Friday, October 29, 2010

Grady McFerrin.



I can't remember how I stumbled across Grady McFerrin and his beautiful letterpress illustrations but it was instant love. I would like to see him do a children's book - preferably with a vintage circus theme  as he seems to have a lot of vintage circus type graphics in his portfolio and there's nothing I love more than a vintage circus. That in my opinion would be getting close to illustration heaven... 
See the rest of his portfolio here.

Tuesday, October 26, 2010

Orla Kiely's Yellow Velvet Dress



More sixties retro from Orla Kiely that you might already have seen. I LOVE the yellow velvet dress but if you think about it, how easy would it be to wear that colour? Or a thick velvet if you are short? I can imagine myself impulse buying it then getting home, trying it on, looking in the mirror and going "Oh my god, what was I thinking? I look like a chubby extra from the set of To Sir With Love, not in fact like the model dancing away on her own in a wood panelled den." Lucky it's prohibitively priced and I don't know where you'd buy Orla Kiely. Cool party dress nonetheless. Go for it rich, skinny girls...

Sunday, October 24, 2010

Gender Studies 101.

Archie was telling me the other day how funny one of the boys in his class was being, a child with a rep for being the naughtiest boy in the kindergarten class. I said "Did everyone think he was being funny?"
Archie said "Just the boys".
I said "Why don't the girls think he's being funny?"
Archie said "Because they know he's being naughty"
"Don't the boys know he's being naughty?" I asked.
"Yes" said Archie "But they can't help it"
It was hard to know what to say next. You'd probably pay a psychologist with a Phd in gender studies a fortune to reach an insight like that...

Tuesday, October 19, 2010

The Daily Foto Project.

No nice way to say this - I'm hating the affluenza chandelier. It's a logistical nightmare. Too many pieces, too ambitious and it's going to embarrass the hell out of me in two weeks time when I have to present it to the 'panel' of industry experts. Only one thing to do when this happens: steal some nice pics off etsy and get them to pretty up my blog. These photos come from thedailyfoto - a photographer named Melissa from Australia who is self taught. The images I've chosen here are from a daily photo project where she will take 365 photos in 365 days. Whatever catches her eye on the day I guess. I particularly like her eye for colour and her sense of the graphic. The photos can be bought on etsy where Melissa also tells the story behind the image  and as an added plus $5 of each sale goes to your choice of charity!






Friday, October 15, 2010

Affluenza Chandelier Update.



Only two more weeks until first stage assessment begins on my Affluenza Chandelier - the project I am working on for the Reclaim Reframe brief that pretty much forms all the assessment for this year's course work. The phrases "Bitten off" and "More than I can chew" keep coming to mind. At least I have settled on the two manafactured pre -used materials and the form my 3D structure will take (the chandelier). Above are the (time consuming) metal flowers made from the base of used flan tins that will decorate the outer tins (I will need at least double what is done here) and then plastic cutlery used as the "crystals". Getting more 'flowers' done and the putting it together so that it looks like the picture I have in my head (!!) is the next logical step. True to form I'm having stressful dreams about the whole thing!

Thursday, October 14, 2010

Why?

Bad News. The junior school has seen fit to install a sand pit. I thought the days of picking up my son and 2kg of sand everyday in his shoes was a thing of the past. Why would the school do that to me? Why? Why?????