Under the Sea

Work in progress sea creatures fabric. 

Dinosaur Doodle

I have been working on mini illustrations for my space book, heres a dinosaur illustrations from yesterday.

Just Us Collective

If you have a chance and like my artwork could you please vote for me to become part of the Just Us Collective. They are a collective for undergraduates who do exhibitions and help promote new designers and illustrators.  You can vote here.

The stress and doubt begins

The stress has been pilling on and the first term of third year is already coming to an end. I have hit the worrying stage of what will I do after the next six months. I'll have no more security of tutors and funding to allow me to create everyday and this is seriously worrying. I know I'm most likely to not get a job in the art industry straight away (or possibly at all). The reality that I need money to pay to be alive really dawned on me during my year in industry, and just how little people would pay me if any doing what  I love. I know many people who are on my course or studying art and design feel the same too.

Its becoming very real that this last six months could possibly be the last period of time I'll have the chance to be creative every day. As you can tell I've been feeling a bit down and worried the last could of weeks. And my projects have suffered because my brain won't stop thinking of what will I do next? Where will I live? will I have to go back to admin work? Which one of my biggest fear, I have been working for my dad doing admin work in the summer since I can remember and it is always the longest worst couple of months of each year. I really hate it there, and even my friends say I'm terrible to be around while I'm working there. The experience has really pushed me to work hard so  I don't have go back to this type of work know matter what! And has fuelled my determination to succeed in the creative world. I do however know I'm lucky to have a possible job of any sort to fall back on as some of my friends who have graduated have had no luck in even retail let alone design or illustration jobs. Really sorry to put all these negativity onto my blog its just me venting.

I'm still trying to look on the bright side which is I have a some time to get my portfolio together and get my work up to scratch to come out of university fighting ( as cheesy as that sounds). If you have read all of this thanks for listening and my moan will stop here.

Ben's Guide to the Solar System

I decided to illustrate and write a children's guide to the solar system for one of my final major projects. Really loving the space theme and had so much fun with it. Would love to hear what you guys think. 

Heres a few illustrations so far:

Surface Design

I'm now back at university to finish third year (eek) its strange to be back to education after a year of internships and dealing with real life. Its as it I'm back in a bubble where tutors have very different views to work that is in industry. I'm loving being back to use the work shops though! The technicians are worth their weight in gold, and are always keen to help you learn a new process or help you use the facilities to suit your needs. My work has started to become quite pattern base, and the surface design course has been kind enough to let me sit in one their lessons and use their screen printing room. I have been using my cut outs to create stencils and learning to use procion dyes to print my very own fabric! Its been amazing so far, a really long process but worth it in the end. I'm hoping to produce a range of home wares for one of my final major projects. I'm also sitting in on the ceramics work shops and hope to get my designs on dinner ware at some point :) Its an exciting start to the year, also extremely hard work but got to make this last year count!

Speed Trust

As promised heres the post about teaching at the school. The kids took a while to get used to me because of the lightness of my skin (they don't see many half white half asian people so they didn't know what to make of me). But once they warmed to me they'd all jump around knowing I'd brought goodies! They have never really drawn or played with paint before so they weren't 100% sure how to use the materials, plus the language barrier was a bit difficult but I generally did a demonstration of what I'd like them to do any just let them have fun with the arty bits I'd brought. You should have seen the mess when I brought in glitter! I cut up butterflies for them to paint and elephants for them to stick square bits of paper which was wonderful, we also had story time and a sing along at the end of the day.