Life Changes

So a few things of note have happened recently.

1. I finished up first year at Art School.

2. I got me some full-time employment. Working in retail selling books, dvds, and music. Which is awesome but has also been quite stressy due to the fact that the store opened a week after I started working for them (the week before they opened I worked 80 hours processing stock for the new store) and it's now building up to the whole christmas craziness (and we're still receiving and processing heaps of stuff).

3. We took possession of our new house yesterday. We're moving in over the next few days, which is pretty exciting. Like, really exciting. Expect to hear a LOT about it in the coming forever.

Right, those are the important things. I thought I ought to let you fullas know the reason why I've been so absent from my online existence. So yeah. Things will calm down soon and I'll be back around here a lot more.

Win!

Swimmer

Here's a drawing that I did today during a framing workshop at school. The workshop was damn cool, and I'm going to try and frame this as a practise run before I attempt anything big/time consuming.

Win!

(edit: below is a coloured version of it that I put together tonight while watching the Spongebob Squarepants Movie.

Paisley Ghost

This one I drew thinking about poor old Champ who has his wisdom teeth coming in and wreaking all kind of havoc in his head. He's looking at getting them out but that kind of work don't come cheap, and isn't covered by his health insurance. Stink buzz!

Anyway, I'm playing with this drawing in Illustrator and will hopefully have something done with it in the next few weeks.

Not doing so well on the Daily Drawing front.

BLOODY SCHOOL HOLIDAYS MAKE ME MEGA UNMOTIVATED.

Sigh. I don't think I've done any drawings for the past two weeks which is really lame. So I'll get onto it asap. I have, however, had a great time sleeping and playing Settlers of Catan both in the real world and online. It's awesome, easy to learn, and really fun.

So that's been my holidays.

I made this today.

Argh! So behind!

So I've been mega-lax with updating this - here's some of the backlog now, more as soon as I FIND THEM AGAIN. Sigh.

Sketches from the 21st and 22nd:

The 23rd(ish):

September 24th:

I don't even know. September 20.

No! You Jump in a Lake! (19th September Drawing)

18th September

I really don't know what's going on with her left arm - her left, our right. Hmm.

Yesterday's drawing - September 16

Really into drawing triangles, swimsuits, and people eating/vomiting hair

Drawing from September 15

Drawing for September 14

Yeah! Up to date, booyah!!

13th September - Daily Drawing

12th September

(I forgot to post drawings over the weekend - but I'll do so tonight, it's a promise)

The Gideons / Thundercub / Sex with Bowie

I finally busted my ass out to Chicks in Port Chalmers on Saturday night for the Sex with Bowie album release party. The fact that I love The Gideons and haven't seen them play inages, nor the fact that Logan and Chris of Sex with Bowie are hilariously rad (no offense Bugs and Gordon, you guys are pretty neat too), not even the simple fact that my live-in-lover is the keys player for Thundercub had anything to do with my decision to go along. I just felt it was time ok? Stop questioning my motives!

In any case, it was great.


The Gideons were a bit sloppy, but that's one of the things I love about them - the frustration that Louis emanates on stage sometimes has a stage presence of it's own. Yuss.


Thundercub are sounding quite tight these days. Selfishly, I hope they stick to their minimal performance quota, but for the sake of the music public by and large, it'd be awesome if they played more shows. Even if it means I end up going out more often as a consequence.


Sex with Bowie were great too. By that time I was well into my third or fourth pint, and using the speaker stack as a makeshift tripod, and the crowd was having a doozy of a time. I love the performative aspect of Logan's frontman act, and Chris looks so damn happy behind the drums, it's transformative.

Anywho, there are some more photos on flickr if you feel like having a look.

Drawing for 11th September

I found this group of peeps on flickr who do a daily drawing of what they wore that day. I don't think I can do it everyday, but on days when I've got nothing to draw, it's a good go-to.

Also awesome is that the group is headed by one Gemma Correll. Her shit is tight, I recommend checking it out. I really like her illustrative style.

You know what? Space is cool.

I've spent this morning hanging out on the NASA website checking out the images from the hubble telescope and suchlike. I should be researching an essay, but you know what? Space totally trumps essays.


I also made these because nothing says procrastination like images of space and people talking about space... I can only really top this by actually going to the library and then reading some Asimov that I've hidden in a book about state housing. Yuss.

Drawing for 10th September

I couldn't focus on much for long tonight so I kind of doodled instead. Might have been the beer? I like the clowny person at top left. Also the eye on the far right. That was fun to draw, but pen can be so unforgiving if you make a boo-boo. Ah well.

Daily Drawing for 9-9-9

I couldn't find my scanner yesterday because it was hiding under a mound of clothes. Here it is for you now! Whee!

First daily drawing!

I drew this in class today - well, I drew the Quail in Space in my lectures and then came home and made it into a show poster... and then photoshop crashed cos it was a mega file (can print 300dpi A2 size suckas!) and I had to start from the raw scanned image AGAIN.

Every time I get lax about saving files, the universe kicks me in the reproductives.

Don't expect stuff to be this polished every day, cos it's most probable it'll be a lot more doodle-like.

Woo! Sleep time!

Life modelling

Not life modelling as in getting nakey and letting people draw you, but life modelling meaning looking at a nakey person and making a 3D representation of them.

I'm not very good at it, but it was fun. Given time I could get better maybe. I think making a bust would be more my style because I like faces way more than bodies (and by like, I mean that I find it easier to make visual representations of faces)

I'm going to start doing a daily drawing from Monday - I was going to start tomorrow but remembered that I have a twin-flavoured 7th birthday party to attend at my dad's house tomorrow. I can't believe they're 7 already!!


Seems like yesterday they were just babies! Sigh. I'm getting old.

Daily Drawing?

Seeing I'm at Art School this year, and endeavoring to push myself into being more creative and drawing more frequently, I've been thinking about doing a daily drawing and posting them on my blog.

Sounds like a good idea?

Cos I know I love it when Liz and Gi at the friendly teacake post theirs, as well as Lauren Nassef's drawings, and Chris Piascik's typographic treats are wondrous to receive in my reader too.

So do you reckon I ought to? Yeah? I think I'll stick to doing the drawings more often if I know someone out there is interested in seeing them.

But no pressure.

My flat is awesome

The other night our flat decided to have an evening of drinking. We drank gin and rum and absinthe (hoorah for Samdrub!), played drinking games and singstar, and then fancied ourselves up to head to town. The result is the above photo.

We walked to town through the gardens and this happened:



The result of this was a lost wallet and cellphone in the middle of the botanical gardens in the pitch black. Nice work. Luckily, my wonderful man (pictured below) was able to find the missing items which allowed us to continue on to town:

Good work Champ! In town, cigarettes were smoked, dances were danced, and burgers were eaten. I think we ought to do this more often.

Knives at Noon

Tim Couch, Radio1 Friday drive host extraordinaire, and drummer for local lads Knives at Noon got me to take some photos for them a wee while back and I realised today I never popped them on here! If you're interested, you can see them here, otherwise just enjoy the family photo nostalgia in this post.

Haunted Love Tour Poster

This was about the only other thing I did during the holidays of much consequence. I finished it up about two minutes ago (there were some date changes that needed made due to double bookings) and now that everything's all A-OK, I thought I'd share it with you guys.

It's nice putting hand-drawn elements into posters, and having them feel quite sparse, letting the main image draw you in rather than bucketloads of text. Huzzah! Here's hoping the Haunted Lovelies get me to do more things for them in future, also hoping you go check them out if you haven't heard them before. Their new EP, Darkness in Diamond City is ABSOLUTELY GORGEOUS, just like their darling faces. It's boppy and sweet and dark and harmonious and rocking and so bloody good.

GO LISTEN NOW!

Sunley

One of the things I did over the holiday was to do the album artwork and layout for the new Sunley album, Apologies. You can listen to bits here.

Evan pretty much gave me free reign which was wonderful, and it was really nice doing some design work again. Seriously, I love it in small doses and frequently. So long as I don't have a huge workload from school or other projects, doing design is one of my favourite things. Yeah!

Five Weeks

I'm feeling a bit shamefaced about admitting why I haven't posted on my blog for over FIVE WEEKS. I mean, something big must have been going on right? Wrong. I've been on holiday for the past five weeks.

Oh, so you've been out of town? Away somewhere awesome and removed from technology? Umm, actually no. I've been in Dunedin. At my flat for the first two weeks, then cat-sitting for my Mum who WAS in some remote awesome location (Niue) but still had the interwebs and skyped me fairly frequently.

I've just been playing the Sims and hanging out with the cats and it has been THE BEST holiday I've had in ages. Mum and Paul have a lovely big warm house, four radpants cats, a high-def tv, fast broadband (I know, no excuse) , and CONTINUOUS HOT WATER making taking a shower easily one of the high points of my day.

I think the real reason I haven't blogged is cos there's been very little to blog about. I'm going to do one or two posts of the few things I did manage to do on my ridiculously long mid-year break, so there is that right?

In any case, this posting drought is pretty much over as the holidays have finished, and I've been back at school since Monday - Mum and Paul get back on Sunday and I'll be back in the coldness of a student flat once more. Yay for ten layers of clothing indoors!

x

$9.99

This movie looks awesome - for one thing, it's stop-motion which is always worth a look (I love stop-motion, especially claymation... it seems quite magical). Secondly, it sounds like it has a plot that'd be mighty interesting to watch even if it were filmed normally.

"Based on the Short Stories of Etgar Keret, and adapted for the screen by Etgar Keret and Director Tatia Rosenthal, $9.99 is a stop motion animated feature which offers slightly less than $10 worth about the meaning of life..." - $9.99 film website

Rodent Plague

Our house over the last six months has become home to not only humans, but a variety of rodents. Thus far, we've only caught mice, but our flatmate claims to have seen a rat hanging out in the library and the amount of noise made as they run about in the walls and floors and ceilings indicates something larger than a few wee mice.

I like to think of them as wrestlers, it sounds like they have massive smack-downs and the squeaking galloping noises that accompany the matches seem very appropriate - almost like the redneck yelling at WWF matches.

Object Study

As part of our project drawing class we were required to make a marquette/object study of pretty much whatever the hell we liked. I like glasses. Big nerdy glasses (and boy do I miss my real ones - such a dumbass to have sat on them, sigh).

Logan and Champ as additional models. Suaaaave. I think I might post a few Seth pictures later too - his geeky faces were spot on despite the fact that he was actually trying to look like a grandma.

Sculpture

Ok, so I really enjoyed sculpture at school, so much so that I've decided that it'll be one of my two majors next semester alongside printmaking. Squee! Getting to use power tools made me hyper-pumped, and the vast broadness of materials on offer in the department was also excitement inducing. Yuss.

Robot is made out of a floppy-disk holder, grater, jar-opener, long forks, and bits of wood and keyboard and scrap.

Skull is an old christmas tree and polystyrene. Such a goofy skull.

Video Works

I just realised that if this is meant to be a way to show off the cool things that I've been doing, I should probably put up cool things I've done as well.

Here are two videos I made as part of my design degree at Otago.

Both videos were made for special topic papers where I got to choose what I wanted to make. The one above was about the experiences my peers had had with social anxiety - I was interested to see how many of them had encountered it, and what their perceptions were. It took ages because I took a lot of the frames into photoshop and drew on each of them individually.

The video below is a music video I made for one-time Dunedin band, The Tweeks. It's a song about the limitations of texting, so I made the cellphone into a set of costumes for three of the band members and got them to follow around the fourth member of the band as his lackey. Yes yes.

Enjoy!

Attention: Friends

Dear Friends,

This is a note to say please stop moving overseas. Overseas includes crossing the Cook Strait. I am serious. And lonely. Chamcham is awesome, but so are you. And one Champion does not a group of friends make.

I understand that you all have important things to do abroad, like teach, save the world, play music and get high/drunk/sunburnt, but dammit I miss you. And surely that is more important. I know that I wasn't always the most social beast, often saying I'd come out and have a drink/dance/standatthesideofthestageandstompmyfoot with you and then pull out at the last minute but I PROMISE that if you come back I will work really hard on not being a piker.

In any case. You are well missed, so I hope you're having fun. If you're not having fun, get back here. NOW. If you're still in Dunedin, good. Text me in a week and a half and I will cover you in anecdotes, icing and cups of tea.

Love,
Luci

Haunted Love

I recently took some photos for the newly y chromosomed Haunted Love. They're all so pretty. So ridiculously pretty. If you're interested, you can check out the rest of the photos here.

Basement Cuts

Here are some posters I made for Mr Hawkins' DJ Manick gigs at Pint Night. I love old pin-up postcards. They're so sassy! I think I'll keep this theme up for a while if he decides to get me to make more of them.