Eelpie Island // Art House Open day

The Sunday just passed, I headed down the London to visit Eelpie Island, an island in the Thames at Twickenham to check out the Art House Open studios. 

The Island is home to around 26 artists studios situated a working boatyard and is usually only open for about 2/4 days of the year, a chance to have a look around the studios and chat to the artists themselves.  I honestly had heard nothing about it before Gemma send us (and by us I mean myself, Gemma, Sam & Jo)  a link, either way I was intrigued.  

So Sunday rolled around and met the others in London and had an explore. I'm not quite sure what I was expecting from the day but it turned out to be a nice way to spend the day. Wondering around the studios, admiring the work, (which I must say I do slightly regret not buying a beautiful mug I found), taking some snaps and then heading in to the town to a street market, having a explore around the river whilst Sam and Jo played giant chess and finding some rather lovely looking secret gardens. 

I'll leave a link to the website about the open studios incase you want to find out more and I'll leave you with a few snaps from the day. 

I've decided to do a couple of collage style clusters of photographs as I'm not completely happy with the quality of the images, (I used a different film camera then usual and hadn't used it in 5+ years) but it seemed a shame not the shame them. 

The article Gem sent us Here & about the Island Here

Grand Views

Every now and again I get a little burst of motivation and itch to get collaging and about a few weeks ago I got that itch, pulled out all my supplies and made a complete and utter mess of my floor. Totally worth it though. 

I've been really into using black and white foregrounds, mostly found from books about the past, old photographs and creating weird and over exaggerated backgrounds such as skies and mountains; using images from books about the natural world and things we don't usually see. 

Its sort of like creating a alternate world, views that could only imagine and making them a little more real; probably my favourite type of collages to do.

Delicate Things

When you a vase of dying flowers that still look too pretty to throw away, what are you to do? 

I thought it would be quite a cool idea to scan the flowers/petals and just mess around with it, no purpose and no real thought put into it. Who says something weird and dying still can't make something beautiful. 

These actually turned out a lot better than I originally thought and I'm really into doing more of it and more with it. 

As well as just scanning the petals I tried adding some type and things I'd found or had to work them together. Again this was just another experiment I wanted to try out and thought why not. This one ended up being what looks like a poster for something or a cover etc. Although some of it is a bit smudged and fuzzy, I still think it makes a good image. 

A type of Dear Diary; A long ramble about my feelings towards my work, life and needing a kick up the butt. (This is probably more for me than it is anyone else).

[Heads up to anyone who does in fact read this, there will probably be grammatical/spelling mistakes and I may even repeat myself a few times, its a family trait. This will mainly be a lot of rambling that may not always make sense, I am not a great writer and I am simply trying to type out my thoughts for anymore that cares but mainly for myself. For a lack of a better words; a sort of kick up the butt type situation, to get it all out of my head to clear some space. So here goes...] 

It's been 8 months since I last made a post which is beyond ridiculous. This past year I haven't felt that inspired and when I have, I've lost all confidence and motivation to do anything proper with it and share it on this blog. A blog I made because I wanted an outlet to share the good, the bad and the ugly of my work; be it for a project or purpose, or just me messing around with things etc but this year has been difficult and this blog has been neglected.

When I started this blog I think I took it a lot less seriously, I'd just did/made things because I found it fun, wanted to try new things out and just because wanted to. It was a good place to share photographs I'd taken on days out, experimenting etc and although I know not many people even look at or read my blog, (I could just be talking to myself now) I feel like I put a lot of pressure on myself to have these amazing posts. After finishing university I almost felt like I should be making/doing these amazing things and that just wasn't completely the case. I began to constant worry that nothing I have is actually good enough and who in their right mind was going to even look at it. I've always been very critical of my own work and I think that in some cases that can be a brilliant thing, but I think over the past year, since leaving uni it has gotten slightly worse and my confidence has been completely knocked. Other than sharing a few photos on instagram of my work every now and again, I don't feel confident enough in them to post them anywhere or do anything with them; which completely sucks! I then start to feel like "whats the point of making anything if your not going to show anyone or do anything with it?' and nothing gets done. I'm all for designing for you, because you want to but I guess sometimes you need a little reassurance that your doing something right... Is that bad? I think after so many years of always having people, tutors etc judging and looking at work after every project, its kind of weird afterwards to adjust.

I think a lot of I know a lot of this pressure I put on myself and comes from the fact that in an ideal world I would leave university knowing exactly what field I wanted to work in and be on my way to doing that but for me and I'm sure many others, that wasn't the case. I took a year to live at home, earn some money and try and figure it out.... but that didn't exactly happen either and instead I think I might be even more clueless than before. Honestly that feels really good to "say" out loud aha! 
I like to call it that weird limbo after uni life.

I constantly see and know other people doing what they love, doing it well and being happy. I want to state that I am completely and utterly happy and proud of them all. They inspire me to do things, they work hard, go for what they want and it makes me deeply honoured to know people like that but sometimes, and I think I am only human for thinking this, I can't help but feel a bit rubbish because life has not panned out that way for me, that they seem so sure of what they want and have this wonderful confidence about them and I don't. To put it simply, I envy them. Envy is a terrible thing to have and a bitch to kick, but we can't all be perfect right?!

Obviously this is something I have to get over, an insecurity that I need to face and do something about, which I guess is the purpose of all this godforsaken rambling, the first step of doing something about if you will.. I think I need to get back to the basics of what I started this blog for; to keep a constant or semi constant stream of work, images, things that inspire me etc and try not to critic myself too much about it. After all, I'm not in education anymore; I don't have to worry about tutors or not having a purpose for something that I do...
Whether people actually look at this blog or not, I need to just get back into doing it, having fun with it, stop being ridiculous, share the silly collages and photos I take, write about things I've seen that inspire me or what I've been up to and build upon something I can proud and confident of and want to show off.
Blogging is something I used to really love doing and I get so inspire when I read/look at other peoples, Its such a great outlet and I want those good vibes back.

[Side Note; I am in no way promising myself that I'm going to be uploading things everyday but I'm definitely going to make a conscious effort to be better, hopefully by trying to pressure myself about this less, I will actually want to do it and do it well!]