I must admit I am terribly enthusiastic for the New Year… I feel like 2010 may be an epic one… well I do hope so. A year is a long time if it’s going to be a shit one. I hope it will be I mean only the other day I actually realised that its almost 10 years since the millennium! How crazy is that! 

2009 has been quite an eventful one though, I think it will most definitely be a year that I will remember. I mean a lot has happened this past year… (WHILST I AM WRITING THIS I REALISE THERE IS NO REAL DIRECTION OR POINT TO THIS BLOG… Please excuse my rambling…) 

So yeah, Haha I actually have no idea what to write about. Haha. I hate feeling like this, I do have lots to write about but equally nothing. When you have that much stuff to take about your mind becomes clouded and blurred almost like a crazy abstract impressionist painting… This is why I do usually write, not in here. But I do regularly keep a journal I have done now for the last year or two. I feel like its good to release a lot of pent up natter in some shape or form and also have something to look back at when you get older… even though I generally tape up journals as soon as there finished so that I can’t read them back… Haha… But yeah, maybe one day I’ll read them back…

So what’s next with me… well I should probably get some sleep at some point this evening. I haven’t been sleeping very well recently. I think when your in different surroundings all the time your brain won’t allow itself to settle. Hmmm… But yes, I am looking forward to New Years Eve festivities… which is weird because I’m also not. I contradict quite a lot don’t I. My brothers have come back home for the christmas period too which is nice, Brad is a dancer and Jordan is a young budding journalist and musician on the side. We don’t often get to see each other because we are all spread about like lurpack on a epic piece of toast. So when we get the chance to meet up it’s always nice. When we don’t row.

I have just deleted two massive paragraphs after realising that this is spiralling into the worlds most pointless and ridiculous blog. I probably should stop typing now and come back when I have something seriously amazingly interesting to write about. Until then lets enjoy the silence and the letter a. Tarrah. xx

Right where am I in current life. I’ve finished Art School, Woo! or not so Woo! I miss it desperately… but we do have to move on and this is the next stage of my life, so let it be. I’ve OFFICIALLY graduated! Yup, from now on you can call me alumna. Nice ring to it hasn’t it… Yeah the day arrived and passed quicker than expected, proud parents snapping away like David Bailey impressionists, the pulling and tugging of the tent they call the ‘gown’ and the nervously gulping of the free wine. But seriously, it was possibly one of the most emotional days of my life so far. I felt proud to be there with my fellow Art School friends all with smiles on our faces knowing that we did it… we survived Art School. Haha. At this point I feel that I should probably insert a picture of me in my gowning glory… However above is my very last picture in front of the building I spent my last three years of study. I felt it was a little more apt. The amount of alcohol consumed at the point this photograph was taken, I felt, was a definite celebration of our time at the Lincoln School of Art and Design.

Right whats next… Just before graduation I completed a short internship at Zip Design. 

The short time spent there was a great time, I met some really cracking people and learnt a hell of a lot. The whole studio had a lot to offer me as a still-learning-graduate and really can’t thank them enough. They are a really great studio, with a brilliant portfolio. 

Where to next… I’m currently up north at the moment, enjoying my time being on home turf. However, next week I’ll be heading back down to the big smoke to begin another short internship with Blast. I’m really looking forward to it, a new experience and new people. Should be fun.

Also whilst I’ve been here at home I’ve been scrapping out some of my old drawings, paintings, etchings, bits of everythings… remising about my old Fine Art college days. Haha. I found some right beauties. I want to try and spend a bit more time drawing, painting etc. I think it’s quite a therapeutic release from everyday life. But anyway, thought I’d put a few of the golden oldies up… 

Naked man… crying? I have no idea.

This woman has for some reason got a bizarrely skinny shaped arm… 

Billie Joe Armstrong! Haha… Supposedly anyway.

Another naked lady…

I guess that will do for now in this post. I feel I have provided sufficient chat and imagery to compensate for my previous lack of anything. 

Tarrah.

Haven’t blogged for what feels like ages! Mentalness!

Well I’ll try and update as best as I can, finally reached the end of Art School. This seems to have arrived quicker than expected, but its definitely true to say that my time at the Lincoln School of Art and Design has been the best three years of my life so far. I have met some great people over the years, many who will not be forgotten. The time upto the end was quite stressful and tiring, for me personally it was overwhelming. It was definitely difficult to get my head around the fact that it was ‘the end’, it made me realise that when Barrie was saying, ‘there is no time’ he wasn’t over exaggerating as we might have suspected!

Thought I’d put the little elfie lady on, because I drew her ages ago and never got round to using her. It was intially for a collaboration project between myself, Steve Fenn and Tobias Burkil, although after a couple of weeks debating about the whole thing we threw the towel in on the project. Which some might think as I little silly of us to do, but we felt it was the right thing. The project wasn’t really working for any of us, so there really wasn’t much point pretending to ourselves that it was working… 

Anyway! haha, The project was called ‘Start to Finish’, basically it began with a word association type thing, where we all put together this list of words which linked to one another… hence the ‘Start to Finish’ malarky. Then everyday we at random picked out a word, One of the words I got was elf… which lead to this illustration.  I began brainstorming elfs and shit, and then found myself writing about this kid that I remembered from school. He was in the year below me and everyone knew him, and quite simply just referred to him as ‘Elfie’, which was strange and ironic at the same time, aside from the fact that he did slightly resemble the stereotypical look of an elf, there was no other explanation for the nickname. I always remember him being quite strange, in an admiring, intriguing way though. He was an odd ball, but no one bothered him, I suspect if anyone had bothered him, there would have been plenty around to defend the little kid. I always remember that he was alarmingly wise for a youngster… I don’t actually know if that is possible, but he definitely had this air of wisdom around him, Some also referred to him as ‘Granddad’, at weekends and after school whilst the rest of the kids would play football or other such things, he’d garden. If he wasn’t gardening in his own garden, he’d be in someone elses garden, he was mad for it! He’d come to school offering gardening tips, asking if anyone wanted their gardens sorting, Because ‘he was the man for the job!’. After leaving high school I never heard, saw or even thought about elfie again, until last summer when I paid a visit to the local garden centre with Mother Maiden I saw him there. In his element! He looked so happy, I don’t honestly think I could have seen someone so settled in a place in all my life. And as daft as it sounds it made me feel happy! Seeing that grin on his face in the garden centre, made me chuckle inside! Elfie was doing what he loved with, with what he loved. Good times!

So yeah, the little Elfie lady is my ode to Elfie! haha.

Its a bit late to post this but as my blog is still very new, I’ve got a lot of catching up to do.

I wanted to post this because I’m quite proud of how quickly I knocked this together… As usual, I forgot about Valentines Day and was un-armed with gift or card… which meant I had to think on my feet and produce something quickly, otherwise there would have been a very disappointed gentleman in Lincoln!

Across from the Art School is a library, where sometimes they have a little sale where they sell old books, videos and dvds for a very small price… I always like to have a look, I’m not sure why… But I like to have a rummage and see what I can find, I tend to have a gander through the older books, I always think they have so much mystery about them, and the old typography is beautiful too. So yeah a couple of months back I bought myself 4 song books for about a pound… I don’t play any instruments and can’t read music… So yet again another weird purchase. But I just love them, there so beautiful. So yeah, to the point… They’ve been sitting by my desk for a while and the Valentines Day panic arrived so rushing to make something, I had a flick through the books and came across some really cute little lyrics… I gathered some together to write something a bit slushy (as you do) and pot luck as I reached the end I found a page with the words ‘Valentine’, Weird or what! I knew there was a reason I was drawn to those books!

Today was fun! Got to help out at the Lincoln School of Art and Design open day, Well its was more of a workshop I guess. A good chance for potential future students to get there hands dirty and find out lots about the Art School and the course. We set them a task to experiment and create some typefaces, we gave them a number of things such as;  Existing typefaces, glue, paint, scissors, compasses, scourers, bits of metal, toothbrushes, dead insects… (just kidding about the last one) But yeah, Just gave them a variation of things to play around with… It has to be said some interesting things where produced…

It was really nice to spread some of our third year wisdom too, Made me smile inside! It was nice to meet new, nice enthusiastic people interested in Design. I hope we helped with their University and course choices…

This blog malarky looks like a laugh though… think I might get the hang of this…