The Busman’s Holiday

Technically speaking, I’ve been completely useless when it comes to actually making art this week – partially because I’ve finished and I should be packing to go home (I’m not) but also because my mum’s come up for a visit before I leave as a sort of free holiday. But I have developed a really nice collection of photos of the Welsh Landscape to work from, which I think I’ll base my summer project on while I’m preparing for the exhibition.

I’m glad I live in Aberystwyth to be honest, it’s sort of in the middle of everything so it’s easy to get from one place to the other, especially when you’re trying to pack three days worth of holidaymaking into one.

Thursday, we went to Borth to visit the Zoo, which is actually pretty impressive considering it’s such a small town, and see the sunken forest for what I have no words besides “go and see it for yourself” and Machynlleth, though it was pretty dead as we arrived just around when everything was closing, thanks to a falling branch that almost killed us on the way there – deep joy.

Friday was spent wasting all my spare money on clothes and Saturday on the Devil’s Bridge falls walk – a really beautiful way to kill someone, if you were wondering. Though there was a woman who was marching up it all faster than we were with a small child on her back that I will have eternal respect for, however insane I reckon she must’ve been. And I’m still having war flash-backs to the giant beatle the ended up in my hair, then on my finger, then being screamed at and flung across a gift shop. I hate insects. Especially ones that end up in my hair.

Today was a castle day – see how many castles you can visit between 3 and 6 in the afternoon because you had a sausage sandwich and a lie in this morning. The answer’s 3. I will admit, it was a bit of a blast from the past. We went down towards Cardigan and Newcastle Emlyn and visited all the places we used to go to on holiday as children. I’m not sure how I did it but aparently I used to run all over them, when this time I spent most of my exploration time clinging on for dear life and hoping that the hoards of small children weren’t heading my way. They were of course, it’s like you think I’m lucky or something.

Either way, my stash of images are growing. I’ll see what I can get tomorrow in Snowdonia and then I think I’ll start working out sets of 3 or 4 from each location to play with so I’ll have a whole “Landmarks of West Wales” set of wor to exhibit.

This Semester’s Portfolio – The Best Bits

La Thuile des Fées With Fae

The Litle Elder Tree Mother

La Thuile des Fées

Vanya

The Forsake Mermaid

Voice Like a Nighitingale

From Aberystwyth With Love

Silent Poole

Arianwen

Study

The Forsaken Mermaid Book Covers

Fae

Portfolio submitted. Assessment completed and I’d like to think it went pretty alright. I’m a free man, even if I do feel a bit like my life has next to no purpose anymore – besides cleaning. Our house is a state and my mum arrives on Wednesday, so this is going to be fun. I cleaned the stairs yesterday with a dustpan and brush because our hoover is a hunk of shite and I can honestly say it was a terrible mistake. I am still surprised that to dust didn’t crawl up my arm and strangle me – and there’s a little bit of me that wishes it had. We had enough dust on our stairs to make Jeremy Clarkson two toupés and a matching merkin for good measure, and possible more if you can manage to extract what’s imbedded in my lungs.

Also, I think I might set up shop as an Agony Aunt due to a weird sudden influx of people asking for relationship advice. “What should I say to her?” “Does the mean she likes me?” “I think she doesn’t like me, what should I do, oh Alex, your highness?”. Frankly, I find it rather comical. One, because half of these questions are posed by Ex-Boyfriends I’ve been trying to chat up, and two, because my love-life is a joke. And I mean literally a joke. We laugh about it around the dinner table, on nights out, every time anyone of the male variety is mentioned in conversation. But then again if people are pleased with my bad relationship advice, they can take it. I’d just recommend not using it on anything you expect to last more than three months.

Yet More Woe

If I said this week has been the most stressful week in my life, it’d probably a gross understatement. Besides rushing to get my work done before hand-in tomorrow, realising that there isn’t a chance in hell the posters I printed online weren’t going to arrive before sumbission because of the awful delivery company that is UKMail and having to fork out an extra £50 to get them printed at a local store, the results of the general election make me want to pull my hair out. I probably wouldn’t be quite so angry if we had a proportional voting system that meant your vote counted towards something even if your constituency has a majority one way or the other, but we don’t. And it baffles me as to how so many people can listen to the right-wing media, run by Cameron’s chums, and believe that they’re doing a good job despite the fact that the number of people forced to use food banks has risen drastically since Cameron came to power, there is now more national debt than there was in every Labour government combined, 25% percent of children are living in poverty and that they want to scrap the Human Rights Act – wehey!

On the plus side, I’ve got my portfolio sorted and ready to submit tomorrow, even if there’s a little nagging in the back of my head telling me that I’ve probably forgotten something. I don’t think I have, but this speaks for my whole second year at University so I have a right to be nervous. Though I’m pretty pleased with the re-done illustration prints, or at least they’re superior to the God-awful paintings I did, even if they don’t fit the brief – and it’s extra work so I might even get some brownie points for that as well.

Either way, if this all goes to shit I’m moving to France and buying some sheep or something.

Still At It

In theory, I am officially done with work for this semester. If I was a normal person, I would stop and take this as an opportunity to relax. But sadly, I’m not. I mean, I could probably leave it, but there’s some more stuff for my illustration I want to. After having debated with my mum over whether having a go at my tutor (who also happens to be the Head of the Art department) for setting work biased towards the painters, that only make up around half of the course – if not less – would be a bad idea or a really f-ing awful one, we came to the conclusion that the best thing I could to as a sort of two fingers gesture would be to do some really stonking prints outside of brief but using the images I was using for the illustrations within it.

In the world of my other Illustration, I finished my Hans Christian Andersen dustjacket and I am more than pleased with it. I’m surprised at how well it all slipped into place and the colours fitted within the gaps. Fair enough, there was a bit of titting about involved trying to fix where the automatic transparency decided to leave thin white lines around everything I’d done, but I worked my way around it.

I also finished printing my final lithograph onto the flower paper from the Moulin Richard de Bas. Some of them look really good, I must admit. Though working with the flowers was a bit of a palaver as they had a habit of obscuring the image or simply falling off onto the stone as it was going through the press. Annoying, but I’ll live.

While I’m here – and though I doubt enough people will see this to make too a difference – one of my letcurers from first year recently had a baby, which was born with respitory issues and needs 24 hour care, and has set up a gofundme page to raise money so the sister can come down from America and help care for him. The family are lovely people and I’m sure they’d appreciate anything you could give: here’s the page.