The end is nigh

Of 2009 that is!

Another busy couple of months have passed. Just finished a weekend of socialising with friends at an event for which I'd done some basic design work, a few signs and nametag stickers and programmes for the day, all themed with the idea of espionage (the party was in its 7th year, so they dubbed it K007). A good time was had, and lots of money was raised for charity. The design stuff seemed to go down well, so I was pleased. It was good to throw myself into a biggish project, just a shame I couldn't enjoy it more as it was worked around normal daytime jobs and other little hiccups. All worked out in the end though, I'll try and get some photos of the promotional goodies up here.



In other news, I entered a competition in Photo 360 magazine (issue #13) with the theme "travel", and to my utter amazement was picked as a finalist! Even more amazing, when the issue came out, they gave all 4 of us a printer as a prize rather than the usual public vote for one winner! Brilliant!

Fribble battle!

Work has been taking up quite a lot of my time, unfortunately. However I've still been squeezing in some design work as and when I can.

I'm trying to work on a website idea with a friend, it's got some bare bones now which technically I need to work on as soon as I get a few hours to properly put some focus down. I think the weekend is the time to do that one.

However, this week I've been trying my hand as a contestant in the first ever Fribble Battle! The concept is that 8 contestants enter in a contest that lasts a week, 3 rounds lasting 24 hours each, with a day in between for voting/judging. Long story short (details are available on the website here if you'd like a look) - I managed to scrape through round one! Round two is now in the voting/judging stage, and having seen the other entries (anonymous until tomorrow) I'm very much doubting I'll make it through, but it's been great fun, the short deadline was exhilarating and terrifying at the same time. 24 hours start at midnight in America, which I think is about 6am here. By the time I'd get home to start my entry it'd be 8pm here, giving me only 8 hours of my 24! Luckily they'd put in a provision for the Internationals like me, so technically I could've tried planning stages out before I got home.

Not with my brain :) Worked out in the end though. I recommend it to all, keeps you on your toes. Must get back in the swing of contests to work to someone else's brief. Just as long as I get some more time....

Sinful City

Yesterday they showed Frank Miller's "Sin City" on TV. I'm a big fan of the film, the plot confuses some, but it enthrals me and mainly because I love the film style. The desaturated images, heavy contrast, strong angles and dark shadows with the odd highlighted touches in colour - it just facinates me the whole way through.

Tried to create a Sin City effect last night, but didn't have much joy. It needed a specific type of image to start with, and today I searched for something more fitting.

My first attempt I was really pleased with, the stock images used were individually nothing remotely Frank Miller-esq. I didn't want the car to be red, but there was nothing else really to highlight and overall it wasn't too bad. Flickr link to car.

By the time I'd tried my second attempt, I was much happier with the rain effect, but less so about the desaturating of the woman. Flickr link to woman.

A good learning curve overall.

LOTS happened!

Ahhh, so much to say!

It's been a very busy few months, but the last few weeks especially have some major milestones in my creative career.

Back on the 18th July I joined the "Portobello Market, London" group of the Worldwide Photowalk. I had a brilliant time, photographing people as much as I could as it was an area I knew I was wary of. It felt much safer doing so on a day where lots of other photographers were off doint the same thing, especially in an area like Portobello Market which is PACKED with tourists and shoppers on a Saturday. My portfolio of shots from the day is found here on Flickr.

At the end, we could pick two images to enter into the associated competition, and each walk leader then picks one photo from their group selection which they submit to the next "round". Imagine my surprise when my photo was picked!

I was really proud of my photo, I call her "Purple lady". She was a stall holder, aware her photo was taken as it would surely have been hundreds of times a year by various visitors to London passing through. The instant I took it I knew I loved it. The composition and colours from the view on the camera just made me "know" it was my favourite, and luckily viewing it on the PC later didn't change that. Phew!

Well, some time later, and the winners were announced of the Worldwide round - nearly 900 entries, whittled down by Scott Kelby to 11, one overall winner and 10 runners up. I scrolled down his blog page and got the shock of my life... there was my Purple lady, a runner up! Hee made the following comments about it:

"When I look at this image, I just want to know her story. She looks like she’s led a fascinating life, and has amazing stories to tell. I love the flower in her hair, the look on her face, and the wonderful lighting. I even love the coffee cup—it all adds to the story. The colors work so well together and the composition is spot on. The shot, and the subject, have an awful lot of character. I wish I had taken it."

Ahhhhh!!! Amazed!

Surely that's all? Well no... on a slightly less grand scale, but equally important to me, I was contacted by a guy called Chad who was interested in using my Phoenix Rising From The Smoke image for his band's album cover. My image has a Creative Commons license, so although that technically gives permission for others to use, I love that people contact me too. I like hearing from others, especially if they're interested in using my work. Long story short, I'd offered my services to clean up the image and edit it to their album cover idea and so after a few weeks of emailing back and forth, we reached a result him and the band were pleased with. I really enjoyed working on it, frustrating at times, but exhilarating doing it for someone else. It meant a new dimension when looking at my work, it wasn't just for me, it had to fit the needs of others and I had to interpret the brief given.

I hope the guys go far, check out their Myspace page here - good luck Paradigm Shift, p.s. remember me when you're famous! ;)

Then, finally, there's the ongoing story from my last blog post about the DVD cover. Again, email correspondence to discuss the design and make a few amendments to better suit the product. All source images used were checked for commercial use, and only a few days ago through the post came my own copy of the DVD - complete with cover using my design.

It's been a very, very busy time lately! As a result I decided it was about time I fixed my site properly to make it a portfolio... and after weeks of struggling with a layout I finally reached a point where I could update the URL with the new version. Still needs the "projects" page - where I'll describe some of the progress with commercial endevours, but for the moment I'm pleased to have a better place to show off my work.

The new Sarahg.co.uk - available here!

Anyone else out there wanting to work with me? Please get in touch :)

Update update update

Update needed! Really. Sorry about that - the world has been a bit busy recently!

With weather being an unusual variety of heatwave for England, it's been heavy heads trying to work through daily tasks. That's not to say nothing has been done, quite the opposite. In the last month I've been working on designing a website for a friend/colleague, as well as some examples of stationery designs which could be of use. This resulted in a neat little payoff which I plummetted in my usual style into other things, notably some more mini easels which work beautifully to display small canvases. My first ever mini canvas painting of a cheery giraffe was recently listed on Etsy.com, testing the water... and shock horror it SOLD!


Amazed, not only money for design work but also an artist. Together with the cover credit for a photoshopped image which was seen on Flickr by a Dutch production company who approached me wondering if they'de be allowed to use it for a cover of their DVD, well it's all a blur.

Would quite like more hours in the day to get everything done, I'm a little behind in my photoshopping, and with the weather so warm the oil paintings have been put on hold (too sticky to concentrate on painting) - but am still keeping up with the daily Flickr photos which at the very least means I'm doing a bit of editing daily.

Finally, the 50th issue of Photoshop Creative is now out, and at least I managed to enter a pic on their "50" theme which got printed, see it on Flickr here.

All in all, I'm feeling a bit more positive about all this design & art work. If only I could make it a bit more of my main income...

Picture and that

Added some traditional artwork to Flickr here. Photoshop creations can be found here.

Still not redone the website using own coding. Not enough hours in the day... barely able to get my daily Flickr self portraits up.

Ooops....

I am completely rubbish at keeping blogs up to date!

Creativity has been occuring, just not at the scale I'd like. Photoshop/computer has been acting up recently which has been driving me crazy and to tears in equal measures. Despite this, small moments of activity have got some pleasing results.

Recent projects include oil painting. I got myself some water soluble oils a while ago, as well as some small 8cm squared canvases, perfect for starting out and getting a feel for the medium again. I must say I'm really enjoying painting again - must learn patience, I tend to try and "finish" a piece in one evening regardless of its size (some 8" square canvas board was also acquired). Square seems to be a nice shape too, not sure why but I find it easier to work on. To try and practise I've been asking friends to name some album covers they like. This tends to be a good start as it doesn't mean they're thinking there's an end product, it's just a random question. The resulting painting for Pink Floyd's "Atom Heart Mother" (Amazon.co.uk link here) was a bit of a surprise as I hadn't expected it to turn out as nicely as it did, even if I do say so myself.

Once I've let all the existing pieces dry a little I'll take photos and add them.

Website - no progress since last I'm afraid. It's in the pipeline, but it's harder to motivate the little free time available to redoing something that is effectively done (just not to the coding I'd like). It's on my list of things to do, so eventually there will be more to tell.

Another thing on my agenda is logo design! This started as a friend asking if I could do some ideas for a new logo for a band he knows. "Ok" I thought, why not, good practise! Did a few little designs quickly to give a bit of a suggested range of styles on only one font as I had little idea about the design they were after so easiest way to get feedback is see what they like of a suggested pallet. Got their feedback - and realised this is a slightly bigger project than anticipated. They're a signed band, not major - yet! A tour in America is due. "Hmm" was my next thought. Rather than a fun little logo for a few friends in a garage somewhere, this evolved into a proper band hoping to use it around the world! Legal minefield when I started reading up on copyright regarding the use of images and fonts. Royalty free images are generally ok for small work, but a big no-no for logos, and font work isn't much better! Have now set myself the task to read up on law & design, as well as now having to work on a logo using entirely my own creative endevours rather than just some images/fonts edited in photoshop. Eeep!

Lastly, I should mention the 365days project I've joined on Flickr. Basically, it's an idea where you take a self portrait (be it your shadow, a portrait, a photo of your hand, etc - just as long as it's YOUR composition and YOUR picture of YOU) every day for a year, edited if wanted, and uploaded. Having a general dislike for myself in photos, this was a challenge at first, but it's now become something fun. Even the bad photo days have Photoshop to rescue them, and I'm really liking the resulting portfolio of images - available here on Flickr. I highly recommend the project to anyone, even if you do your own take on it. It's a nice little way to ensure something creative is set for every day.

Website v2.0

Since the last post I got my hands on a copy of "Serif Internet Design Suite 2009" to test thanks to a friend.  Perfect for testing on the old laptop which only has the power of a handful of hamsters and can't handle the big flashy fancy programs.   To test it properly I tried to recreate my first website idea from scratch.  Serif IDS 2009 requires no knowledge of coding or html, and works entirely on a DTP format to move and adjust images and boxes, and was quick to get used to and the results were impressive and looked sleek.  Once ready, you then "generate" the website by publishing it either to disk (where it saves on your PC as the html files and attachments) or direct to web.

I saved mine to disk, as I wanted to see how it all looks from the inside, curiosity may have killed the cat, but I'm human - just about.   The deisgn is clean, and very easy to use for someone unfamiliar with web design, however since I like to tinker with it all I found one issue.  It creates copies of all picture files, and names them with its own random alphanumeric code.  Should I want to replace an image I'd started off with called house.jpg, it would have probably been generated out as wp0177tu90.png.  Not a massive issue, but when it also generates every coloured background rectangle or shape from within the web site as its own .png, you quickly end up with so many image files you've no idea where to begin.

On the positive side, the resulting website is very fast to create and so I'm using the Serif generated site as the one linked to my domain.  Personally I want more control over the web design and I've not yet tested it in various browsers, but when viewing it on my mobile it has issues displaying all the image files which is a pity as it means the menu (which saves out as images) isn't shown.

For the moment, it's a good basic site maker with plenty of easy to use functions and certainly something I will play more with, but it isn't the permanent answer unfortunately.

The hosted site can be found here: http://sarahg2.atspace.com