blue tak Giraffe death

Apparently at work one day I had enough time on my hands to make a Giraffe out of blue tack, stick him to the wall and then decapitate him!

Very Productive.

This is a photo from an old phone from years ago. But I'm always up for modelling stuff. Earlier in my blog I added a Winnie the Pooh I created with icing for my Nieces birthday cake.

plimsolls

 I'm enjoying looking through me old phone's pictures at the moment. I just dumped them all on my hard drive and left them there.
I found two pair of plimsolls I painted for a girl who was leaving work one year and the pictures of them were there.

It also looks like they got filled with sweets to and why the heck not.

The Designs are quite simple but I think good because of that. You can overdo painting your shoes right? Is that a thing!?! what ever ye.
  I used Acrylic paint and that's usually hard enough to get off clothes when it drys so apart from some slight cracking they should be fine.

Interesting. The red pair appear to have the outline of a turtle with a mounted tank turret on one and a squatting dragon on the other.
Don't remember doing that!

I should do more of these and sell them on my Etsy site!

Sleeping fox

I was looking through my files trying to find a picture for a client and came across this picture of a for I'd done and then promptly forgotten about!

I'd done it because I had not tried to draw a fox before and had seen one when I was out walking.
I don't care what anyone says, most of the time foxes look absolutely deranged! However, when they are asleep they look lovely.

This is watercolour pencil on watercolour paper. No water added.

I like the effect.
Sometimes you just get to the point in a picture when you think ~ If I carry on any further I'm going to regret it.
The adding of the water changed the look of the picture and I'm just glad I took this photograph of it so I have a good copy to look at and maybe print out.

clay pigeon shooting

I was on a stag do at the weekend. Now you have to do some kind of activity right?

I mean yes, sure, you can go away somewhere and get so drunk that someone is sick on some strangers head and another one in your group buys a dog off a Gypsy while someone else punches the prostitute someone payed to eat a wild rodent just as THAT MATE (and apparently most people have at least one) takes a nice long relaxing poo through a hairstylists letterbox and you wrestle the two lasses from Salford and their camp Chinese friend for supremacy over a toy monkey.
But why not do something you haven't done before!

This year I'm trying to do a few of the things that you may think of trying but often don't get round to.
That's why I was happy to be going to the Manchester clay pigeon shooting club on this stag do.

I've done Air Soft and paintball and fired I've BB's but I've never actually fired a gun.
I remember one of my friends coming back from America and showing me the movie of him shooting a Desert Eagle and a P90. That looked fun!

I highly recommend giving clay pigeon shooting a go.


Due to the time we arrived, which was late,  we had a quick safety briefing, got kitted up with safety gear and headed out.
There were 4 places we got to fire. One where the clays came toward you which was easy, one where they came in from the right which was hard if you are left handed because you can't see it coming, one that had them flying straight up and one more where they were heading away from you and that one was the best.

As we only got 6 goes at each place (because we were late) the highest score you could get was 24.
I think my score was 15. Going    6    1    2    6 .

Oh and the gun guy we had was really winding up one of our group. I mean he was being harsh with everyone but one lad wasn't taking it too well.

Is he being too harsh?

At one point he said something like ~ my American friends would say your as nervous as a virgin at a prison rodeo ~ you just can't buy class like that.

*    *      here's a link to the one we went to in Manchester      *    *

http://www.manchesterclayshooting.com/

by the way. That stuff about the stag do things when drunk. As far as I'm awair, only the monkey thing has ever actually happened.

mask

I needed to make a mask at short notice of a pigeon head.
sadly I couldn't find a tutorial that exactly showed what I wanted to do...
so I winged it!

It is not right.
I still need to glue in some sponge to keep it in position when worn.

It's a bit freaky

Only took 5 hours...

OH GOD WHAT WAS I THINKING!?!


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Since making this it has been no a zombie morphsuit in manchester

children's book illustrations

My mother has asked me to do some illustrations for her. She has wrote a short book for young children called WALKING WITH MIXIMALS.

It's a short rime on each page with corresponding pictures and is 6 pages long.

She actually started righting the story after looking at some of my mixed animal pictures.

"I went for a walk one day. Guess what I saw along the way?"

This is on of the pictures. A tiger rabbit .... or tibet as I think we called it.

There is another stary she's righting about the Miximals aimed at older children. I'll have to see how that ones coming too.


I actually have some of these on cards. I need to put them up on my Etsy account to sell.

***************

A book I have written and illustrated has just gone up for Kindle no Amazon. 

This is the link

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Denalls-Adventure-ebook/dp/B00DQDQGZG/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1372870553&sr=1-1&keywords=denall%27s+adventure

children's book published web page

I've just added a new page to my web site. It's a picture of the new children's book front cover and a little about the book.
I will be adding a link to it when I have put the books up on etsy.
I have had 50 printed in the first batch by quoin publishing.

http://matteesside.wix.com/artandphotos#!childrens-book/c14iy

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update

6 out of 50 copies gone between 13/05/2013 and 23/05/2013

(1week and 3 days)

You can find my book with these links
-hard copy-
http://www.etsy.com/uk/listing/152428446/childrens-book-fairy-story-denalls?ref=shop_home_active

-Digital Kindle Edition-

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Denalls-Adventure-ebook/dp/B00DQDQGZG/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1372870553&sr=1-1&keywords=denall%27s+adventure

winnie the pooh cake

It's my nieces birthday soon and I was asked to make an Icing Winnie the pooh to go on the top of this cake.
Now I'm alright at recreating cartoon characters etc when it's in a 2D format but modelling a pooh for a cake!
It doesn't look quite right. Not like the picture I posted of pooh. That pooh was good!... he he, pooh.

I can't imagine a 2 year old complaining about it though  :)

At least you can tell who it is... even if he does have a Pudsey the bear look to him
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children_in_Need


I also made a mess of my hunny pot but we all make mistakes :) 

Publishing a children's book

(Image from children's book Denall's Adventure)

I have recently finished writing and illustrating my own children’s book.

http://www.etsy.com/uk/listing/152428446/childrens-book-fairy-story-denalls?ref=shop_home_active 

It is on Amazon for Kindle too.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Denalls-Adventure-ebook/dp/B00DQDQGZG/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1372870553&sr=1-1&keywords=denall%27s+adventure

I had no idea how much work was involved in such a venture.

Getting down a premise, developing a story, checking and rechecking and editing.

Then working out what the characters are going to look like and what the place is like around the character. Then keeping continuity in the pictures.

Now that is all over I need a publisher.

… Actually I thought I’d self-Publish and see how that goes.

In the end it came down to choosing between two options. Self-Publish with someone local or choose somewhere on line.

I decided to go with a local printer but also after I’ve done that I’ll go and put the book out on the Kindle! Why not.  Might as well since amazon have a self-publishing section.

As a Dyslexic I find it hard to find the info I need on the internet but after reading threw amazon’s information, it seems pretty good.

As for the local side of things I Emailed Quoin publishing as it is a place in the Teesside area.

The quote I was given was:            

£50 for set-up on my pictures and a choice of matt or silk for the finish on the inner pages.

The children’s book is 28 pages long and A5 size. This therefor comes to £1.44 per print with 5% off if 250 are ordered and 10% off with 500.

Quoin publishing also do a proof reading servies which, with the small size of my book would cast £53.

I think I’ll get a small amount done first and then look at the amazon publishing.

Amazon self-publishing link:

https://kdp.amazon.com/self-publishing/help?topicId=A37Z49E2DDQPP3

(Concept art for book)

Bird Song

A walk in the woods and bird song. Add a little sun, a light breeze and you can have a relaxing moment to your self.

That is if you can get to some woods... and it's sunny... and there aren't people walking around shouting in a way that suggests a nice soothing lobotomy may be in order.

Just in case, here is a picture with bird song from Flatts Lane woods in the North East of England (Teesside area).

Here are just a few of the birds that can be seen in flatts lane woods