The End is Nigh...

So it's that time of year again: taking down the studio. That involves a week of 20 sweaty illustrators shifting tables and chairs that normally seat about 130 people, painting about 100 8 foot high wooden walls and building an exhibition. It signals the end of the academic year, when we exhibit our work from the last year and then don our bikinis and sun hats and disappear for the summer. Only this time, for me, it's my last one, because somehow I made it to my third year. Some pangs of nostalgia, but mostly, I feel ready and happy to move on. It goes to show how much I've grown over the last 3 years. When I started uni I was still a child, now I am an adult, mature and ready to tackle the adult world.

Yeah, so mature. Pic's taken by Pete Merrel for Tracey Wright. 

Our 3rd year degree show exhibition opens on the evening of June 15th, and stays open for a couple of weeks, so come down to the Roland Levinsky Building 1st floor, Plymouth Uni, for cutting edge artwork from the next generation of highly trained illustrators (and artwork from me, as well...)

The Ukulele Tree - Now exists somewhere other than my imagination!

Culmination of 6 months of work, and tears (because I think this is the most important thing I've created) edited into 15 minutes.

Post 100!

Hooray! I have reached my hundredth post! Gosh! Bloody hell! This is probably the longest running of any of my internet projects. I've had about a million websites, blogs, youtube channels, deviantart accounts and email accounts. This one I feel a particular tenderness for, it's grown along with me. I'll be finishing uni soon, but this blog will continue for as long as I have stories to tell and memories to share.

The Ukulele Tree - first field test

Had my first workshop on saturday! It was pretty successful, we had 6 people come. 2 Little girls, and a range of adults. I'm happy people didn't assume it was for children only, I'm much happier having a range or indeed just adults. I was very nervous the morning of the workshop but mostly about things were beyond my control: what if nobody turns up? What some strings break? What if theres an earthquake? As it happened one ukulele did explode, but since that happened I felt a little more comfortable. If I can deal with an exploding Ukulele then I can deal with anything! 

The workshop was videoed and I'm currently working on editing that together. In the mean time here are some pictures of happy smiling people holding Ukuleles! 

Looking back at the footage I look pretty together, confident and eloquent. A sign of how nervous and hyped up on adrenaline can be seen here; my blushing, a symptom of my severe rosacea which I've had since I was 15. Breakouts caused by alcohol, spicy food, hot showers or stress. 

"One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious." - Carl Jung And, if like me, your puny netbook is too narrow to veiw youtube videos with my blogs current layout, go here.

Remember when I used to post things on this blog other than photos and artwork? This is really whats on my mind at the moment. Self-work. It sounds really egotistical and self-involved, but for me, personally, individually, working alone, its a quiet and occasionally traumatic journey of inner self discovery. Observing the past, looking at how the past effects my present behaviour and programing like pebbles rippling in a pond. Trying to come to an awareness. I've learnt that "trying" and "aware" don't belong in the same breath, its an oxymoron. As soon as you are aware you are aware, you are like...double-aware. Does that make sense? It's like lucid dreaming. I'm lucid living. Or I'm getting there. Ooooh. That rhymed. Thats totally going into a song...deeeeeep maaaan....

21st Birthday

So last month was my 21st birthday! I've been so busy the last couple of months, uni is really kicking off now. I have 7 weeks and then I'll be finished forever! Whoa! In the last month alone I've written 14,000 words, and I'm giving my first Ukulele workshop on saturday! And I've got to sort out my portfolio... Anyway, last month was my 21st birthday and my best friend's 22nd birthday on the same weekend so we managed to get 15 of our closest friends to our favourite campsite and had a lovely relaxing 4 days chilling round the campfire. Here's a few pics from that weekend. I love my happy hippy family :)

One from TJ

Picture by Alex. I'm the fooked hippy on the right. It had been a long day :) 

Another one from Alex.

This one is from the wonderful Pam: http://www.h-pinkness.com/

Paul and Dorothy

Paul Mccartney and Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz playing the Ukulele together. This is the center piece to page of song chords for my Ukulele booklet. I didn't mean to make Dorothy so nervous looking, but then I'd be nervous if Paul was looking at me that way...


I should explain, to the left is a page which has the chords for the song "Let it Be" and to the right will be a page of chords for "Somewhere over the Rainbow."