Finished Fashion Collection

For several months now I have been working on this one piece of art. It is a dress collection that I created using a fashion book. The page I used had simple templates of dresses that had noting on them, the brief was to make them into prom dresses but I kind of ignored that bit, instead I created zentangle style dresses. Zentangle is a form of drawing. It was first created in India by a man and his wife who relaxed regularly (i.e meditation etc.). As you can tell by the name it is a form of zen (a japanese word for meditation) so it is meant to be relaxing to complete. The second part of the word 'tangle' is like doodling which is exactly what you do in zentangle-very detailed and intricate doodles! As I said before, it's supposed to be a calming and relaxing art form similar to meditation but a bit different, however I didn't really see it like that, it may of been relaxing, yes, but I just used it as a way to draw if you see what I mean. I used black fineliners of different sizes to create my collection. Take a look below at the picture (click on it to see it full size)! I hope you like it!

Update

Hi guys! Just to let you know that I am having problems with comments on this blog. I have enabled them and looked through all the settings, even had someone check on another computer to see if you can comment however, it seems that the comments only work on one post (which is really old anyway) so I really don't know what's wrong. I'm sorry that I told you all that you could comment a while ago, since you can't. I'll try and get it fixed as soon as I can but in the meantime you can still enjoy reading my posts. :)

Wonderful Watercolours

Today me and my mum have been using my watercolour paints and paper to create some pretty images from around the garden (and one pottery museum). We first used fine-liners to draw out the outline and we both liked the effect that they made on the pictures.
  Here is the only picture that isn't a garden themed one. Mum was inspired by pottery museums to make this industrial looking picture with lots of stone and brick work. I love the different shades she has used so that it doesn't all blend together as one brown picture.  Also she has gone into so much detail there is even a cobbled street and if you look very closely there is even a little bird on one of the chimneys.

The next picture is also my mums. I think it looks a lot like a flowery spring meadow but it's supposed to be a lovely flowerbed in a garden. It has lavender, rose and even more flowers in it! I love the bright grass green in the background! Also, the flowers colours work really well together!

Now lets start to look at my watercolour paintings. The first one I'll show you is my least favourite. It is a picture of a garden with a vegetable patch and a cat in it! I made it so you could see the vegetables and roots under the ground.

My last image is also drawn by me it is my favourite of my own drawings. It is a wooden birdhouse that is our garden. It has been standing outside for years so now it is peeling and has a bit of mould on it. I tried to capture the worn look of it in my painting.

I really hope you liked our pieces of art. If you haven't already tried using watercolours then you really should! My mum hadn't tried them before today but she really enjoyed creating the art. Have a go! 

TopModel Fashion Poser Entries

My dream job is to be a fashion designer so in the meantime, I keep practicing and practicing over and over again different design ideas. My favorite company of clothes deigning books is called TopModel and a few years ago they started a magazine with the same name. Each month there is a fashion poser competition where they give you a brief on what to design and then you must draw your own outfit on the model template. I enter almost every month and recently I took some photos to show you.
   The picture on the left is my entry to the circus fashion poser. The story behind the competition that month was that the model was doing a shoot with an elephant. Animals were only allowed in the circus many years ago so, inspired, I decided to go for a whole vintage themed outfit. To give me some ideas I searched up vintage circus outfits and used some of the images features to create my own unique design. I saw lots of top hats on the ring leaders, but as the page stopped just above the models head, I figured I could only fit on a mini accessory hat. I used tiger stripes for the t-shirt and added a giant flower posy brooch (lots of the images had this). The skirt is a very
detailed piece, I used my black fine liners to draw a dream-catcher (I came up with that idea), a large bow-reoccurs on most pictures, stars and some curved stripes. I then drew frilled long sleeved gloves because there were tons of frills on the inspiration pics. I thought it would look very circus-y if I drew net mesh tights on her legs because lots of staged productions use these type of tights so I thought circus' would too. The jewelry I drew was a vintage headpiece with gems all around it, a choker with frill string along the bottom of it, feather earrings (there were lots of feathers) and 2 star shaped eye stickers. To top off the look I added a striped hula-hoop in her hand, some black patent leather high heels, the elephant little outfit with a father boa on the head and some glitter paint on the top and tights.

    The picture on  the right is of my entry to a sleepover outfit fashion poser. I chose pastel shades for this outfit because they are more subtle and relaxing colours to use for pyjmas. This is an overall cosy look that would be great in the spring range of a clothes shop. I thought I would leave the makeup quite natural because at sleepovers you're just with your friends and you don't need to get all made up for them. However, I used natural coloured eye-shadow and pale pink lip-gloss for the lips. On the the top of the ensemble I created a peach coloured tee with a cream peter pan collar. I put nerd glasses (which are quite fashionable at the moment) over sleeping eyes with eye-shadow on. There is a frilled trim at the bottom also in a cream colour. Just below, she is modelling soft high-waisted shorts in a dusky pink colour with small cream polka dots on it. She is pairing it with some beige bed socks in a cute bear design along with little suckers on the bottom. The outfit is topped off with a cute friendship bracelet in various hues of pink and purple.

   I hope you liked the little taster of my TopModel deigns. I don't just do deigns in the magazines, I mainly draw them in the drawing books (from several companies including TopModel) however, the designs that I enter into competitions are often the best because I use a range of media to create them and I also have a brief to fulfill so I have more ideas and inspiration before I start designing. If you would like to see more fashion designing posts, please leave a nice comment on this post. :D

Tasty Truffles!

Mmmmm.....truffles! Recently I have made two batches of rum truffles with my mum. The first batch was for my Nanna as a gift for Mother's day and the second was to share between my family. The picture (above) is of the second batch. For this batch of truffles, we used shaved/grated milk chocolate as the truffle cream's coating. For my Nanna's batch we used half cocoa powder and half chocolate sprinkles a the coating.
    I think these truffles are a great gift for chocolate lovers because if you were to buy truffles, they would be very expensive but as you are making them yourself, they would be much cheaper yet the receiver of the gift would think they cost a lot more than they did and/or would appreciate it more because it is handmade.
    Truffles can be very rich, but having one or two can be a very luxury treat for an after dinner taste sensation. If you love them so much, you can have a few at a time as a lovely chocolaty dessert.
    If you want to make rum truffles just like mine then just ask in the comments for the recipe and I'll tell you how to make it. I just thought I would leave out the recipe from this post because I wanted to just give you a little taster and keep it peppy so that you would only have to read a whole recipe if you wanted it.
   IMPORTANT UPDATE: Comments are now enabled on this blog so please leave some nice comments on the posts.

Watermelon Watercolour

Have you ever wanted to decorate your room but have thought that you don't have enough money to be splashing about on some decor? Well, I've got the solution for you all!
You can make your own room decorations for hardly any money and they will be really unique and people will know your sense of style when they hear you made it yourself. This post has one simple idea that will make your walls pop but there are so many more ideas out there for you to try!
  I used watercolor paints on a artist's paper pad to create a beautiful picture of a watermelon slice. I made this because at the moment in my textiles lessons, I am making a cushion with a similar design to this on the front so when I bring it home, I can have a matching picture on my wall.
     You of course can make any design on your paper with watercolors so you are choosing something that works well with the color scheme/theme of your room. Maybe you could paint an animal or a pattern onto your picture. Absolutely anything can go on your decor.
    Just to let you know, you could use any drawing material you want but I chose watercolors because the effect they leave on the page makes the watermelon look even more realistic because of the high quantity of water in the fruit I chose and the amount of water used the paint, you can almost see the juiciness of the watermelon on that piece of paper. I hope you enjoy creating your picture to go on your wall.

My Art

I'm not sure whether you readers already knew, or just guessed-that I loved art, anyway, I do! I'm here today to tell you a bit more about my creative hobby.
   
I suppose I've always loved art, even from an early age, it's so fun doodling random things but just as satisfactory finishing an amazing art piece after hours of hard work. That's probably why I love art, you get something from it no matter how much effort or time you put into it, you can still create something. It's such a diverse creative process.

I mainly draw with normal pencils, create detailed drawings with fine-liners or use watercolors for my pictures and sketches. I prefer these because they are very easy to use and/or are very variable. For example if you made a mistake using pencil, you could rub it out an draw it out again. Another example is if I didn't apply enough paint to my color to water ratio and my line came out too light, I could add more layers. If I were to be using acrylic paint, there wouldn't be much I could do, you can't get much of a gradient with acrylics like you may be able to with watercolor paints (or another drawing material such as pencil). I do think the overall effect of acrylic paints, however, is great when used professionally by an artist, the thickness of the paint brings added texture and a 3-D form of some kind to the canvas that it has been worked on. I still believe though, that acrylic paint is very hard to work with if your an amateur who hasn't studied the form. Additionally,  I use my drawing tablet on my laptop instead of other drawing materials that have to be renewed. The finished work is easily accessible once you have saved it, you can print it off, share it online and view it whenever you would wish to. It is also great because you can always press the undo button. You don't even have to cover up your mistakes or use a rubber (that still leaves indents in the paper), the mistakes that you have made or the unsatisfactory technique you have used, is gone in a click of a button. And quite as easily, you can bring them back with the re-do button. it's great.

You can see at the top of this post, an example of my art created by a drawing tablet. This one isn't particularly detailed so I didn't need the aid of the undo and re-do buttons this time round, but I think the overall effect is quite good. I made this piece very quickly (10 mins tops) yet it is quite decorative. The amount of tools and brushes you can choose on a drawing software is immense so you can create much more of a varied range of artworks that you couldn't possibly create as an amateur with normal drawing materials and tools. The best thing is, is that most drawing software is  free to download on your laptop (or are already downloaded) so it will be much cheaper to test out new styles of art than if you were to use your own supplies. You can dabble with different materials that you perhaps wouldn't consider buying in real life. I'm not suggesting that online drawing is the be-all-and-end-all but you should consider using alongside other techniques to get you prepared for using up paper. I hope you enjoyed this little insight into art. Bye guys!