UPDATE: ILLUSTRATION!

Hello all,

I'm sure it hasn't escaped your notice that I've been pretty inactive on Kitt The Britt over the last little while (boo hoo), but that's because I've been working on a rather exciting new project (yay yay)!

Approaching the end of my four year Bachelor degree, I'm turning my thoughts towards the future in the hope of answering the big "what next?" question. I have always known I want to do something very creative and I've reached the point of deciding that I want to try my hand at a career in illustration. I'm currently trying to establish an online presence as an illustrator, and the other week launched a blog solely for my illustrations and artwork. So, at the risk of sounding a bit cheeky, I invite you to go and check it out - if only to see my excuse for not posting on here for a while.

I'd love to hear what you think of my work at eleanorreeshowell.blogspot.com :)

Love,
Kitt xx

BETTER THINGS ARE COMING

I've been rather down-in-the-dumps lately. Perhaps I should blame it on the colder than usual summer, or the fact that I miss the mental stimulation University brings, or even my recent lack of social life, but my mood seems to perpetually hover somewhere in the region of BLAH. Apathy has apparently become my middle name and the amount of time I'm spending in my pyjamas will attest to that. I'm learning in my life, however, that the little things have the biggest consequences. Trying to focus on the small purposeful good things I can do in my day really does make a difference to my overall mood, and so today I created a little happiness to-do list for myself:

1 // Clean my room (again)
2 // Enjoy a sweet, sweet peach and a crispy apple
3 // Paint my finger nails an eye-popping shade of lilac
4 // Write an uplifting quote on my chalkboard
5 // Browse Boden's beautiful clothes (if ever a brand represented my personal style, this is it)
6 // Play Duffy on the iPod dock and put those 60's vibes on loudspeaker
7 // Text a friend to arrange a future hangout
8 // Write more of my children's story
9 // Have a slice of Mum's homemade Victoria Sponge cake
10 // Take advantage of today's surprisingly hot weather and go for a swim

Small, simple things, and none of them particularly life-changing, but what I'm beginning to understand is that a big life change is made out of little moments.

So yes, while I am still in my pyjamas, I'm trusting that better things are coming.

Kitty xx

ART + HOME

News from this week: I was promoted (it may or may not have been a self promotion) to Interior Designer and Curator in the family home. The house has been a work of progress for a while now and  in recent weeks it has been the living room's turn for attention. I've been nurturing a vision for this room and persuaded my parents to let me unleash my creative prowess: hello there, mint paint (same as in my bedroom), salon hanging and art prints. I spent a morning framing and arranging and hanging and then stepped back to get a feel for the result. I love salon-style hanging as it reminds me of my beloved art galleries and museums, and I composed it all in a way that would allow us to add more frames later.

As for the prints themselves - the majority were created by moi. Most are the result of a print-making class I took at uni a year or so ago and I've been waiting for an opportunity to do something with them. I've also been playing around with watercolours in the last two weeks, and the Auden quote is a product of one of those sessions.

Throw in several old glass bottles, some antique gold-leaf lettering, and a pair of Emma Bridgewater Royal birth commemorative mugs (Prince George turns one this week) and I think we've got ourselves a rather fetching ensemble.

Kitty xx

P.S. The imbalance of text to image in this post is due to my current state of extreme tiredness - I went to see the Katy Perry Prismatic tour in Toronto on Friday night and I am still recovering. I'm compensating for my inability to string a decent sentence together by inserting a flurry of pretty pictures. You can thank me later.

THE AUTHENTIC STARVING ARTIST

Even though I'm a Fine Arts student I've only ever taken on a couple of commissions. There are a few reasons for this: I struggle with the creative issue of equating my art with monetary value; I find it very difficult to be told what and how to create (some people don't have the ability to execute their own vision and expect artists to be their hands); it's hard to motivate myself to do something that isn't perhaps my taste in subject matter; the pressure to please can be quite intense... All quite 'authentic starving artist' thoughts I know.

My parents, au contraire, are not of the 'authentic starving artist' mindset and encourage me to take on commissions when I'm asked. This particular commission has been in the works for months due to uni, travel etc and the other day I finally finished everything apart from adding my signature (I can't do that until the paint dries). This is an oil portrait of two young children and the first time I've done a painting of this sort. I was also working from one 4x6 photograph of the children so I felt like I was guessing so much of the tone/lighting etc. When I do work on a commission, I try to see it as a chance to learn and perfect techniques - I've only actually been painting for three years so I still feel like such a novice!

The style of this painting is perhaps a little more traditional than my personal work but such is the nature of commissions. One of my current artist loves is Kai Samuels-Davis and although his paint-handling is so much choppier than mine, his work has intensified my recent obsession with flat grey spaces.

I'm a real perfectionist and sometimes I have to tell myself to walk away. There are always bits that no matter what I do I can't get right, bits that I end up having to live with. I've worked into the girl's face, for example, over and over and over again but it's still not quite right. The boy's face, on the other hand took only two sittings to do and I'm happy with it! Art can be fickle.

Well, I apologize if all of the above is a bit of an incoherent ramble for you non-artist readers, but I feel that this blog wouldn't really represent me without the occasional prattle about art.

The 'authentic starving artist', Kitty xx

CARROUSEL

Every time I hear the word 'carousel', the words to my favourite Joni Mitchell song come floating to the surface of my mind...

And the seasons, they go round and round
And the painted ponies go up and down.
We're captive on the carousel of time.
We can't return, we can only look
Behind from where we came
And go round and round and round
In the circle game.

Quoting these lyrics makes this post suddenly seem rather deep and philosophical, but there's been good reason for the song to be going 'round and round and round' in my head for the last week or so. Every day as a Production Assistant at The Works International Art Festival in Edmonton, Alberta, I've been passing Carrousel, the creation of a Montreal-based trio of artists known as BGL. Made of shopping trolleys and crowd barriers, Carrousel is a fully-functioning carousel available for the public to ride for free. After days of watching it being set up and then having to walk around it, curiosity finally got the better of me and I found myself lining up with a gaggle of excited children to try Carrousel for myself.

The ride on Carrousel, however simple the concept might seem, was rather magical in its own way. Carrousel touches upon one of the things I engage with most as both an art lover and as an artist: taking the everyday or the mundane and transforming it into something beautiful.

I think that there really is loveliness to be found in everything, even in a shopping trolley spinning round in circles.

Kitty x

Two of the artists from the BGL trio admire their work

THE PRINTING STUDIO: PANIC OR PARTY?

Copper plate prints

Prints by my Professor, taracooper.com 

Plate inked up...

... and the finished product! 

One failure too many for these unhappy printers - Zana, Alex and Sara.

Never have I experienced such a fine line between laughter and tears, happiness and despair, as I have in the Printing Studio.

In the Printing Studio dreams are made and dreams are ruined. That room holds the power to make your life worthwhile or to destroy your sense of meaning.

'A bit dramatic', you might think. Perhaps. But spend just one hour in that room as a student printer and you will be saying 'Amen' to the truth of these words. 

This morning I arrived at the deserted campus at 10, ready to spend the majority of my day making a dent in my final printmaking assignment. This class mixes traditional and digital printmaking techniques: you make a drawing, scan it, edit it in photoshop, then print it out on the printing plate before inking up. Not as easy as it would seem. One hour later, and I was still sat at the computer with an rebellious digital printer randomly printing the whole tray of blank paper and giving me the odd sheet with the words, "error: image offensive". I was trying to print a plate for a lithograph self-portrait - hardly x-rated material! Needless to say, there was a whole lotta mutual offence between the printer and I. 

Luckily for me, three lovely ladies soon came to my rescue. A combination of Alex, Sara and Zana, lots of failed attempts, a couple of abusive rants at the printer and another hour or two, and my plate was decent and I got to work, eventually leaving the studio with some beautiful prints. 

Therein lies the trouble with printmaking: I was on the verge of giving up, ready to throw myself onto the floor and commence a full-on temper tantrum, and then voila, everything went rosy and in that last little while I had a lot of success. A few weeks ago I literally spent 10 hours in the printing room working non-stop on copper plates without producing a single decent print, yet other days I'm just churning out masterpiece after masterpiece.

Some would tell me that perseverance makes the end result more valuable. Some would tell me there's a life lesson to be learnt from this process. I would tell them that I might just have ripped up every bad print and be a sobbing mess in the corner long before seeing that silver lining. 

Stiflingly hot Printing Studio of Doom, to you I say NOT TODAY. You may still be waiting to thwart my hopes of happiness when I return next week, but today, victory was mine. 

Until we meet again,

Kitty x

The permanent state of my hands this semester.

A VERY LAST MINUTE EXHIBIT

The Art + The Artist.

"What? My work is in an exhibition?!"

The lovely Zana and her work.

Untitled, Zana Zozomora, Lithograph.

Nothing quite like seeing your name printed on the wall...

... I rest my case.

ELEANOR SEES THE BROWN BEAVER

ELEANOR FALLS DOWN THE IMMIGRANT HOLE

ELEANOR GETS A SURPRISE, EH!

This week, out of the blue, I had a piece exhibited in a fellow University, about half an hour away from mine. I say 'out of the blue', because it came about like this: me walking casually through a hall in the Art building last Thursday, my friend Zana seeing me from the other end of said hall and running excitedly towards me saying "Theywanttoexhibitourwork!" and then in the next breath "Weneedtogofindourprofessor!", and me not particularly understanding but catching the words "exhibit" and "our" so saying yesyesyes on the spot. Come Monday, Zana and I are merrily driving over to the other University to see our work displayed in the Art Exchange Exhibition. I found out eventually that the work of mine was a Lithograph print I had done for my Mixed Multiples class, and that the student curator had seen it on the wall and wanted it. If only getting my work into an exhibition was always that easy! No applications, no artist's statements, no overhanging risks of rejection - just leave it forgotten on a wall for a month and I'm all set!

We arrived just before the exhibit closed, so the place was pretty much abandoned, but we got to see our work displayed and that's the most important thing, non? It did feel a bit 'spot-the-tumbleweed-blowing-through-the-barren-wasteland-that-is-the-exhibit', though.

My work (see the pictures above) is a Lithograph print, entitled Eleanor's Adventures in Canadaland, a parody of Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. It is a tongue-in-cheek narrative about my experiences as an British citizen living in Canada, and for those non-Canadians reading who don't get the references, I apologize, but it's a 'Canadian Thing'. The print displayed in this exhibit actually isn't my favourite one - I have another version which is full-colour Lithograph and Watercolours that I feel has much more of a visual impact, but what can you do? Curator's choice is final.

Eerie emptiness of the gallery aside (I mean, even all the food was gone, and I happily confess that the promise of a refreshment table is always my Number 2 reason for going to gallery openings), seeing my work displayed outside of my own campus was a rather nice way to spend a Monday evening, even if it was a little impromptu.

Art on a whim? Yes please.

Kitty x

End of the Show

Let's close on a giant spoon, because it's a giant spoon!