Final fruity Print

After finishing my lino prints and patricings them in sketchbooks I have finally made my final print with them all together. I'm actually really pleased with how this turned out.

Cherbourg

La Rochelle

Bilbao

FOG SCULPTURE #08025 (F.O.G.) FUJIKO NAKAYA

Tulips 🌷 Jeff Koons

Casco Viejo

A Coruña

My boyfriend was very lucky and got a cruise for his birthday which is incredible and it meant I got to go on my first ever cruise. It was such a fun experience and we got to visit four different places in a week. We got on the ship on Sunday and Monday was a sea day and we got to A Coruña by Tuesday morning. Fortunately the weather was lovely and we got to walk around for hours.

Tower of Hercules

Next stop Bilbao..

Feeling fruity

Here are the scans from my latest lino fruits.

Lino Pineapple

My new current obsession is lino printing, I am always doing it... I have moved on from all my paper marbling and I'm trying something new! I am a very messy and clumsy person so as you can imagine I have a few cuts on my hands from cutting out the lino but nothing too bad.
I am currently lino printing some fruit and here is one of my favorites which is the pineapple. I will post more in due course.

What I read this Summer

Okay so this isnt everything I have read this summer but these are the three books that have stood out to me the most. Before you read this I want to make it very clear my reviews are rather terrible... if I manage to write anything more that "I like it" I will be amazed okay.

The Girls - I heard a lot about this book from Book Youtuber and actually saw it all over the internet so I felt like I already knew a lot about it when I actually got around to buying it. I want to start by saying this book is written in the perspective of a young teenage girl and so are the other two books I'm going to review. The theme of the book is very much about cults and getting sucked into a cult and how they change you or make you do things you wouldn't normally do

Where'd You Go, Bernadette - One of the reasons I bought this book is because its set in Seattle and if you didn't know Seattle is my favorite city (People of seattle, give me and green card and let me move over there okay, thank you). Its about mental illness and the different relationship within a small family of three. Like all the books I enjoyed this because it was easy to read and I never felt bored or trapped in a long chapter.

Tell the Wolves I'm Home - This book is my favourite of all three, I actually found this book on Goodreads after I had finished Where'd You Go, Bernadette because it was one of the recommended books to read and it had such good reviews and ratings. This once again is about a relationship within a family apart from this time its about a young girl and her uncle.

Summer Favorites 2017

So about two years ago I actually did a "End of Summer favourties" post and I haven't done anything like it since so I thought, eh why not! There have been loads of things I have loved this summer and I wanted to write them all down and share them. This post will include make-up, clothes, food and even places! I have loads I want to talk about so I feel like this will be a very long post.

Starting with these two beauties I bought recently.

Monki Printed Jacket - £60 From the moment I saw this jacket I knew I had to have it! I first found it on the ASOS website for £60 but I used my birthday 20% off code to buy it for £48 and it was worth every penny, I seriously LOVE it and I really feel like it goes with all of my outfits. I brought this jacket in a M (I normally wear a 14) and its a lovely oversized fit.
B&O PLAY by Bang & Olufsen Beoplay H4 Wireless Headphone, Tangerine Grey -£249 Okay, so I have never really spend more than about £40 on headphones so this was a big investment for me. I was looking for weeks for a pair of wireless headphones but I didn't find anything that interested me until I saw these. I know its rather stupid of me to buy very expensive headphones just because of the colour but I couldn't help myself and I actually found them on sale on Amazon for £175.

BarryM Gelly Hi Shine Chai, Paprika, Almond and Peanut Butter £3.99 BarryM is one of my favourite drugstore brands for nail varnishes, I feel like you can always find a colour of texture you want and for such a reasonable price. Gelly Hi Shine is a type of nail varnish from BarryM that I seem to own a lot of.
BarryM Coconut Infusion in Paradise One of my goals this summer has been to find the perfect purple grey and I feel like this comes pretty close to the colour I was after.
BarryM Molten Metal in CopperMine This particular shade was the first Molten Metal nails varnishes I picked up, I have since picked up three others but this one is still my favorite. I know you can sense a theme going on here now which is my favourite nail varnish colours this summer haven't been very summery colours at all and I'm not sure why but these are just what I have been using and loving this summer.
BarryM Sunset Gel in Dark Side Of the 'Shroom This nail varnish I feel is maybe the darkest shade in my favorites apart from maybe chai.
Butter London Nail Lacquer in Old Blighty The only none BarryM nail varnish in my favourties, this was rather expensive I think for a nail varnish but when I saw it I knew I had have it! The colour is a slightly orangey brick red and it looks amazing when I have a bit of a tan.
M&S: Pineapple, Coconut & Lime Lollies I'm going to be heartbroken when summer is over and they stop selling these beautiful ice lollies, seriously they are incredible... they taste just like a pina colada.
Audible - Harry Potter I have always love apps like this, spotify for my music and itunes for podcasts and now Audible for my books! So far I have only been listening to the Harry Potter series and I have just finished The Goblet of Fire. I feel like Stephen Fry is the perfect narrator for the Harry Potter series and I could just listen to them back to back forever.

Disneyland Paris Trip I have already posted a little photo diary of my trip to DisneyLand Paris but I haven't really spoken about it until now. Me and my boyfriend went to DisneyLand Paris for my birthday back in June for three days and it was totally incredible as always, I have been to the parks in Paris twice before and always loved it and this time was obviously no exception. We arrived on my actual birthday in the afternoon and went and saw the Buffalo Bill wild west show, went on a few rides and saw the fireworks! All three days in Paris where so unbelievably hot, it was 36°C and there wasn't a single bit of breeze. Considering the heat we still managed to do lots, go on as many rides as possible and watch the parade. I  had the most wonderful time and it was definitely one of my favourites parts of summer.

Snippets from my sketchbook + Update

Top left - water colour studies of vegetables

Bottom Right - More illustrations of bugs and a fine liner drawing of a Voodoo Doughnut I had in Portland

Top Right - A illustration of my grandparents house with a cut of my mother and grandmother when they where younger

Bottom Left - Working with inks and other media 

Left - Drawing of Beetles in different media

Top Right - Glass and Mushrooms created with paper marbling

Bottom Right - Experimenting with media to create leaves 

Update

Okay so as of today I have OFFICIALLY started my UCAS form for university next year which is exciting but mostly absolutely terrifying as I am worried I will get everything wrong and just make a terrible job of it all. Sometimes I really wish I could of finished it when I first went and I wouldn't have to do all this again (I'm going to have to write another personal statement, sob) but I knew at the time it wasn't right for me.

 I'm also planning some more blog posts, I have been very MIA on YouTube and dont want to force myself to make videos so I was thinking I should start slowly and focus on my blog. The next two blog posts I have planned won't be more drawing  but will actually be a "What I have read this Summer" and a "Summer 2017 Favourites". I'm not sure when they will be up but i'm working on them.

And finally last but not least I have started a Instagram account for my dogs, its called TwoLabsandaCollie and which you can get to by clicking this link HERE.

Different backgrounds

Messing around with backgrounds and bugs

Current projects

One of the things I enjoy to do after drawing is scanning in my work and messing around with them on Photoshop, I don't always love the stuff I come up with and its not always my best work but I find it really helpful to try and add or take stuff away from the original because you never know adding a new background might just be the thing it needed. Here are some pieces from my sketchbook that I coped and changed.

Earth and Moon

I am still playing around with my paper marbling stuff and I have actually been making more so I have different patterns to play around with.

My 24th Birthday in DisneyLand Paris: Day 2

My 24th Birthday in DisneyLand Paris: Day 1

On tuesday the 20th of June it was my 24th Birthday and I got to spent two days in DisneyLand Pairs with my boyfriend. The day we got to Paris it was so unbelievably hot but I still wore my amazing Disney dungarees I got on sale at Urban Outfitters about four years ago.

On the first day we went to see Buffalo Bills Wild West show, went on a few rides and saw the fireworks.

Digitalis purpurea

BEE

 Since making my paper marbled bugs I have been really into drawing bugs so here are some more. These are made with fine pen liners on drawing paper.

Paper Marbling

Okay. so I havent been on my blog in almost two months and that's actually terrible, I would say its because I'm super busy but that would be a lie. I'm lazy, just lazy.

Anyways I have actually been doing some art lately, I have been trying to get my portfolio together so I can hopefully get into the Uni I want for the end of next year, I know that seems like such a long way away but since I'm not very fast at creating I want to give myself as much time as possible.
Here are some of the Bugs I have been creating using paper marbling me and my boyfriend did at the weekend.