Holidays

The house is quiet and empty, mum is next door supping strong tea with the next door neighbour and they are quoting the old swap the children dialogue that has been playing between them for 5 years.

I feel lost on my own, but at the same I enjoy the peace, the moments of freedom to do what I want, sit where I like and not be the cause of everyone's ill temper.

In my daze of quiet time pleasure I wander upstairs to the bathroom, and remember that they are hidden on the top shelf.

I have to climb onto the bath and the sink to reach them, they are kept on a high shelf to prevent 'accidents' happening - again. Why do they think I have so many accidents? Why do they think I stopped falling down the stairs once I discovered I could reach the medicine cabinet? Do they even think?

I have the cabinet door open now, and there they are, wrapped in wax paper and hidden behind some ancient Yardley perfume my mum was given for Christmas before I was born.

Sneaking back down stairs with them hidden in my shorts pocket, hoping that my mum is still next door, sharing tea and fantasies of a better life with the right children.

Outside I go, there is a place at the bottom of the patchy garden, past the disused dog kennel, and under the overgrown lilac trees. It is cool there, the sun is hot today and the ground is dusty dry, packed hard where happy children have played together, and where one unwanted child is penalised for her existence.

Under the lilac tree, filled with the sound of dozy bees and sharp chattering birds I open the wax paper packet and my breath is taken away by the beauty and purity of the edges on the blades. Clean, smooth and perfect, untouched by him and his pink face.

I take one out and run it along my fingers, edge first. Almost immediately a flush of the red stuff, dripping onto the hungry ground, swallowed incompletely by the dryness in the back yard.

I succeed in opening all of my fingers today, before mum catches me and wonders how I managed to have yet another accident. She threatens to tell him, but she won't. He'll find out later, will be offended by the signs of blood and won't look at me until they are healed, fully. They take an eternity to heal, I can keep a scab going for weeks. Its like being on holiday. I know it will end, but for now, I have peace.

Ouch

Today began with the cat waking me at 2.30 am playing with motes of dust in my bedroom, skittering about the laminate flooring like a baby elephant. He then decided to pee in the bath and spent the next half hour sweeping in EVERY corner of the bathroom, my bedroom and the stairs.

At 4.30 after I had cleaned up any messes or presumed messes he had left I finally threw him - almost literally - out of the house.

My alarm clock goes off at 7 am. Long nights sleep then.

I finally scraped myself out of bed at 7.30, and started to get ready to drop the boy off at college and come to the studio. After throwing the cat out of the house again, off we go!

Halfway to college, I stop to let a bus pass me on a narrow stretch of the road and BANG! I am hit in the rear by a car skidding to a stop, using the rear of my lovely little van as a braking mechanism.

So today's early start, cracking on with the book and other things at the studio are now fully interrupted by telephone calls to insurance companies and garages.

We are both fine, just a bit annoyed, and wondering how much it will cost to repair the cracked rear body coloured bumper on my wonderful little Brian the box.

You Can't Change Your Mind Now

I did. I really did it.

I applied to Glasgow School of Art.

Electronically.

The selection of images to include in my e-folio took 5 days. Some went in, came out, went back in and came back out. Some didn't even make the first cut, then helpful friends asked why I hadn't selected such and such a picture it's their FAVOURITE.

Some were in until the final selection. Then were mercilessly binned as if so much rubbish.

One has gone in and I think it may have been a mistake to include it. And no Michelle it ISN'T the print of you. That was never in question. It is stunning and so are you!

Sketchbook pages montaged together in photoshop, life drawings crammed into one image, theming collections of drawings and paintings to match the completed works.

After which I had to write a folio statement. 12 hours of writing, rewriting, erasing and opinion gathering to get that looking like I actually know what I'm talking about and I have an idea who these artists are. Yeah OK, bluff and bluster.

Apparently its not good to admit that you think you blagged it onto your foundation degree when trying to blag your way into a really important art school. Huh? Who'da thunk it?

So now I wait. To see if I can hear the laughter from here, or to be invited for an interview.

Wish me luck.

Applications, alterations and augmentations

I have applied to university. That, I think, you all know.

I nearly didn't.

I went to uni a few years ago, but only completed 3 semesters. I had a major emotional collapse for many and varied reasons, but couldn't complete the course, didn't get the real support I needed to return and quit completely. It was, in short, a horrific experience.

And now I'm doing it all again. This time, however, I am not naively expecting everyone to be socially and politically aware. Or even intelligent. God forbid we waste education on the clever!

I put off applying, in fear and trepidation. What if I am rejected? OK, so I have put in insurance applications, just in case my first choice rejects me. What if something worse happens? What if they accept me and I fail all over again?

Right, Sam, pull your socks up, stop thinking negatively, you can and will do this, because this is the key to your future, you will be spending 3 years in a fantastic city in a historical building doing exactly what you love to do! How could it go wrong?

So the application went to my college tutor, who sent it back for corrections. Not the personal statement, apparently that was "so you", and was perfect in tone and expression. No some minor numerical details were needing adjusting.

At this point I could have completely chickened and 'just not got it done'. Failed by lack of time.

I made the corrections and sent it back. All that was needed now was a reference from my tutor.

It glowed, throbbing with bright fiery light that burned the eyes that looked upon it and the hands that held the flimsy copy, it was so good. I didn't recognise the person she was talking about. But at the same time, yes, that WAS me.

GULP!

I might actually get in!

Ah but I still have to submit my portfolio. It will all go horribly wrong with that. bluff can only get you so far, but then you have to come up with the goods.

Looking at my work over the past 2 1/2 years I begin to see that, maybe, I may just about be able to squeeze a half decent portfolio of work out of it. Plus I have been printing a series of plates based on one drawing specifically for my portfolio. Just to show what I am capable of. That I can work in lots of different ways. I have ideas. I have skill. I have technical knowledge. I may even have talent.

And here is the latest addition to the portfolio. I really rather like it.

The Book, Chapter 2

First page completed of the next chapter in The Book.

The Joy of Technology

I love technology. It can do so much for us. Look what I did with it.

One

Two

I've not really animated anything before. I always thought it was far too difficult and time consuming to do it. Plus I didn't think I had the drawing skills needed. Ha! Little did I know!

New Prints

I've been running 2 projects concurrently. I've not really got the time to do it, but I do it nonetheless.

The 1st project was highlighted in my last post, and that is moving along nicely, I spent 5 hours today working on that one.

The 2nd project is a printing project. I'm putting a print portfolio together, to tout around universities and anywhere else that seems like a good idea at the time.

Here are some of the prints I have been making recently.

Dry point on acrylic plate.

Lino print onto preprinted waste paper.

Lino print with scrim resist onto cartridge paper.

Reductive lino print onto print above.

Reductive lino print.

Reductive lino print onto pre-inked cartridge paper.

The First Chapter

I have finally finished the first chapter of my long altered book project, The Book.

The aim of the project is to retell the stories that are held in common between Judeo/Christian and Islamic stories from their holy books, most notably the Bible, but from other religious and spiritual perspectives.

So the first story is the creation story.

The one I chose to tell was that given to us by the Haida Native Americans. Look here for the full story.

Here are the illustrations. Please don't forget, however, that I am not an illustrator, and so I'll hope you are kind about the first book illustration project I have done.