Recently..

I've been working a lot at the gallery in my extended role and neglected this space, so I decided I would do a post about the design aspects I do at For Arts Sake. I'll start with the a-boards. I design visuals for the a-boards, an a-board is basically a double sided poster in a typically wooden frame that stands outside the gallery (I did a post about the Mother's Day a-board which went down a treat) The most recent ones I've done are:

This was our Olympic a-board, offering discounts in the form of medals.

This a-board went up earlier in the week, was really pleased with this as I just wanted to create something simple and bold for our newest exhibition based on London.

(Better pictures of both a-boards here )

I also completely forgot I did this little hand-drawn sign for Father's Day. I've been trying to teach myself calligraphy which is a bit stop and start at the moment but I thought I'd give it a go on this. 

It turned out fairly alright although I was a bit gutted it was thrown away straight after Father's day!

Pencil outlines.

Typically you would use a proper calligraphy pen but I pulled it off fine with a big ol' juicy marker.

I just wanted to post this little video up too, it's one of my new roles at the Hendon workshop in which I use the mount cutter for framing jobs. I've become used to it now and you get a great sense of satisfaction and achievement when you understand how a new machine works. I made loads of mistakes to begin with and feared I almost broke it on a couple of occasions or that it was about to explode - it uses a compressor which you have to switch on/off to relieve pressure for it otherwise it will actually explode which wasn't a great thing to be told when I would be working by myself the following day.. 

So I always had an anxious wait/half of my foot out the door whenever I turned it on as it would go like 'ffffffffffffffffffffffffffiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii' for a couple minutes then 'POMF' when it was done. 

The 'POMF' was the worst part. 

Just as you're getting used to the 'fffffffffffffffffffffffffiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii' in the background the 'POMF' would interrupt like an annoying dangerous friend. Make you jump 3 feet in the air and then you open your eyes to reveal that you're still alive.. close call this time..

One of my other main roles is now bringing For Arts Sake into the 21st Century by fine tuning them into the world of online social networking. The blog I set up has made good progress so far and can be found here . Also, the Facebook and Twitter accounts have been developing at a steady pace so please check them out.

But yeah, I've had a few job offers recently which is great as this summer has been a very quiet period in terms of freelancing, just realized it was about this time last year I was assisting on that Samsung animation. So there'll be more exciting news to follow soon, smell ya later!

For Art's Sake - Christmas window display.

As I use this blog to record and show whatever creative mishaps I get up to, this is my latest edition to the list. Over the past month and a half, I've been working on the Christmas window for the gallery I work at, 'For Arts Sake'. I actually had a lot of fun doing this. it's been up for a while but I've been doing some crazy OT because of you festive customers.

I got to go down to the Hendon workshop (where the bespoke framing orders are done for us) to make the fireplace prop you see below so I got to cut wood, assemble wood together, paint wood and yeah wood. Was really good, felt like being in the workshops at school, love that smell of wood. The longer window was done by myself and my colleague Caitlin, with a 'winter wonderland theme' in mind I digitally drew and printed the backdrop, whilst Caitlin arranged the composition of the products. Enjoy the photos below and if you pass the shop when you're in Ealing make sure you pop in and go "THAT WINDOW IS SO GOOD MAN"

Cheers