Saturday 24 April 2010

curse of the oil snakes

Uni is rapidly coming to an end. Thankfully my work is going pretty well besides the lack of sketchbook stuff, which I WILL catch up on tomorrow/beginning of the week. So far I have 4 completely finished 3x3inch pieces and 3 on the go (also to be completed by Monday). I want to get at least 10 all together so it seems my time is actually panning out rather well.


Please excuse the shoddy lighting that really doesn't frame them in the best way but it'll give you a rough idea of what they're looking like at this point. I don't think anyone will have any idea how long they take to build up and form into different textures until they experiment with paint themselves. Believe me I'm still learning at 22 and painting for atleast 15years of that.


This is the flattest one I did, which looks really weird next to the others. But I kinda like it.

The other two I haven't managed to get decent closeups of because the paint was far to versitile/wet still. You'll just have to wait.

Yesterday was Sculptures exhibition day. Their project entailed various ways to collect/cook/eat a cooked breakfast. Group A had to collect their breakfast from way inside the studio rafters without touching the floor. This entailed trolleys, pillowcases, bread strapped to the bottom of their shoes and long hooks to pull the bag of ingrediants into the large pillowcase. Hilarious.

Group B had to get their breakfast through/over a wall without touching it. This involved a conveyorbelt and a series of slides that landed all the food into a paddling pool.

Group C had to use fire to cook the ingrediants with their own hand made utensils. I ended up smelling of smoke so bad.

Group D had to eat the breakfast whilst being 3ft away from it and without touching the floor...this is how this one ended up.


yes, exactly.

Well, I'm just waiting for Emma and G to get here with some beverages and my tea. Ofcourse I've sat being productive the entire time....Some pocketmoneypunkmade Goodtime Boys cards. With Stamp and Stencil.



The stencil really didn't work that well because of how small it was. But for a 30minute experiment it's not to bad. I'll refine it eventually.

More tomorrow after Roller Derby practice!

Friday 16 April 2010

outdoors, indoors.


In true Natalie style, I've managed to leave everything I'd planned to do til the last week in regaurds to painting. When you first get told you've got a month of for Spring break it seems like such a long time, in reality the weeks turn over so fast you barely know when the beginning of the week starts and the end finishes.

Luckily this week was sunny enough for me to go to Roath Park to find some moss covered logs and fallen branches. Ofcourse, many people on the footpath thought I was completely bizzare exploring the bramble covered patches rather than following the clear path around the woodland. It felt pretty weird when I thought about the recent stabbing that happened just along the road from the park only four or so days ago. Almost like I could stumble over evidence or ruin a trail, I did find a dirt ridden jacket - my imagination went wild thinking it could be covering the knife so I gave it a prod. Obviously nothing.

Anyway, I managed to find these little beauties:

They are pretty squishy from being eaten by maggots/slugs/worms you name it. There's even a few little slugs still residing inside.

There's one. I didn't even realize that I hadn't actually focused on the slug. Oh well bad image.


Sneaking onto my painting. Cheeky. I'm not a massive slug lover, but because of his minature size he looks cute? If slugs are even able to achieve cute status.


This is a continuation of my 4 3x3 inch paintings that I'm doing. Don't pay any attention to the colour of it as of yet as I had to form the structure out of semi-dried paint to get the right consistancy for Impasto painting. Risen roughly from the wood by 1cm although on drying has flattened slightly. Today I'm setting out to finish the two I started yesterday and start the final one. Leaving the weekend to paint moss onto the wood. This is such a bizzare project for me.


Remember painting PVA/Copydex onto your hand just to peel it off? Who knew I'd be doing the same thing with acrylic for my degree work? It's still as enjoyable I promise you.

Wednesday 14 April 2010

idol eyes

This week has been full of fun, sun and relaxing. It's definitely been the best week of my month of so far - helped by the abundance of good weather.

Having a call from G asking if the guys who hadn't been effected by Norovirus* could stay on Thursday, lead to a house full for the duration of the weekend. Literally had such a laugh - mainly at Angus because he is probably one of the funniest human beings I've ever met.


This is Angus asleep with his new found (girl)friend Emily. He came back with her one night after being at the pub. Never laughed so much.

The guys all left on Sunday after getting back from work, the house was so quiet. It's weird how quickly you get used to having so many people around.

Yesterday I headed to London to see Anita and just chill out for the day. Luckily the weather was amazing and we got to just sit in Soho square the entire day drinking wine and exchanging bizarre stories and getting hassled by a Lithuanian guy who had no teeth and had lost his passport so he was unable to find a job. Same happened with his girlfriend. That seems to happen a lot in England.


Douglas Coupland keeping me company for the 3hr bus journey. To be honest I napped most of the time. 9am.





Food at Beetroot - we shared a medium box with the delightful vegan sausage rolls, shepards pie, tofu stir fry and roasted vegetables and broccoli followed by a gigantic piece of chocolate fudge cake EACH. (not as good as the cupcakes - but equally rad and messy)


Equals =

you really should of seen our faces. Gobbletastic.

After this we discovered how tipsy we'd gotten, the tube was effort, people were effort. We headed to Xam's for a cup of tea then headed back home. Three hour bus journey, and I slept right the way through. Stiff neck is not the word. Home at 1am, watched Ps.I Love You. GOD AWFUL FILM. Same as the book.

Lots of painting today ready for a few more days of fun.

Hope y'all good.

Tuesday 6 April 2010

twoo-enty twooo

So I have successfully turned the tender age of 22. And even in my young and fruitful state I knew I didn't want to spend my birthday getting drunk in the dire clubs of Cardiff - they're for the occassional Saturday night visit. Anyway, I had no idea how I wanted to spend my birthday other than that, so AGP offered to cook a small collective of us a nice vegan roast so that we could hang out and gorge on guilt free delights.

Although we didn't realize, we planned to do it on Easter Sunday (day before my actual birthday) which was weird because it felt like we were almost celebrating easter, however none of us are religious so that was quickly forgotten. Pennie and Jordan took full control of cooking the main Roast, whilst us girls handled the vegan cupcake and brownie making side of things.

We headed to the countryside (almost) at about 4.30pm after decorating the cakes where the guys had successfully cooked every type of vegetable/vegan pie/sausage rolls/glamorgan sausages (you name it they cooked it) available. The house smelt delicious! We made cups of tea in personally suited mugs/cups and waited for the vegan bread sauce and honey coated parsnips to be finished off.

Literally, the food was piled so high. For the Veggies - Chicken style roast, glamorgan sausages, bread sauce, pea's carrots and french bean mix, cauliflour, roast sweet and normal potatoes, roasted parsips, stuffing and gravy. The vegan option was laden with the same veg accompanied with Linda Mcartney pies and sausage rolls. Literally I've never eaten so much in my entire life, luckily I hadn't eaten since 7pm the evening before so I eventually managed it all - as did everyone else.

Although I didn't get an actual plate shot, this is what our table looked like...

A beautiful house as you can tell.

It was exactly like christmas, lots of holding tummys and groaning about how full we fat piggys were.

Misty had fun with all the attention too.

When we had all given ourselves enough time to forget how full we were, we didn't give a second thought to tucking into these beauties.

Strawberry and Vanilla with Almond flavoured "butter" icing.

These were chocolate orange with 3 types of chocolate! mmm!

AND

Triple chocolate and sprinkles brownie! mmmmmmm!

We just hung out in the conservatory most of the night chilling and playing games which literally had us all in fits of giggles! Especially using the light as some sort of orb...


'Ooohhh light give us some gaming ideas.....' Clearly you can tell how weird the night got. Amongst the weird 6 of is it was bound to!


The fish. I probably blinded him :/

and finally, this is my favourite nesting set ever! So much so me and AGP are going to get one tattooed for Liz. And also for us.

Amazing right.

I'll take photos of my beautiful presents another day! I still cannot get over how delicious the cupcakes were, all my other vegan attempts have sucked hard!

Buy 'Vegan cupcakes take over the world'.