I Really Hate This Dress

I was intrigued to read about a young chap who had what was confirmed as Britain's first Selfie Addiction. It got me thinking about the phenomenon of Selfie's, I am guilty as I presume are a lot of people of taking numerous photo's of myself and then deleting the ones I don't like (bad angle, pulling a face, bad hair day etc) Compared to my youth when any photo's were of the 'shoot and hope' variety our self image must surely be changing. I have lots of photo's of me as a child which were neither posed nor selected from a bad bunch, they were what they were and your self image either came from that or you chose to ignore it!
 I wanted to do a short fun story/ poem about the pictures you never post online, the ones that you would automatically delete, as if people were to see you looking less than perfect then it would be a travesty and damaging to your view of self and the view others had of you.
 I put out a facebook request asking for pictures of people looking grumpy- either badly dressed or just plain pissed off. In my last project I asked for pictures of London and was absolutely inundated with shots but this time I really struggled to get anyone to take part, in the end I was forced to use pictures of children and pose a few myself in order to get it done.
 What I have taken from this is that a lot of people are not keen to see themselves look less than perfect, even if it is just a drawing!
 So, come on people, chillax and stop taking yourselves so seriously! Unless you are a model by trade no one looks perfect all the time.
Oh, and many thanks to those that did send me pictures, you guys are the best!

London Lives

I have spent the last year practicing so much with the computer stylus and pen and finally feel like I am getting the hang of it.

This is my newest short story 'London Lives' inspired by my husband finally leaving London behind after working there for the last 12 years.

I left London behind back in 2004 but it still has a unique appeal that I can never quite shake and I am eternally grateful that some of my friends chose to put down roots there, giving me an excuse to visit from time to time.

The Door

I've been reading Neil Gaiman's Sandman recently and it shows. Although I could never aspire to the amazing levels of fantasy and imagination that he and his artistic crew achieve I can dream...

I found this new story 'The Door' an absolute joy to write. I used watercolour pencils to achieve the soft pastel effect I wanted and tried very hard to make each page as interesting as possible.

I also tried to show a juxtaposition between the real world and the fantasy one by using clear divides in artistic styles ie- the real world in black and white, the fantasy world and her paintings in colour.

I wanted to explore a little as well, the nature of art and what is considered worthwhile and who chooses the art that is revered.

It's a little clumsy and obvious but it was fun, I enjoyed every page and am very happy with the overall result.

I hope you enjoy your time through 'The Door'.

Silent Protest

Typically, my latest assertion that I simply did not have time to finish my latest story spurred me on to finish it in record quick time... because I am contrary like that.

It was the first piece I completed on the computer- it is very basic and suffers slightly from a lack of consistency in text font, colour swathe and style but this is really more of an indication of the teething problems I have had using digital processes. But it is a learning curve and I am optimistic that the next piece I do in this way will be more consistent and more elaborate. (Maybe...)

This is 'Silent Protest', which was originally a much longer piece but I thought it was pretty boring, drawn out and far too emotional so I cropped the hell out of it and this is the final piece.

I like the style of it- it's clean looking and that please me- I am not sure what is next- I have a little something brewing but who knows where that will take me and how long it will take me to get there.

I'm amazed my fingers aren't bloody stumps....

drawing, non stop for months... I'm not bored of it yet but maybe soon.... I haven't done any writing at all at the moment as I am intent on mastering digital technique first but in the meantime here are tons of pictures for you to look at....

 

 

This is an incredibly small selection of what I have been up to in the past few months... I am working on a short story but I imagine it will be a while before I get round to finishing it and now..... on with the drawing!

So we all survived, the Mayan's were wrong after all (knew it! Conspiracy theorys= nil points) And I don't care who thinks it's a miscaculation and it's actually 3012 that world is supposed to end... you're wrong and you know you are!

So, Christmas actually came (thank god I didn't forgo the purchasing of presents in light of the whole 21/12/12 thing) and with it came the arrival of my daughter's newest toy, a Bamboo dock and stylus. I was initially wary of this new technology (we fear change) but after my extremely IT competent eight year old gave me a lesson I was away and drawing like nobody's business.

Except my own.... I have a budding business of ebay of converting photographs into pictures which was struggling slightly due to my very hit and miss approach to drawing, sometimes it worked out fine, other days not so good- however with the new stylus I have found you can trace the outlines of figures and backgrounds to get the scale correct and after that it is just a case of printing and colouring it in... word!

Here are some examples of what I have achieved so far.

I'm pretty pleased with the results and hopefully it will serve me well.

So the final thing left to do is add a little plug (hey it's my blog! why not?) The link to my ebay shop is

http://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/kyleacharrise/m.html?_nkw=&_armrs=1&_from=&_ipg=&_trksid=p3686


and also I have added a facebook page in order to stop boring the hell out of everyone on my newsfeed (unless they want to be bored by it...) the link to that is

https://www.facebook.com/Kyleacharrise?ref=hl 

feel free to like me and share me if you are into all this junk.

Zombies! Grrrrrrrr!

Oh how I love apocalyptical zombie stuff... it's not just the jaw-chomping, eyeball bursting, arm-ripping gore of it all, it's not the chainsaw wielding, gun-toting, society crumbling anarchistic wanna-be within me that spurs it on. I just think Zombies themselves are so fantastic- they are me in the morning, times a million. They are the single minded animalistic and literally rotten to the core. They are the part of us that really WOULD bite someones head off if they looked at us the wrong way.

2012 has really hyped it up, this end of the world vibe is nearly at fever-pitch, only one month and two days until we find out of the Mayan's really got it right (I am suspecting they may have miscalculated slightly, what with them not predicting the demise of their own society and all that)

Saul and I were chatting the other day about how Zombie films have really got out of hand, you have of course the classic 'Dawn of the Dead' et al, the comic 'Juan & Shaun of the Dead' and 'Zombieland', and the chilling '28 Days Later' and 'The Walking Dead' but why are there no zombie films from the zombies point of view? Maybe there are, although I am a zombie-film aficionado I am certainly not one of the highest class, I am sure there is probably some little known film lurking around that is all 'Brains' and 'Gak' the enjoyment of chewing someones face off.... but if there isn't, I thought I would run with it, just for fun and if some Hollywood producer sees this and wants to offer me a cool million for the idea, then that's fine by me too....

I enjoyed writing this so much, I managed to complete the whole thing from start to finish in under 24 hours which really helped and I posed for all the zombie facial expression which was so much fun, my phone is now filled with random pictures of me gurning and gnashing my teeth!

Ohhh Zombies- somehow you make me complete, I'm just waiting for the apocalypse now.... I'm gonna don my old DM's, a tight crop top and some figure hugging jeans, find me a chainsaw and head out onto the streets for some good old fashion mayhem!

Wish me luck and pray you don't get zombified before me!