Bunting

I'm giving up on the daily post...once you miss a day it all falls apart...going for regular posts!

Anyway a friend of mine is getting married in a few weeks time and she has asked that everyone provides a piece of bunting. She provided an outline of the shape that she wanted...

My plan was to cut out her name, her to be husbands name and the date from card in the shape of the bunting using the craft robo...she is a 80s rock fan so I made a font in Adobe illustrator based on the AC-DC style of writing. This was surprisingly easy...I only needed 11 letters as there were lots of duplicates and 3 numbers for the year...I also used the lightning strike. On the first go I cut all of the lettering from a white piece of card and stuck this onto a red piece of card stick the islands on individually...this wasn't a problem as pritstick is a wonderful thing but it added to the time to make it quite dramatically... My second attempt was much quicker...the trick I hit upon was instead of having two pieces of card to have 3...two white pieces sandwiching a red...as long as I only wanted text to be readable from one side I could cut the outside of the text from one of the white ones and the islands from the red layer and leave the other uncut...you could therefore see the white of the third layer through the red to make the islands of the letters...not only was this quicker but it was much more accurate and tidy.

Day 21: Pot

No not cannabis...old pottery.

Archaeology largely revolves around pottery...it is used to date features, in some cases to identify the purpose or nature of a deposit, feature or room. As a result I do a fair ammount of illustrations of it in various forms. Today I am only digitising drawings done in the 1970s for my Italian friends Phd...I have tried to train him to do them but I don't think that he is really interested...as he has now asked me to do them for him...hey ho I tried...I'm not really sure what I have let myself in for really...the number of pots that he needs drawing is undisclosed...am I a mug?...probably!

Pottery illustration, and archaeological finds illustration in general within the UK, has developed a very well defined idea of style and convention...which is nice it means from my perspective that I know exactly what it is a client is requiring from me...which makes a nice change! 
The left hand side shows a section through the body of the pot, the right hand side the outside of the pot. This will require some shading before it is finished but at the moment I am just digitising the main lines and features.

Day 18: Asparagus & Salmon Pasta Recipe

I had dinner with my Italian friend who I am helping with his Phd a couple of days ago...he cooked a lovely dinner! So I have produced a recipe sheet of what we had. Not sure if you can read it on here though!
the photos were taken by me...very inexperienced with a beautiful camera that I bought just prior to christmas...it's a Nikon D90 digital SLR...expensive...but worth every penny!

Day 17: Forbidden Planet

...for some reason this popped into my head today...I'm sure it's been done before but I couldn't find any examples on the internet.

It was done in Adobe Photoshop...not quite as easy as it might have been as I had to recreate the areas where the legs and head of the woman that the robot is carrying in the original had been. Just a bit of fun.

Day 16: Part done...

The story of my day today is part done...nothing complete or finished...lots done though!
But nothing that is in a fit state to post...in truth if I were to look around my house at the number of part complete projects around the place...I'd probably find as many if not more than the number of complete ones! I'll try and finish something for tomorrows post.

The only thing that I have actually finished I am not willing to post up on here...my italian homework...I had to create a number of sentences based on the past, present and future tenses...so I wrote my teacher a postcard...I'll stick it in tomorrows post. It should get to him in time for my lesson...if not I can blame the post office! He probably wouldn't believe me!

Day 15: Skull & Cross Bones 2

I have had a second stab at the skull and cross bones that I did yesterday. I have made it x2.5 as big, used printstick instead of spraymount and used two sheets of card for each layer. Each of these aspects has definitely improved the general effect of the piece. I have also taken a picture of it...please let me know what you think!

One thing I did think about...after I had already gotten too far is that I could have had a sheet of black card for the background...next time if I do it again!
The other thing that I might do is get it cut from acrylic with each layer in different colour

Day 14: 3d Picture

I came up with a concept a while ago of creating a 3d picture from card based on the contours of an object.
At work today I was looking at the contours around a site my company is currently doing and it reminded me of the idea...I know it isn't particularly original...but it is something that I haven't tried before.
I found a picture of a 3d skull and crossbones on the web and converted it into contours in illustrator...I did this manually...I had a go at doing it automatically in photoshop but it resulted in too many really fiddly bits so just drew the ones that I thought would result in an understandable 3d picture. I then broke this down into layers with a frame for each layer. The frame was important because it meant that locating the largest part of the design on each layer would be really simple. It is only 90mm x 60mm but it could easily be increased in size. I used spray mount to stick each piece of card down...I would like to find a better glue...it's a bit messy and quite often ends up on the wrong side of the card when spraying onto the back...might try printstick and slightly watered down wood glue. I would post a pic of the final product but I'm not sure that it would be show up very well. I might try doubling up the card to make the thickness more obvious. But in general I am very pleased with the result...