couple of my flatmates had decorated the flat with birthday banners and Hello Kitty plates and party bags (!) which was really nice. By this time it was getting on for about 8 and we needed to go meet Frankie and Tim at the train station so myself, Lee and Sacha walked to town. Sacha headed home and we made our way to collect our other halves.Tim and I were going for a meal the next day so didn't really want to go for one that day too (and after a lot of party food I don't think we could have managed it) so we made our way to McDonald's for my lovely birthday tea as we are superb students. After this we headed to Carpe Diem for cocktails (so many cocktails!) . Sadly they were out of lemonade somehow and generally all the exciting and my favourite cocktails need lemonade so we had ones with milk and cream in and they were surprisingly nice. after all this we were absolutely knackered so made our way back up to the flat and went to bed. Overall, lovely day :)

My birthday didn't stop there though, because Tim had missed most of my birthday we had it again on the Friday, so we went to Tropical World and then out for a meal to TGI Fridays (where we'd both never been and it was amazing). It did start snowing and hailing on us on our way to Tropical world which was a total nightmare seeing as it was sunny when we left the flat but other than that I had a really nice day. Sadly parts of Tropical World are in the process of being renovated so a lot of the trees and such were missing in areas, but seeing the meerkats made up for it completely, ridiculously cute and inquisitive. TGI Fridays was one of the nicest meals I think I've ever eaten, it was amazing. We had double stacked bacon burgers, mine had special Jack Daniel's glaze on it, and it had pickles on it and the chips were so nice and urgh it was just ridiculously good. Not to mention the drinks we had, they took slush to a whole new level, and more cocktails, mmmm.The next night (the Saturday) we went out with Sacha, Jamie, Vicky, Laura and Danhi to Wire, a club in Leeds, for a sort of joint night out for my birthday and Danhi moving back to London then to America (sob sob :c) then hobbled home because heels are the devil, playing count the chicken on the way home. Fools. Before we went out Laura brought out a cake she had made me and it was just amazing, a rainbow cake covered in marshmallow fluff, it was never ending and very sticky but so so so tasty.

                                                                                Presents
I received some lovely presents for my birthday, as well as money from family (which I'm putting towards a new laptop because this one is on it's last legs). I also got a lot of very nice cards which I just took down.

 

Top photo: Rob Ryan book 'A sky full of kindness' from Frankie, 'Handmade typography' book, owl necklace, Hello Kitty teddy, Hello Kitty coaster, travel mug, all from Becca, a lovely tin lunchbox full of treats and things I love from Sacha, ink stamping set and Hello Kitty jelly beans from Laura, Kinders from Tim (his other presents are below and in the form of burgers), To-do book from Tim's parents (as well as money).

Middle photo: Hello Kitty headphones from Tim. My god they are amazing. and they come with a microphone attachment for Skype and everything. So ridiculously comfy and good quality. Boyf done good.

Bottom photo: a beautiful orchid from Tim. I've wanted one for ages and now it's brightening up my windowsill. I also enjoy getting to use the water sprayer thing I have for it. Currently chilling in a mixing bowl.

and so concludes my first installment of 'shorter posts'. I failed miserably as I originally started this last night at 9.30pm and it is now nearly 4pm the next day because I was on the phone to Frankie for hours planning a holiday to Barcelona, but there will be more on that later, but excited! Onwards with the next installments! <3