Hello!

Over here! No...here! Over HERE!

Check out my new website and blog at www.lauranuttall.co.uk

This blog is now closed for business, but I'd love you to join me at the new party. You can sign up using Google Friend Connect here.

See you soon!

Laura

Follow me.....

....down the rabbit hole to my new and improved website!

Thank you so much for following me here at Blogger.com, I have appreciated all your support and wonderful comments. You can find all my old posts and exciting new stuff (I promise) over at my new site www.lauranuttall.co.uk

To go straight to my blog and the latest post click here!

You can sign up to follow using the Google Friend Contact widget on the right-hand side of the page. Please do come with me!

This site will stay but all new posts will be on my new site. I look forward to seeing you there.

Laura xxx

Susan!

So, as part of the mini 4 Week Challenge for Zero2illo (which will probably end up taking me 4 months) here is Susan, completed in gouache and indian ink. We've been asked to blog our progress, so here she is from conception to completion!

Preliminary sketch:

Note the Scary Monsters album cover, oh how I LOVE this cover art. A big inspiration, let alone Bowie himself.


Photoshop sketch to establish colourway:

This is probably the first time I've been this organised with preliminary stuff. But it really helped and saved time and frustration in the long run. If only my art teacher could see me now...along with my penchant for outlining everything which he hated, I was always marked down for my lack of prep. Finally sir, I've learnt the error of my ways.

Taking brush to paper:


Adding colour and detail:


And finally, the outline:

I've had to take this picture at a slight angle so as to avoid glare from the ink outline. Hopefully I'll get a lovely clean scan soon...once I find an A3 scanner.

Working on a new pic....

....here's a little taster, a Photoshop sketch to decide the colour palette. I like her so far! Have been watching a lot of 80's films for inspiration, it would seem I can watch Pretty In Pink, The Breakfast Club and Ferris Bueller an infinite number of times without getting bored of them.

FUSE screening at The ICA

Photo taken during shooting in the green screen studio, check out the Fuse Youtube channel for a short video explaining how the film was made.

Last night Fuse, the short film I blogged about earlier this year, was screened at The ICA (Institute of Contemporary Art) in London. Written, directed and edited by my extremely talented cousin Ben Barfoot, it was a wonderful night with everyone who worked on the film, plus a legion of loyal friends, coming together to watch it on the big screen.....at last!

Click here to check out the Fuse channel on Youtube, where you can see the trailer. Exciting times!

Digital doodles....

This image, called 'Smile, Baby', started life as a collage but I thought I'd tinker with it to see how it looked with really flat areas of colour.

Here's the original - the scan shows up the black outline as fainter than it actually is. I really like the fact it's slightly off-register as I was going for a screen-print effect.


And here's the digital version. I love the vibrancy if the colours and the crispness of this one, but perhaps it's lost a little 'soul' along the way...?

What do you think?

Playing with Photoshop!

So I've finally made my foray into the world of digital images! I've played around with Photoshop before but this is the first time I'm dedicating time to learning it properly.

Here's an idea I came up with after reading a book on Art Nouveau, I was inspired by the use of bones and organic forms.

The initial sketch:



And here it is after a little tinkering on Photoshop:



It's still pretty sketchy, but even after just working on one image I'm much more confident with the software. And I really love the creepiness of this image! What is it...???!