Friday, 29 June 2012

Exhibition

Once again I've been really busy... so I appologise for my lack of updates and posts.

I decided to blog today about my exhibition, which was last night. Remember me telling you that I coudn't put my work online because they were for my exam etc etc etc.... but I assume now the exhibition is over, I can.  So I am going to Include photographs of my art exhibition and my Graphic Design exhibition too. I am not going to include photography because I don't currently have the final images saved on my laptop, they are at school. (so when I get them, I'll upload them).

I'll talk you through the images a bit aswell.
(©Copyright to becky-iblog-becky images)
This is my unit 1 final work for Art. This is actually about six foot tall, to give you some kind of impression of the size. It is all pencil and it took about 5 months to do ( Not constantly of course). The theme was twisted and intertwined and I clearly decided to look at hair, and the idea of plaits twisting and intertwining. I started with the head and just a couple of plaits, then decided to keep adding them so it became more and more surreal. The cracks in the face were to add to the sense of surrealness, and the impression if it being a porcelein doll.


All Images (©Copyright to becky-iblog-becky images)


The next two images are from my unit two art work.
 The theme here was facial expressions, and I was strongly advised to step outside of my comfort zone for these pieces. I normally do quite tight, controlled work- so I did these in a very expressive and experimental style. They are supposed to work together as a set of two. The images
were of friends of mine, I photocopied their faces when they were portraying an emotion, and cropped sections of them.
To achieve the effects seen, I used tissue paper and dry brushed paint over it, which worked well. For the faces I used about twenty or more different shades of green, with a few blues, purples and yellow tones. And obviously on the blue face I used 20 or so different shades of blue, building little areas of colour with a small brush.  I know a lot of people will look at these and be very unimpressed, but for me, I am proud because they took a lot of effort :L haha... and to be honest I wasn't overly thrilled with the choice in themes! :L


Well I hope you enjoyed the little insight into my artistic world! I will probably do a similar post soon with my graphics work and then with photography... but I am so tired I can't write anymore...

Bye for now

All images are (©Copyright to becky-iblog-becky images)


Saturday, 9 June 2012

A short weekend in the Lake District

I’m 99% Sure that I’ve mentioned before that my brother goes to Lancaster University. That is why we always go up and visit him, and spend a few days in and around Cumbria and the lake district. It is so beautiful and every time we go we see something new because the weather has such an impact on the surroundings- nothing ever looks the same. There are fantastic hills and dales to see, but I love the lakes most. They are so calm and peaceful and so unlike anything we have where I live. It’s a real privilege to live in a country with such a vast variety in scenery.

So after I finished work on Sunday we began our 5 hour journey to Lancaster straight away. It’s always a bit of a dull journey, but it surprisingly didn’t seem to take too long. We got to Lancaster university in the evening, met my brother then spent the night in the hotel they have on campus. The next day we got up early and drove to Grasmere via lake Windermere and some other beautiful landscapes. The village was so pretty, filled with cute little tea rooms and gift shops. There was an old fashioned gingerbread bakery which smelt so good, and we got some gingerbread in there.  It’s a real tourist attracting area because William Wordsworth lived there. There is a memorial garden for him with a river and bridge running alongside.
(If you google Grasmere, one of the suggestions is the Gingerbread shop, to prove how good it was)







We grabbed a sandwich and headed out for an afternoon walk. Now in my mind, an afternoon walk is a gentle stroll round the little villages or parks, in my parent’s minds it is a hike up the biggest hill you could find, well one of the biggest anyway. My dad had his mind set on climbing Catbells.  Now you can Google Catbells in Cumbria and it probably won’t look that big but for inexperienced walkers like myself it was basically Everest and I wasn’t looking forward to it.  We briefly spoke to a passer-by at the bottom, who told us we’d be better off going up another hill as the view was more impressive from the top. She said it was a shorter walk, but I now know she was most probably lying as the highest point is apparently higher than Catbells. Well anyway, my mum and I were relieved that this new hill, seemed to be a shorter walk, so we started walking up the first path we saw. It looked as though we were heading the right way to the top of the hill, until we saw a load of hikers on the other side of the valley seemingly also heading to the peak. After bumping into some walkers we found out we were in fact on the wrong path, but we could still get to the top if, we walked a bit further. We walked for a good hour and a half (or should I say bad?) up a constant leg burning hill,  with the sun blazing and our feet slipping on the thousands of tiny rocks making up the pathway. I was far behind the rest of the family, and I’d love to say this was because I kept stopping to take photos, but even I don’t believe that.  We got almost to the top, and had near enough, vertical climb on the rocks to get to the highest point. We made it. The view was breath-taking. I don’t even think my photos can do it justice, there is no better feeling than getting to the top, all the climbing was done, it was completely silent and we could see for miles. The lakes were glistening in the sun and the clouds were casting shadows over the valleys. Amazing. If anyone is near to Rowling End you have to climb it, no question. You might want your Nordic poles though.  
The view!
 (Very steep)


I only included this because it made me laugh! I couldn't get the timer to work properly.

There was a pile of rocks made by people who made it to the highest point!


You might even befriend some sheep along the way, I clambered down to a really steep section of grass right at the top of the hill to get these sheep shots. I was on my hands and knees and couldn’t risk getting any closer because I was so near to the edge, but the sheep stood still for a while so I got a couple of shots.

The walk down seemed harder, it takes so much effort to keep a steady, slow pace as you balance your footing on the rocks and slippery grass. I slipped once and my legs were shaking the whole way down. I have never felt so glad to see the car!
We stopped at Keswick on the way home which was nice, but there wasn’t a lot to photograph there. We, then went back and had tea in a lovely three story restaurant in Windemere Village, The lighthouse. I recommend the calamari!
(Image from Google)














I know this blog post is really long already, but despite being a break of only two days, we seemed to do a lot, I haven’t even included everything….just the best bits.

The next day we got up early again and went to Carlisle. I loved the look of the University and photography course at Brampton road (the arts campus of the university of Cumbria, in Carlisle) on the website, so we went to visit to see if I really did like it. Can’t say I did.  There was nothing particularly wrong with it and it would probably appeal to a lot of people but just not me. I’m looking for a huge bustling campus with shops and cafes and loads of social places as well as a good course and so far I’ve found nothing of the sort. But I have plenty of time so I’m not worried…YET! J I did tweet to you all about Universities, and asked if you knew any good ones that did photography, so let me know if you find any!
We had a look round the main city of Carlisle, which is historic and as parts of Hadrian’s wall there I believe.  Th city was lovely, really busy and had loads of shops! There were people singing and there was a really lovely atmosphere.
Next up to  Ulswater,the viewing points and hills around there. It was all lovely, and we stopped a number of times to take photos. We then went to Morecombe beach before we had our dinner.  It was cold and bleak in Morecombe and wasn’t exactly busy but  there was a real atmosphere from the desserted beach.

Ulswater-


Sorry that this was such a long post, I tried to keep it as short as possible. I hoped you enjoyed reading and looking at the photos. I’d just like to add that it is under a week until my Race for life with my mum and it would be so great if you could sponsor us. My target is £100 and I have £50, if you could help in any way I’d be so grateful. I’d love to reach my target and raise £100 for cancer research. You can donate onlinehttps://www.raceforlifesponsorme.org/beckyweale49  and even the smallest amount would help such a lot. Thank you all! The website is secure and safe and the money goes straight to cancer research. Thank you.
Bye for now

Friday, 1 June 2012

I'm Back!

I'm back! It's been a while since I did a good blog post so this one will probably be a long one.
I now have twitter on my mobile so I can tweet anywhere and anytime, but sadly I still can't blog from my mobile, it doesn't seem to work. Its been hard, therefore, to keep you all updated. I've obviously had exams, when they were done my laptop died and went into repair, then I went to stay with my Grandparents and couldn't really blog there, now I'm back, working for the next few days and then I'm going to the lake district till wednesday.  So I think after wednesday I should be blogging more regularly again.

Anway! I just want to say a quick thank you for the support I've had, even when I haven't been blogging- the tweets, followers and emails to tell me that your all still reading is really great! So thanks.

So, I mentioned that I had been staying with my Grandparents.  They live in Kent, a little way away from me so it was a great oppurtunity to get out and about and visit places I hadn't been to before. One of those places was wingham wildlife park. One of my favourite photographics subjects are animals, so I was really keen to visit this park.
http://www.winghamwildlifepark.co.uk/
I think it was about £11 pounds for adults (15+) which I didn't think was too bad considering the amount of animals they had there- Penguins, Lions, Tigers and an enclosure you could walk through and meet (and get your feet licked by) the lemurs :D.
It was a really lovely, sunny day and I took loads of photos, particularly of the lemurs as we could get so close to them. I'll just put in some of the best shots...