Bumblebee

 This week's assigment has been graphic design and updating websites. I started with designing a logo for Bumblebee Studios but the start itself wasn't easy. I opened Photoshop ready and then googled some logo designs for inspiration and after a little research I just started sketching. I wasn't happy at all with my first sketches but it was a start and actually it was even necessary to get the flow going on, just like in arts. And after awhile I really did get my flow and did bunch of sketches and wrote down some notes and pretty much in the end of the day I got over 10 sketches I was ready to show.

 Next step would be choosing a design and create it with Adobe Illustrator.  I might even try some different kind of color palette too once the vector base is ready. I might also draw a stereo design out of number 9 just for fun.

Preparing for Halloween

 This is probably the thing I have waited the most about this trip. I'm going to have my first very real Halloween and I've been daydreaming about it all the time. I'd like to buy a costume but I think it wouldnt be very wise so I gotta come up with some other kind of solution unless if they rent costumes in some shop here. But what I've been thinking is that maybe I try to find some skeleton t-shirt (with a rib cage on it), some cool wig and paint my face to look like a skull. Would be cool also if I find white crazy lenses here.
 And what would be Halloween without movies? Nothing at all!So I have been planning to go to the movies with friends I've made here to see the new Horns movie and then watch Nightmare before Christmas and Hoccus Poccus from Netflix. Me and my friend also bought tickets to Beauty and the Beast ballet for day after Halloween show which will be the first ballet for me so I'm super excited!

I have also started to paint something with Halloween theme because of this constant dreaming of the coming day and I finally came up with the sketch. I'm not sure though if I will finish it in time for Halloween, but I'll try.

Storm and Guy Fawkes

 This week it has been raining dogs and cats. One day after work there was a meeting that me and my workmate were going to attend. Outside we opened our umbrellas and at least mine was pretty much useless. Wind was blowing so hard that my umbrella turned upside down all the time so my hood kept my dryer than the umbrella. Soon after it was fortunately only drizzling.
 We popped inside the shop to buy something little to eat in the meeting and I saw something surprising. They were selling fireworks! And then I realized why - Guy Fawkes night is coming up. ''Remember, remember, the fifth of November'' (which I always seem to forget). There's gonna be some happening in town then and I'm definitely gonna go see fireworks and maybe buy the mask if I find it from somewhere.

"Remember, remember, the fifth of November!"

 Weather just got worse and worse. Lightings just kept on stricking after another. When we were walking back home in the evening, we saw this building that was surrounded by tape from front and there was a sign saying ''POLICE ACCIDENT''. We wondered what happened and a man, who was photographing the place, said that lighting had hit the roof so it destroyed part of the chimney and rocks flew all the way on the other side of the road. We looked down and saw those parts of the rocks right next to our feet. I was glad that we were inside in the warm when the storm was that bad. Next morning there was even news about that lightning struck. 

Meeting and the evening itself couldn't have been any better. :)

Sculpting

 When I started the internship I was told that I could take a part of some workshops while I'm here, since the building is full of artists so I could also try out something different. I thought about it for a while and I decided to try sculpting.


 I've been thinking about a lot lately to start practicing some sculpting because I'm really interested about doing models for movie and gaming industry so it would be fun to at least try it out (I actually would like to try everything!). And maybe one day I'm able to make some little sculptures of my favourite characters and even paint them with an airbrush! So I'm really happy that I got this opportunity.


 Downstairs when we were about to start working, I decided to try to sculpt a head using one of my paintings as a reference. I'm just glad that it's not any kind of a commission work and I don't have any deadline so I can forget about the pressure already in the beginning and just focus on learning. Christina was kind enough to help me to get the base where to start from and let me use her workplace and clay. She also let me watch some sculpting videos from Youtube so that I'd get some idea how to start building a face.
 We first took some newspaper and scrunched it into a ball shape since head needs to be hollow, otherwise it would explode in the oven. Then I added some ''layers'' on it and little my little tried to shape it into a skull, and I just was thankful for all the 3D lessons and some drawing tutorials that I have seen that I was able to imagine it 3-dimensionally in my mind. Maybe not perfectly, but at least it was a start. Then I saw from the video that they actually drew some guidelines on the clay to see where eyes, nose and mouth would go. Just like how you would do when you start drawing a face. Piece after piece it started to look like a face. I didn't finish it though, but I'll continue it later. :)

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Hairdresser

First thing in the morning on my to-do list was buying a new bag. I found this shoe store called Deichmann (so maybe German store?) that also sold bags. Downstairs for the ladies there were backbags that were full of koala bear prints or some other prints and I was looking for a bit more plain bag. So I asked the salesperson if they had any other bags and she adviced me to go upstairs where they had men's section. And the first bag that I saw was perfect! And the price made it even more perfect since it was only £7,99! My laptop also fitted inside just perfectly. (It was meant to be)

Notice my beautiful Darth Vader keyring.

 So since I was already there, spending money, I decided finally to go find the magazine store. I needed my ImagineFX! We had been separated from each other for too long... Anyways, I did find the store, and they didn't have only ImagineFX, but also THE DIGITAL ARTIST'S SURVIVAL GUIDE VOLUME 2! And ImagineFX Sketchbook. So basically everything that you can expect to find in the end of the rainbow. I just might spend some day inside drawing.

And some other finds on my trip:

My future speaker.

I might have laughed at this way too much. English speakers: You might wanna translate ''peruna'' from Finnish to English.

 In the evening my moment finally came: my appointment to hairdresser. And I gotta admit that I was feeling a bit nervous about the outcome since my hairdresser vocabulary isn't the strongest. Not even in Finnish. So basically how I got prepared for this was loading lots of reference pics of the hair from different angles and save it on my phone so I don't need connection looking for them. Oh yeah, and it was a student from College of Plymouth who did my hair. But I must say that she did amazing job. She dyed my hair the exact color I asked and when it was time for cutting, she was so focused and watched my references all the time and it turned out so good! So thank you for making my hair awesome! And the price wasn't bad either, with student discount it was only £16 o.o And I must say that much better haircut I have had than for paying more for the same job. So my ''pamper myself'' day ended with smiles.

Also, I took few more pictures for my new painting project:

Farewell party

 For a few days I've been thinking about buying a new bag since I take pretty much everyday my laptop to work with me and the bag was quite heavy to carry, especially on just one shoulder (I had a shoulder bag) And in the morning it all of the sudden broke! I suppose it really was too heavy - and the ultimate sign from gods to get a new bag. Luckily I was able to fix it so I was still able to carry it till I'd find a new one.

 So another day at FW but not like any others have been. There was a reporter doing a story about FW and PCQarts. He also interviewed a little all of us interns. And gosh, when he asked me how to spell my name, like yeah, I can spell my first name just like that but the last name, why does it have to be so long?! But I think I did it pretty well and in a record time! Especially because I keep messing up with E with I (thanks thinking in Finnish), but I think I didn't mess that up this time! (I at least hope that I didn't!) And after the interview we took a group picture outside that I only cropped a little afterwards in Photoshop. (You can find it from Flameworks official Facebook page)
Then we had meetings pretty much rest of the day, and even though I don't always understand EVERYTHING that they talk about, there's this weird feeling when attending meetings. I kinda feel so grown up... (not that I wouldn't already be but... you know...) I promised to go to a few events to take pictures. I'm actually really waiting for that because I haven't done much documentary kind of photography and my boss said that I can go as close to people to take pictures as I want since they are all already used to it with him. I got to check if that is really true!
When all the meetings were done we ordered chinese, probably all their food. That list was long, really long. And I gotta say I was pretty surprised that food was still warm because I really expected it to be colder than normally since they had to make all that food before bringing it in. I also liked the fact that they actually use fresh mushrooms and it's sooooooo good. While we were eating we talked and passed around the keyboard so that everyone who wants to gets a chance to choose a song from Youtube. Ofc I put on some Finnish songs, starting from Kuningasidea and Apulanta, even some Disney songs in Finnish and so on. Oh but why this special fun? Justyna, an intern who worked in PCQarts for 3 months, she had her last week here so she this was a farewell party for her. I hope she had a real fun time in Plymouth :)

Cleaning day

 There was a cleaning day at FW and I pretty much thanked all the gods for not having to clean. I probably would have just aimlessly walked in circles and wondered where everything goes. But because I had a laptop I was able to move my working place elsewhere while they were tidying up the places in the office, and I was placed to the artist's studio next to the office. And I kinda liked it. It had a bigger open space, light coming out of the window and all those paints in shelf and some palette with the names of the colors on the whiteboard. I couldn't stop my imagination at that point anymore but started to daydream about my own studio one day. It would be amazing to have all the reference books just next to my laptop and having this BIG drawing tablet, and maybe a view to a garden...

 After the work I met up with my classmate who's also doing the internship here in Plymouth. We agreed to meet in Drake Circus which is a shopping mall in centre. We pretty much walked outside immediately after meeting but just before the doors there was some sushi place's tasting and well, since I had never ever before tasted sushi and now I had a chance to taste one without buying a bunch not knowing if im gonna end up throwing it all in the trash, ofc I tasted one. And gosh, it IS good! I definitely am gonna go there some day to eat more that heavenly food.

 In Primark shopping wasn't as easy as one could have expected - they didn't have EU sizes in all clothes. And at least I didn't see any kind of guide on walls for sizes either so it was a bit of a guessing game. I found myself this beautiful Game of Thrones tshirt, which fortunately did fit perfectly eventhough I didnt even try it on. I also bought cute donut earphones (yes, they are cute!) and something little for my best friend.To my disappointment I wasn't able to find tshirt with separate Hogwarts houses, but thanks to my new friend here I found out that there's one awesome online store that sells them AND chocolate frogs plus every flavour beans. Now I only need to find out if they also deliver to Finland.

 In the evening was the highlight, we were finally gonna order from Domino's Pizza and literally, I've been waiting that pretty much from the moment I heard that I'm gonna go on this trip. Thanks to Internet I got this king idea that we should write something in special wishes and see if they actually do it because apparently somewhere in the world they do some of the silly wishes. So we wasted one of the genie wishes for getting a little drawing of a panda. Well, we didn't get the panda, but we got our pizzas and they really were good and as a dessert we had Ben&Jerry's <3 Definitely a beautiful day :)

Inspiration

This time that I have spent here in Plymouth, been at work with awesome people, got friends and talked about arts and passions, been to art show, walked around the city etc. I get all the time so much ideas of what could I draw.
Sadly I just don't usually remember to keep my sketchpad nor my camera with me, but last night I got the idea: I might make few sketches here of pic that I take with my phone (since with that I don't get good quality pics) and try out some new styles! I thought it might be a fun little project to do sketches or speed paintings of the city the way I see it or the way I imagine it.
Yesterday when I was walking back home from grocery store which was a bit further away, I saw this cute store that I remember seeing on Google Maps before when I was checking some points of interests before coming here, and I gotta say that it was so much cuter in real life! So I took a pic of it and started sketching it out immediately when I got back home.
May I represent my first project: Mr. Scarecrow's Attic!

Surroundings

Most of the houses here are terraced houses and people here have painted their own parts of the house with different colors. One morning when I was on my way to work I saw one of them with peculiar choice of colors - pastels (it looked super cute). And even though the yards are small they have really beautiful gardens to make the best out of it. But what really stayed in my mind is that most of the houses (and the yards with them) are on different level from the sidewalk. I have never before seen anything like that.

Last weekend I went to walk around city centre and tried pretzels in a shopping mall. And I must say it was a lot better than what I expected. After my little treat I walked to the harbour where is this beautiful lighthouse. It's atonishing. I've been also planning to go back there to draw. There's just something about that place.
In harbour there was apparently some kind of an event since it was full of people and food stalls.
Here you can see few pics that I took on my walking trip:

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PCQ Arts

I got a work placement from PCQ Arts which is an community arts movement based here in Plymouth.
The first day they told me my assignment: edit a Kickstarter video for Flameworks creative arts who needs funding to create an education room. Editing was supposed to happen in Adobe Premiere which I had never used before. One of the employees went showed me how to get started with the programme and went trough the video footage with me and helped me collect some shots from the footages of the interview to get started. He also showed me a bit how to update PCQ Arts website.
The website had been created with wix.com of which I had never heard of before either. It is a free website builder and it's very easy to use. I've been planning to try it myself to create a portfolio with it and test its limits. I'm really curious about what one can really do with it or would it still be better to use Adobe Dreamweaver after all.