Pomi

Been getting frustrated with this so have stopped for the day. But this is what it looks like now…

It’s a bit rough, plus the photo is poor quality (excuses!), but I’m just playing. Painted in a background first, then worked on it with a combination of pencil, charcoal and pencil crayon. This isn’t quality enough to be a finished spread but I can again use it as a guide to something more final and polished.

A productive and thought-provoking day. More to come.

nay.

Today I am sketching from my dioramas. This is a new way of working for me that I discovered recently. I have started to recycle my work.. First I photocopied a lot of images from newpapers and stuff I had lying about in my room, as well as some photos I had taken and sketches and that. Then I cut them all up and played about with compositions and collage. This then morphed into dioramas which are like 3D collages - I made all the photocopies little card stands, played with more compositions and scenes and took photos of them. Tidied them up on photoshop, then drew from the compositions I’d made as a guide to a final spread.. You can see two steps of the process in the photos above. The sketch is roughly A4 size. I’ve enlarged it to about 4 times the original size and am intending to work back into it…possibly with acrylic. I am excited about the concept of continually rebuilding and working into an image…I think this could be good for me and my crappy attention span…

…watch this space!

nay.

Greetings and salutations! I return to the blog. I confess I have been neglecting it slightly. Anyway, on with it!

In Other News today!

1. Book Of The Moment is The Lies Of Locke Lamora. This is a debut, I repeat debut novel of the fantasy/con artist/dastardly evil plot genre by a guy called Scott Lynch, and it was (excuse my french) fucking awesome! I’m so eloquent aren’t I? It’s gripping exciting funny mysterious violent scary and above all else completely hooked me from the first page in! I suggest you look it up, it won’t disappoint. Again if you are morally encompased and do not approve of foul language then don’t bother. You’ll be missing out on a cracking story though!

2. I’m starting to wonder why all the books I’m buying recently have an excess of swearing in them. Hide them on the top shelf!

3. I watched Time Bandits last night and fell in love with all the little dwarf people!! Unhealthy obsession perhaps.

4. Lots of boring blah about uni going OK but a bit stressful and I can’t be bothered to go into it.  

5. We have a shiny new house to move in to for our last university year. The main pro I can see about it is there’s a dodgy looking greasy spoon cafe just around the corner which I can imagine purchasing bacon cobs and tea in unmatching mugs from! Simple pleasures in life. I wouldn’t have it any other way!

6. Pump Festival! I am officially going! Well, I have saved up enough money for my ticket so that’ll do for now heh… I’m looking forward to wearing a ridiculous assortement of clothes that I’d usually get beaten up for wearing in normal circumstances. The oppression of society eh! Can’t even wear a pair of brightly coloured patchwork trousers without being assaulted! Or being called a paedophile clown or something! Lol sorry.

Right then, I’d better skidaddle, as my Dad would say. Work to do! People to see! Distasteful jokes to crack! 

Sayonara

BOOK of the moment is Pilo Family Circus by Will Elliot, deeply depraved and hilarious in more ways than one, a tale of a boy forced to join a very un-ordinary circus to become a very un-ordinary clown. When our hero Jamie dons his white greasepaint he falls victim to JJ, his evil clown alter ego, who gets Jamie into trouble at every oppurtunity. Jamie has to work out a way of escaping the circus but his clown boss, Gonko, the other circus minions and especially JJ himself have different ideas..

Mwahaha… If this sounds like your cup of tea please support the cause and buy a copy. It’s wicked storytelling. Only, if you don’t go for large amounts of profanity and violence then this may not be the book for you!! Personally I thought it was brilliant mate. A piece of sheer joy.

I am feeling unnaturally optimistic that I will be able to finish all my university work on time for my deadlines next week. To put it mildly, I have an awful lot to do. I’m trying to stay calm. I like doing my illustration at the moment but I seem to have other annoying things conflicting in which I am having trouble ignoring. Nothing is fitting together, things are constantly obstructing each other and not lying how they should. So many things! I wish everyone would just fuck off. I wish my course wasn’t so great one second and ultimately shocking the next. So shocking it’s ridiculous. Yes I know lets have all the deadlines in the world within 2 days of each other.

Bolllllocks to it!

Presently my liver is punishing me for treating it so badly over the weekend. I feel like it’s emitting some evil poison into my bloodstream, just to get me back for drowning it in alcohol incessently. Bastard. I hereby promise to treat my liver with respect and dignity from now on.

Cough.

Anyhow, today I am meant to be getting on with the HUGE amount of work my university has laid onto me for the festive period, how thoughtful of them. Unfortunately I feel like shit and can’t concentrate on anything. Maybe I’ll just sit in a darkened room and rock gently back and forth for a while. Sounds like a plan..

One more thing. I was thinking about the Golden Compass. In fact cinema in general. I think it’s sad that our world has become so obsessed with political correctness, keeping everybody happy, oh and God forbid if you actually take a risk and tell it how it is. Expect death threats, letter bombs, maybe you’ll even be kicked out the country. I’m not entirely against big blockbusters, but I absolutely can’t stand it how films are being ‘dumbed down’, skirting around issues and generally being REALLY SHIT. Too much money put into effects, not enough put into the script, director. Even the name of Golden Compass pisses me off. Oh my God, we’ve got to call this film after an object because people will relate easier to something material. If it’s too cryptic, people might not know what it’s about. This means less money. Oh shit! Let’s call it after that compass thingy in the book. Yeah. And it’s really shiny. Probably gold. People like shiny things don’t they? Also, we’re going to disregard the fundamental theme of the book and turn it into a pants no brainer kids film because we’re not good enough film makers to tackle the theme with taste and respect. Hell, we blew the budget on that massive CGI bear. Oh and lets get Daniel Craig in it. Yeah! He was Bond. That’ll get the crowds in. He’s only in it for about 10 minutes, but lets make his head the biggest on the poster. Next, lets search the phone book for a child actress with a suitably quirky Hollywood name. Dakota Richards? Like that Dakota Fanning girl everyone loves. But wait…we need something more! What’s your favourite colour little girl? Blue, you say? Man, this film’s gonna be AWESOME!

End of uber-cynical raving.

In other news today

Photography is my new favourite thing to do. I’ve been pottering around in the darkroom for 8 weeks and it’s been jolly good fun. I like the smell.. I also got to make a pinhole camera out of a beer can, which apart from being an extreme novelty item produced some pretty good results. The one disadvantage of this camera is I look like an alchy, walking around Birmingham clutching a beer can. But I guess that’s a pretty frequent sight lol…..

RADIOHEAD have brought out a new album for your listening pleasure. You can even download it for free. When you go to buy the download, the price box is empty and there is a red question mark next to it, once clicked upon reads “It’s up to you.” This presents with a problem. Should you give a donation for their effort? Or is the temptation of free music too strong?

Needless to say, I couldn’t bear paying nothing for it. I mean, I know they’re offering, but I just can’t do it! Radiohead are too great! However I am a poor student, so I gave them a fiver for their effort. Apparently over two thirds of people who downloaded it paid nothing. Scallys. www.radiohead.com

Also. I heard TWO Radiohead tracks on Radio 1 last night. TWO! I doubt they play more than two a year. That’s it for 2007.

Sayonara

One last thing!! UFC 80……….Oh yes you’d better believe it because on January 19th 2008 I am so going to be in Newcastle in some massive arena surrounded by a male/female ratio of like 2000:1, watching some motherfucking fighting. Hell yes!

STILL NO INTERNET HERE. TO SAY THE LEAST, VERY ANNOYING AND BRINGS NEVER-BEFORE-CONSIDERED THOUGHTS TO MIND SUCH AS WHAT THE HELL DO I OWN A PC FOR IF I CAN’T ACCESS THE INTERNET ETC ETC. I CAN’T PLAY ANY GAMES BECAUSE A) I ONLY HAVE 3 AND I’VE PLAYED THEM TO DEATH AND B) I THINK MY PC WOULD HAVE A MAJOR CORONARY EPISODE IF I TRIED TO INSTALL A NEW-ISH GAME ON IT. HOWEVER I DO HAVE MINESWEEPER AND iTUNES (YES SACRILEGE I KNOW, SO SHOOT ME!) SO IT’S NOT ALL LOST. AH, SUCH WOES WE HAVE IN THIS MODERN WORLD! PEOPLE ARE DYING OF THIRST, I HAVE NO INTERNET, WHAT IS GOING ON REALLY. MADNESS.

I joke I joke. I was on the bus today and I saw a man lying on the road he’d come off his motorbike. He had really curly hair. I wonder if he’s ok?

Right mainly I’m going to mope around my (very cold) house and be bored. If sudden spiritual enlightenment comes forth into my mind then I’ll let you know. For now though, nothing extraordinary to report.

WAIT! One more thing. I’d just like to take this opportunity to express my love for darkrooms and photography in general. Me, having actual fun at uni? Yeep you’d better believe it. Sayonara

It’s week 6 out of 8 in my illustration project and it’s all coming to a horrible grinding halt. I have exhausted my ideas! I need direction..

It’s such a beautiful day. Earlier I felt horrible, like run down or something. So I went and sat outside on the fountain wall in the car park (hehe) with the culinary GENIUS that was my breakfast. It was so nice outside I stayed out there for about an hour and a half and it was the most relaxing thing I’ve done probably in the last month. I could see people giving me funny looks and that, but why? I’m the one who’s having a nice time, so fuck you!

The other day I did a real fun thing. My friend needed a model for her fashion project and she asked me to do it! I wasn’t really sure at first but then I decided twould be much fun. I got to dress up nice and Ev did my make up really preeeetty. For once I actually looked like a girl it was radical. And the photos came out well.. I’m quite proud of myself. I’m not really into looking perfect all the time so it was nice to prove that I actually could sometimes ha ha….. As if you ever doubted me!!

Better get on with work. Gonna post some pics of my project up once I work out how to do it… Sayonara.

Hello. And welcome to another blog, courtesy of the literally concise vocabularic wit of Pomi, Inc.

Is vocabularic even a word?

Anyway. Today’s hot topics are comics. Lots of. Me and Ev went on a comic spree, the best kind of spree of course, and I managed to justify the purchase of £16.50’s worth of pure comic joy. That’s quite a lot of money for me. I’m a thrifty person, you know. It was all good material though, with Sin City: That Yellow Bastard closely followed by some random Batman issues that looked interesting and indeed one of them had wicked artwork. Awesome, like.

After that, my passion for eBay re-ignited and I bought some wicked films, including The Machinist and American Pyscho. Christian Bale innit. He’s a dude. Also got Kiss Kiss Bang Bang for a singular pound! Neat.

In other news, I hate the person who wrote the theory brief for my course. They need their head setting on fire or something similarly unnessecary, because they gave us practical work to do in a theory module. Like, DUH…………………

What really does my shed in is the fact that I’ve wrote the essay part really ok, but overall I’m going to recieve a shitty mark because I can’t be arsed with the practical part. 

BOOM!

In your next installment I will bother to write something about Sin City and how wicked it is. And about how Frank Miller is obviously obsessed with naked women and guns. 

Sayonara  x

There’s been some good shit cracking off recently. I read Dune, The Children Of Men and Clay, they were all very excellent. I thought Children of Men was going to be real difficult to read or too full of politics, but I had obviously misjudged it and it was a good mix of suspense, action and moral stuff. And a bit of politics, which is ok.

Clay is a kid’s book by one of my favourite authors David Almond (he wrote Skellig and Kits Wilderness). His style of writing is kinda magical, I like it. Read Heaven Eyes! It doesn’t make sense but it’s great. Then there was Dune, that started off a bit odd but in the end it was a wicked concept, especially how the thingys oh yeah the Fremen rode the sandworms, that was funky. Kinda old fashioned style of writing but nevertheless a good tale.

I’m trying to work my way through some of the so called ‘classic’ novels, not Jane Austen or owt but like I want to read 1984, and I’ve just started reading One Day In The Life Of Ivan Denisovich, apparently it was very famous when it was written. So yes. And of course I have purchased a copy of Lady Friday by Garth Nix, continuing the series! I wish I knew someone who knows what I’m on about. No one reads much I don’t think.

Last week I did not see one but two great films at the ol’ multiplex, The Lives of Others and Sunshine. Danny Boyle, what a fucking wicked director. He’s well good. Watch Sunshine and you’ll understand, the last hmmm 20 minutes or so are the fuckin biznitch mate.

And thus we move onto the last topic of the day, artistic revelations as experienced by myself on Friday morning last week. To cut a long story short, I looked at my final piece from my last project and was ultimately shocked to discover that it was not the sort of work I would ever want to do EVER. AGAIN. It was shit. It wasn’t me one tiny little bit. I couldn’t see my style in it. Where did my style go? Did I ever have one? It’s amazing but I had completely abandoned the style in which I work and I hadn’t even noticed. For nearly a year. What the hell. I realised that I was a fine artist at heart. With illustrative tendencies! That may not make any sense, let me sum it up: It’s all good! I’m gonna revisit all my paints and charcoals and chalks and do it my style baby, no more shitty little illustrations. It’s expression and colour from now on.

Well with all of that (sort of) cleared up, I think I shall sign off. Oh one more thing. Hi Tim, I know you’ll at least read this. I’ve still got your shoes safe here. I think I’m gonna go make a banner to advertise my blog on myspace. Sayonara.