Wednesday 7 January 2015

Braces and Pretty Faces

Hello!

Doing rather well, aren't I? Clearly this is some sort of new-year-buzz that I'm still riding, similar to that gym membership you pay for in January and forget to cancel until April.

First update, and I don't think I've written about this before, but I've had lingual braces for almost 3 years now. Well, until yesterday. I got the lingual braces behind my top teeth about a year into University, and then bottom braces (the normal kind) on my bottom teeth about 6 months afterwards.

It's been a long, slow process, but finally I'm beginning to reach the end game, which sadly involves some fairly scary jaw surgery that should be happening mid-February. So yesterday, I had to have my linguals removed, and replaced with some rather uncomfortable, chunky ceramic ones on the front of my top teeth. All I can say is I am not a fan and it's making me fairly miserable, and when I'm miserable I like to paint! (Though the painkillers are probably helping as well.)

So tonight I decided to finish a painting I started a few months ago of a blogger/fashion vlogger that I follow called Helen Anderson. I'm not really a 'girly' girl in that I don't spend hours watching clothes hauls/make-up tutorials, but I like her as she's a little bit more interesting than your average beauty blogger, and her videos make me laugh. She's also in a very good band which you can check out here!

She is also obviously very pretty, and so I thought I'd have a go at a face study, which resulted in this:


Though it's fairly sketchy, I really enjoyed painting it! I was experimenting with different textures for the skin and I quite like how it came out. Could have spent more time on the hair maybe, and it's not 100% accurate but I'm no portrait artist yet haha, always on the lookout to improve.

Anyhoo, time for bed. And then work, and then bed and then work and then bed and then.... Haha. Hopefully I'll be able to do some more painting soon :)

Annie
x

Monday 5 January 2015

Art Dump: 2014

Well, Hello!

So this is a great big pile of some of the things I created last year, and failed to blog about. So what better way to present them than dumping them all at once into one post so no one has to do any complicated clicking. As you can see I went from doodling to actually trying to create finished digital paintings and more detailed work. My head is perpetually full of beautiful fantasy women and Game of Thrones/Lord of the Rings references, which I think this proves.

In order of Oldest to Newest, from top to bottom:


Still have a long way to go in terms of my art, but it's not been a bad year at all!
I do think I'm improving slowly, but having been so busy it's not been as easy to practice. I can see a definite improvement, but comment and let me know if you do too!

Back to the grind now,

Speak soon!

Annie
x

Sunday 4 January 2015

Oops!

Long time no see. Haha. Aha. ha...

I HAVE REASONS. Genuinely. Hear me out!

So the last you heard from me, I was diving head-first into the wild world of VFX, and learning from my wonderful tutors at Escape Studios, who I cannot thank enough. I would also like to give an honorary mention to Mr. Liam WOTO (not his real surname, rumour has it), who is a very talented artist and all-round-nice-guy, for recommending Escape to me. Go check him out, he draws good.

Realising that this was almost exactly a year ago makes my head spin a little. I need to sit down, hang on. Deep breaths.

Right, so for those that are interested, I completed my 18-week-course at Escape, (and yes, it was very intensive indeed!) and then, two weeks afterwards, somehow managed to land myself a job as a Freelance Junior in Soho with a very up-and-coming company in VFX, working primarily in ads and music videos.

Since then, I have been lucky enough to have worked on a bunch of fantastic projects, including a music video for Alt-J, a Freeview ad involving some charming, if not slightly creepy, singing toys, and some upcoming promos/ads that I am very much enjoying being a part of. I'll plug myself horribly below so you can check these out if you fancy! I'm getting to do all sorts of work from modelling & texturing to sculpting, lighting, rendering, you name it! We won an award about a month ago for Best VFX on Alt-J's Hunger of the Pine at the UK MVAs, which is absolutely mental.

So it's been a pretty darn busy year. I've also met loads of great, nerdy and extremely talented people, and made some amazing friends and colleagues along the way. And hence, this blog has been very neglected, which is why I am giving it a make-over!

Other things that have happened include going to Latitude & Boomtown Festivals over the summer, working with a friend on a Youtube video, going the farthest north I've gone so far (not that far, in all honesty, not even Scotland), Christmas, New Year and overall not having a huge amount of time to blog ;)

But hey, let's start the new year optimistically.

I'll be updating later this week with some recent digital paintings/sketches and doodles I've been doing, but for now, I will leave you with lots of super fun links to click on. G'wan.

Alt J - 'Hunger of the Pine', Directed by Nabil.


Freeview - 'The Left-Behinds'


King - 'Release the Magic' spots for Candy Crush Soda, Pet Rescue, Bubble Witch and Farm Heroes.


Aaand the Youtube Video I helped out on, which now has a crazy crazy amount of views, directed and mostly created by the very talented Mr. Mat Hill, who definitely deserves all the praise he can get. But those rocks tho.



More soon, I promise, but for now this is getting far too long and everyone needs a KitKat. I hope you are all having a brilliant start to the year, but now I desperately have to go to bed in preparation for work in the morning. More arty things coming your way soon!

Best,

Annie
x