cross sections!

I have always loved cross section pictures of well...anything goes! You can spend agies looking at those, investicating the picture. It's a similar thing than a dollhouse for excample but on paper. Today at work I came a cross these children's illustrations by Joelle Dreidremy (picture above) which reminded me of my passion for these kinds of drawings! As a kid I used to draw massive cross section pictures of all sorts of fantasy houses and castles. We got old architectual paper from my friends dad which was brilliant for this purpose as it was so large. This passion of mine made me want to become an architect. It is this very same passion that drives me now decades later to design my final year projec; a fantasy world with lots of detail.


This is just a part of an amazing and massive cross section drawing of Kowloon Walled City. This super crowded city used to really exist in Hong Kong! Unbelievable! Underneeth is a cross section made from legos...well maby it is a lego dollhouse then?

Supersize Airfix!

I am a big fan of Top Gear, not because I love cars or motorsports. I actually support cyckling and greener ways of living( so not Jeremy Clarkson stuff) but the program is fun as it seems like the presenters are just big kids with unlimited budget to play! My favourite presenter is defianetly James May and he has actually done a whole series about play and toys. In this episode he builds a massive Airfix scale model! My hero! I want his job!!!!

Airfix scale model

I visited the biggest toy store in London: Hamley's in attempt to look into board games. What made me much more excited was the whole floor of miniature models of cars, ships, trains, aeroplanes, war tanks... I decided they were relevant indeed when it comes to my final project. I never built one though so I decided it was a time for my scale model virginity to go away! I chose the classic of classics Airfix war aeroplane. Very vicely I went for simple and small starter pack. That was a good move as this mega detailed working method wasn't that easy to a nearly 30 year old woman...




I managed to brake the other landing gear thingy....aaargh!


So it is a slightly unbalanced plane...


And ready for take off!

Robert, Versailles and steam engines

Hooray! I have a work placement sorted!!!! I will be helping Robert, a brilliant guy who builds very detailed miniature replicas of real buildings. He calls them dollhouses... His company is called The Model Room . His small studio is near Kew gardens in the permises of Kew Bridge Steam Museum. At the moment Robert is working on a miniature of Hall of Mirrors in Versailles. I can't decide which one made me more excited; Robert's miniatures or the Steam Museum! Robert showed me around the museum and it is my absolute dream place!!!! Massive old fashioned machines everywhere! Excatly the kind of style I wanted to create on my final project. So I have a double reason to be happy about my work placement. First of all I will learn all sorts of model making skills from Robert and secondly I get lots and lots of first hand inspiration and research material from Steam Museum! My London summer is going to be ace!



This film shows one of the massive engines in the Steam Museum in action. This engine used to pump up water from Thames to Londoners. It is bloody impressive machine and I can't wait to see it in action!

the most outrageous game ever!

So I am going to make a board game. But it's not just any board game. My game is a game for oulandish king like people...one of a kind experience. If you have ever wathed the tv-program Heston's Feast where a Micheling star chef prepares dinners out from this world...well that's what I want to do for a board game! It is also going to be totally 3d. I will build my world as I wanted to but the function is that it will work as a game board and creatures in it are the "pieces". The experience; the game night will be a special occasion with especially invited people experiencing hopefully something extraordinary! This all sounds very grand I know, but what is the point of planning anything less than magnificent stuff? Oh yeah. I am excited!


This is the tv-chef Heston with a fantasy animal he created for one of his feasts!

real life 'flying' buildings

This temple seems to be fighting against the rules of gravity. It is the Hanging Temple in Shanxi in China. It is in China I know and fim maker Hayao Miyazaki is Japanese but still I can not help thinking that maybe there is something extraordinary in the culture in east that makes his imagination so colourful!

Flying buildings!

I got carried away with fantasy worlds, impossible buildings, magical places.... Animation film maker and true master Hayao Miyazaki has created many of them; breath taking worlds and in them amazing fairy tales. He masters them two, the places and stories. I want to be like him! Oh mi god indeed. This is a "music video" from Laputa the Casttle in the Sky. I am fascinated by it all; flying buildings and curious aeroplanes. So much detail and so much imagination!!!!!

passion for architecture

Earlier I already talked about my fascination for tree houses and other curious buildings. Weirdly just recently 2 different articles about architecture have catched my eye. Both from The Guardian newspaper...but anyway. First one introduces a very cutting edge idea of using architecture as part of the healing process for cancer patients. Maggie's Centre (picture above) Hypothesis is actually pretty simple: beautiful hospital=beautiful architecture instead of horrible clean and cold hospitall style, affects cancer patients psyche in positive way. I think it is not only cancer that could be healed by architecture. It affects everyone. Our surroundings are important and we should pay more attention to them! This is were the next article steps in. In yesterday's paper the philosopher Alain De Bottom( author of Architecture of Happiness) introduces a new project where they build affordable holiday homes for rent but intentionally they are all designed by top modern architects. Instead of renting a classic country gottage any average family could actually live a week or long weekend in a curious modern building. This project has aims to educate public to understand, like and experience modern architecture while drawing attention to the psychological aspect of our enviroment as well.
I love this kind of thinking. It makes perfect sense! I have always had a great fascination to buildings with caricature. It is most exciting when architecture brakes the boring normal pattern.

fashionable distraction

I got distracted. Slightly. Darryl sent us competition invitation for Tony&Guy hair products and I got excited. Basically they need fashion illustrations on their product range which will be sold in London Fashion week next year. Deadline is this monday and my nearly forgotten passion for fashion woke up. I am going to try. Maybe this is complete vaste of time as thre are probably lots of participants who actually study FASHION illustration....
So no new thoughts about next year. Except I found out that there is a puppet festival near St. Pauls this sunday. I want to go there defianetly!


This is a lovely fashion illustration by Laura Laine. I love it because it's playfull and not just cool and pretty like fashion often tends to be. Besides I love imaginary small people and creatures...links nicely to my fantasy world building.

my fantasy world

This is from the most memorable film of my chilhood "Resan till Melonia" ( Journey to the ShaMelonia) which is a Swedish cartoon based on Storm by Shakespeare. What I wanted to show is the amazing tree house world right on the beginnig of this clip. Ever since I saw this film for the firs time I have dreamed of that sort of place!

puppets perhaps?

I had a tutorial with Mary today. She was very helpful as usual. And she managed to calm me down from the overhelming stress of next year. She also seemed keen on my timid idea of building a "set" as my final project. Now I feel more confident about that sort of thing. And best thing was that she suggested that I could try to do my work experience in some sort of puppet place as that would be relevant to my final project! Logical and less terrifying indeed! So lets go back few steps and let me explain my set design idea a bit. Basically I just wanted to build a fairytalish world with curious characters and maybe take photographs of it or film. So the purpose would be book or animation. Animation could prove too laborous on a top of already laborous building process though... I was thinking a world underneeth the ground with lots of tunnels and nests or a big treehouse world. There is something about nests and unconventional ways of living that really really interest me! Set would also be bit like in the iconic Hitchcock film "Rear Window". I mean at ones you can have a peak into different homes or nests or worlds! I think I also like "spying" a bit.


After I got home I've been looking into different puppet busineses. Most of them seem to be theatres with quite traditional take on puppetry but I also found few more interesting places. One of them is a puppet theatre for grown ups called Faulty Optic. Their style is very dark, nearly horror film type.



And other rather curious company is one called Green Ginger. Now my plan is to find out about this business as much as possible and then start sending lots of emails to every interesting place and hope that someone wants me there for work replacement! I am excited indeed!!!!!

stuck

Now I really am a big failior. I had 2 days without any markins in here. 2 days! On saturday I got too drunk and on sunday I was too tired. Brilliant. But it's monday now and time to start all over again. BUT I do not seem to be making any progres with this subject. Oh yes I probably still want to try to do children's books but what then. I need to have bit more to my great plan to make it special. I'v been also thinking my narcistic side that loves to perform. Should I now just completely forget about it and consentrate on traditional means of illustration or should I embrace the variety of things I would love to do. I even did performance as my elective earlier this term and I loved loved loved every moment of it. But what the hell amIi supposed to do with performance? It is fun indeed but I can't see it paying my rent or relating anyhow to illustration. Obviously now when I am still a student I can combine it to my art practise but does it carry on to the real world? And shouldn't I be thinking of the real world now. Time after the degree. Shouln't my final project reflect strongly what I intend to do professionally? HEEEELP. I do not now what to do! I am bloody stuck in here!!!!!!

This picture is from "Dances of Vice" club in New York where everybody dresses up in
fairytalish manner. My friend just went there and that's how I ended up browsing the galleries on their website. I love clubs and parties like that and use to go even more often to such places. I could just spend all my life like in a fairytale. That would be perfect!

Well so much from writing every single day... I missed one day already! But I have an excuse. My good friend Hanu is visiting and yesterday we spent the whole day hunting a perfect dress for a photoshoot we are going to do together. Hannu is a a hairdresser and I am about to model for him. My moment of Being Kate Moss.... That reminded me of my passion for fashion. Earlier in here I have only discussed about children's books. Children's books are NOT something I have always wanted to do. When I was younger I was convinced that I was going to be the next big thing in fashion! Heh. Gradually I grew older and learned myself better. The thing about fashion I like is the possibilityto have fun with clothes and ones appearance. I don't want to take it too seriously. It is a fun hobby and luckily I have friends like Hannu who enable me to continue that play.

This is the dress. I feel like a robot in it...

I also just recieved an email from Macmillan basically saying that I wasn't succesfull in their competition. Naturally I am dissapointed but I am still proud of my self that I did the whole book. I know there are lots of things I could still do better and it just made me want this even more. I am defianetly going to take part next year again! Now I really now how big the job is and can start thinking it already now! I had a small inspiration as well. Something reminded me of my very old fascination of beavers especially their curious nests and dams. What if there would be this beaver who is very interested of architecture and wants to built rather modern and funky looking nests! Before I wanted to be a fashion designer, when I was much much younger, I wanted to become an architect. Later I forgot that dream and nowdays I hardly even include buildings in my drawings. I am still very interested in buildings so I should defianetly take on a drawing project about those! A good challenge indeed!
These kind of educational pictures made me mega interested in beavers and especially their living arrangements. The entrance is from the water underneeth!!!! So cool!

boys will be boys and girls will be...FUCK THIS!

I am ridiculously tired now. Not too sure why. So today's blogging will not be that ambitious. This morning I had tutorial regarding my essey. I am intending to write about gender stereotypes in children's books, subject that really interests me. I found few good articles about the matter and even one study that tackles this very matter. I spent a long moment reading the whole study trough and even though it was full of figures and "boring" academic data it was interesting but also devastating to read about. Sadly the obvious conclusion seem to be that females are under-represented as characters in children's books and especially as main characters. Also worryingly old fashioned sexist role models were still rather common. Phew. This all made me pretty angry even though I had predicted the outcome already beforehand. And I gues getting angry made me tired. To cheer me up I will attach a picture from one of my favourite children's book characters. They are Heinähattu and Vilttitossu(Hay Hat and Felt Slipper) the 2 adventurous sisters created by Finnish authors Sinikka and Tiina Nopola.There is light in the end of the tunnel anyway.

towards final year!

Time flies. It's end of the second year and I HAVE to decide what to do next year. First I decided to use this unused blog for this me thinking. I am pretty anal when it comes to what I want to publish on my main blog http://hatebutterflies.blogspot.com/ and it's been mainly my work in there. I can NOT change it now. I just can't. So all this thinking goes in here and it goes here every bloody day from now on until the time of my presentation. I have to set up rules for myself!
Lets start then. Before I panic I have to break this down: Have I learned something about myself and my art practice? What have I done so far? What was sucsesfull, what I enjoyed doing and most importantly what it is I want to be doing from now on!?!?!?!
I defianetly enjoyed the projects I was ambitious about, the ones I felt proud of. These were the costume and group project and animation from last year. On second year I loved the publish project and the super stressfull and laborous Macmillan competition. Weirdly I seem to be on my element when under a decent stress. Oh dear. Who would have thought!
Common theme on my stuff is nonseriousness. My approach to pretty much anything is humour. I want to make people smile. I am interested in making the everyday life more enjoyable not necessarily creating something grand to grand occasions. I am not going to do any fine arty farty stuff. I want to do "real" things in "real" world.
Macmillan made me really think about kids as an audience. My stuff is naturally quite kid like possibly because I never really grew up. I loved my childhood and I don't understand why so many of the people seem to loose the joy and playfulness from their lives when they grow older. Society has too many unwritten rules for adults on how they should or should not behave. I don't mean that I would not take responsibilities that life brings in, I just refuse to loose the child in me. Actually it is pretty cool to be a grown up. Everything is possible now, it's just all up to you. But kids as an audience bring different responsibilities. If I just produce playfull and possibly kidlike work for grown ups it is different than doing it for kids. There are limitations on what you can actually do. What sort of values and messages you are delivering. Earlier I thought that this very fact was the reason I did not want to do children's illustrations but now it seems more and more that this very same fact is turning me towards the subject. I feel strongly about especially what sort of role models there are for children. Models of women and men in kids culture are still often worryingly old fashioned. Female characters seem to be still...well only female while males have other qualities as well.
Kids as humans are like blank canvases and I do think that people producing products for children carry a huge responsibility. Sadly it seems that especially toy industry only follows money and doesn't take this responsibility. In 2010 toy shops are full of pink exaggerated femine fluff for girls and macho action for boys. Situation is worse than 20 years ago!!!! While the parents believe to represent the generation of equality between the sexes the growing generation is feeded with extreme sexist role models!
Thankfully children's literature seems to suffer less from this alarming trend. At least my home countries Finland and Great Britain both have refressing and exciting books for children published every year. Yet still I can not have gone unnoticed the fairy fluff expanding also to this area of children's culture. As you probably notised I FEEL STRONGLY about this and as I also enjoy drawing for kids and inventing stories, why not to try to go down that path. Yeah, why not.

Which one of these heroines for young girls do you prefer: