Getting Ready To Fly.

Last week I received the final marks for my remaining assignments of my diploma of commercial arts graphic design. And with great relief, I passed them all. It has been one enormous undertaking for me these passed two years and now that its all finished, my brain can finally take a break....but not for to long. The hard task ahead of me now is to find work in the area I wish to specialize in. So what's the plan? First off is getting my logo created and a Facebook page up with examples of my works. So far I have a logo created and now working on the Facebook banner. I've already had my business name for awhile now but its been under wraps until I can buy the domain name for the website. So there is progress happening but 'm taking each step as it comes. The above pic is from an afternoon of sketching with my daughter who has shown an interest in drawing and wants me to teach her!

Running Down the Mountain

Do you ever get those days when life is like hurteling downhill at a speed you know you can't stop running? Or you know that stopping is a matter of controlled and gracious face planting at the bottom of that hill. Yep, I'm pretty much there at the moment.
Why? Well I'm glad you asked. My diploma of commercial arts and graphics design is gearing at a speed that just about has me staining my linen. My current assignment is design and build your own website! I'm sure your thinking what are you worried about? well, plenty I say! I've never been computer literate and now I'm facing the hard challenge of learning HTML5 and CSS3 coding and putting it all together to make it all work. But I'm grateful for all the assistance that the internet provides as it has enabled me to chip away at each brick wall of frustration, and I'm starting to show progress to my own astonishment.
Needless to say this has stunted my own creative release to time restraints but to be honest I've not had the incentive to actually paint or draw that much recently, although I try to draw something every day.
 I have really been enjoying my new xbox game "Titanfall" to help in stress relief, nothing like battling in a mech shooting up the enemy. If your thinking of getting this game then I highly recommend it… and if you do, the "eject button" is your friend;)
I've started a new sketch book so I'll share some images from that. It doesn't seem that long ago since I last posted but man has time flown by, I guess when the mind is active time just slip on by.

To Mimic an Illustrator

Part of my diploma assignment for illustration was to capture the essence and style of any two illustrators of my choosing. First I had to copy seven illustrations of the chosen artist, then draw another seven combining elements of the first set of seven, and then finally create seven originals with the elements and style of the artist. Basically the last seven should be competent forgeries. The tutors were that impressed with my outcome they asked me if they could use my assignment as a student example on their website. Needless to say I was rather chuffed about it all as this is a very uncommon thing to be asked of.
So below is the final illustrations of the assignment. The first illustrator I mimicked was Shaun Tan.

Busy times

It has been very intense these last couple of months with studies and assignments. You'd think I have little time for drawing but to be honest I've been drawing quite a bit. My current study block is illustration and theres a great deal to be done...45 illos in all, three of those covers. In time I'll show those but for now here's a small few from my sketchbook. 

 

Destination Diploma

Well I've just finished the first week of my two year course for a Diploma of Commercial Arts Graphics Design via correspondence. It's going to be a long two years I'm guessing, juggling a full time job, family life and doing illustrations for GCP as well. But I'm confident that I'll get through it all, and by the end of it I'll have a definite direction as to where my new occupation will be. In the mean time I'll still continue to doodle in my sketch book like Mr. Sqiggle after a few lines of snorting graphite. Anyway here are a few thumbs from the beginnings of another new sketch book.