Books

I ordered two photography books from Amazon the other day, and they just arrived.  I am so excited - I love new books.  One is on an artist called Christian Boltanski, and the other is the book accompanying the television series The Genius of Photography - I am so excited!

Tutorial

I had my tutorial with Sam this morning - it went really well, she looked through my sketchbook and seemed really impressed with it.  She thought I had done a very thorough job.  I left my critical appraisal with her so she could go through it on her own, I got it back at lunchtime.  She said that it was very honest and reflective and really good for the first project.  I am so pleased as this is the first time I have ever had to write a critical appraisal.  I'm feeling happier about my work now, but am still nervous about the critique tomorrow...

Meat Pie

I had meat pie, chips peas and gravy for my luch today - it was SO good.  Thanks Mum and Dad for bringing the pie chips and gravy =]

Work work work

All I seem to have been doing for the past few days especially is getting up at 7.30am and going to bed at 1am and just working on Sam's brief the whole day, with like half an hour off for meals and time to go to lectures.  It started to get really frustrating!  But now my sketchbook work is completed, my contact sheets are analyzed, my final piece is printed and my critical appraisal is written!  Thats a day earlier than it needs to be done - not at all like me.  I have a tutorial with Sam tomorrow morning so she can look through my sketchbook and critical appraisal to check it, then it's just waiting for the critique on Thursday.  I am so relieved to have it done and out of the way, although it did end up being kind of enjoyable.

Visual Literacy Round Five

This week we were doing collage again, but this time we had to choose from four starting points and visually represent them.  I chose "object of desire", and looked through magazines for objects and situations which could be considered desirable.  I found this quite a good lecture, which was nice.

Parcel

Today an 11kg parcel arrived for Tom from his Mum - it was full of random food and was so fun I felt it was necessary for it to be included here.

Mourning Dill Fisher

Next doors fish Dill just died - he survived almost two weeks, Hayley has made a small box to bury him in outside.  Bye Dill, you will be sadly missed =[

Happy Birthday Suzie!

Hope you have a great day!

Sorry I can't be there, but I'm so looking forward to seeing you next weekend.

Proper student

I believe that Greg is now a proper student, this evening he ate his first meal of mashed potato out of the sauce pan with a serving spoon. Good times.

Visitors

Howard and Janet have been to visit me today, I've had a great day.  We had a coffee at the flat, then went to Le Gall for lunch - yummy.  This afternoon we have been to look round the castle, which was quite interesting - great views from up on the walls.  Really nice to see them again, thanks for coming to visit.

Girls on the town

Hayley, Lea and I decided that it was time for a night out - Thursday being student night seemed the perfect opportunity.  We went to a couple of bars and then on to Concrete of course - it was a great night which sadly came to a close when Concrete shut at 3am.  Good times girls!

American Adventure

This afternoon I started printing out some of my photographs from last summer's adventure in America.  They are so great, sadly some of the files wouldn't open, but I still printed about 40 off which are now on the wall above my desk - looking great =]

First time in the studio

This morning I went into the studio to take the photographs for one of my briefs on exploring the style of another artist.  I was really nervous about it, but it turned out really well, I am pleased with the final images and have now edited and printed them too.

Owls

I've just got into bed, and all I can hear are owls in the woods at the back of the field behind halls - it is such a peaceful sound, and yet so loud.  Hopefully it won't keep me awake, but I am enjoying it for the moment.

Visual Literacy Round Four

Today was our fourth day of Visual literacy lectures, and the most fun by far.  We were looking at collage and how it is used in so many ways.  We had to make dadist poems and then illustrate them with collage.  The poems were made by cutting up a paragraph of a magazine article into individual words, and then selecting them in a random order to make the poem.  It is a form of non-conformist, nonsense poetry.  I'm quite pleased with the collage, especially the goldfish.

Monday morning?!?

I decided to go into town this morning for 9 to get some jobs done - I'm a student, 9am Monday morning, this makes no sense!  But anyways, I did my jobs and then decided to go to Starbucks for breakfast courtesy of Suzie and Rick - thanks guys, nice cinnamon swirl and vanilla late.  On the way back I walked through Rickerby Park instead of along the road, it was so nice, the Highland cows were grazing right next to the path.  

Glow sticks

We had glow sticks and music this evening - good times : )

Pancakes

Lea and I decided to make pancakes this evening just for the fun of it - they were SO good, especially mine with "Em's special Strawberry Jam".  Thanks to Lea for the Pancake and Em for the Jam : )

Road Trip!!!

Today we went on our first day out : )  We went to Keswick for the day, initially to go to the puzzling place, but also to look around the town.  It is just over 30 miles away.  It was a great adventure - we had to get up at 8am and everything to get there - this is very early for students, especially on a Saturday morning.  So Tom drove us, and we went to the puzzling place wihich is very strange, then had a pub lunch and looked around the town for a couple of hours.  It's a really nice place which I feel needs re-visiting.  We bought matching shoe lace charm things, with shoe laces to wear as bracelets 'cos we are children : D  On the way home we stopped on the edge of a massive lake to have a look - it was huge.  Then we came back and went to the supermarket. Good day out guys, hopefully the first of many...

Pinhole photographs

Today we had our inductions into the black and white darkroom at the Caldewgate campus about a mile and a half away.  It is the first time that I have been in a darkroom for about three and a half years, so I was pretty excited.  We took along our pinhole cameras and loaded them with light-sensitive paper after being given a tour of the facility, and went out shooting.  I took my first photograph inside, it took forty minutes to expose, but turned out perfectly, the second and third were over exposed, but the fourth and fifth were reasonably successful, and the sixth was great.  Due to the time scales involved we only got chance to do a few prints, but I shall be going back soon.  It was great to actually produce photographs from a box with a tiny hole in it - amazing.  When I got back home, I went and scanned the photographs in the digital darkroom, and brought them home, where I converted them from positives to negatives.  All in all a very successful day I would say.

Below are the first and last photographs I took.  The first one is looking up at the skylights in the main entrance to the uni building (exposed for forty minutes), and the last one is looking down the street outside (exposed for three minutes).  Both have the negatives and the positives.

Lighting

In our applied creative practice lecture today, Roger the technician came up to show us some of the lighting gear that we are able to book out.  It was really great to actually get our hands on some kit and start learning about it.  It's pretty scary looking stuff to begin with, but isn't really that bad once you know how to set it up and dismantle it.  I'm looking forward to using it now.

In Bruges

I watched In Bruges this afternoon, I've had it for a couple of months now, but this is the first time I have watched it.  I thought it was really good, but  a bit gruesome in places.  Very, very black humour.

Night on the Town

Tonight we went to the Chinese buffet in town Shanghai Shanghai because one of Lea's mates is visiting till Friday.  Then we headed over to Walkabout, then Office for a few drinks, then on to Concrete for some dancing and more drinks.  It was a great night.

Across the Universe

This is a film based around the music of the Beatles and the Vietnam War, and tells the story of a young upper-class american girl and a working-class Liverpudlian artist.  I watched it this evening, it is a really good film, noting like what I expected, but good all the same.

Visual Literacy Round Three

This morning we had to take wire and cardboard to class, it turned out that this was to make the pictures of our bananas into 3D objects.  Apparently this is not the same as making a banana?!?  So I made mine out of cardboard, and photographed it on a couch that I found in the art studio.  I'm sure I enrolled on photography... It was quite entertaining though.

FISH!!!

We now have fish!  Mum and Dad brought my old tank up yesterday when they came, and Tom, Lea, Greg and I went into town today to pick up four fish.  They are now in the tank and seem very content.  Lea has two goldfish with white bits on them called Pinky and Sue, and I have two shebumkins called Inky and Blinky.  They seem very happy in the tank with the ornaments we got them.  I wish the fish the best of luck with life in a student kitchen...