This is not my beautiful life?

Title stolen from a Talking Head song because I couldn't think of a better one.

My week hasn't exactly been boring, I dont think I can honestly I can say nothing happened, its just that no really good blogging material happened. This week in art school was illustration and we had a two day life drawing project and then an introduction into illustration day all of which was really fun, I'm not exactly interested in taking illustration but I really wanted to get better at my life drawing and be a bit more free and exciting with my life drawings. The second day was the best, we were exploring tone and I could play about with paint and chalk and crayons and make loads of mess on the page, I may have gone a bit over board with the water colour crayons as the paper started to disintegrate a little. It's a shame I wont be going back to illustration as I really like the tutor and it does seem like fun, on the last day we had to illustrate words that describe ourselves and mine got pretty abstract pretty quick. 

Not a lot is happening outside of school, I've been pretty broke so I haven't been doing a lot of fun stuff, I spend a lot of time drinking water and sharing food when going out and I've tried to restrict the urge to go shopping, although I broke when I saw a pair of mom-ish jeans in the charity shop for £1.99. I 'm going to a vintage fair tomorrow so I'm going to have a splurge and then leave it for a while. I want to find a cool but practical back pack, a pair of dungarees maybe and some nice tops to wear to school to stop me from constantly wearing band shirts with my jeans.

On the plus side I have got back into sewing, at the moment I'm making a little bralet-top-type-thing which looks worst in the picture than irl, I'm not sure how its going to look on but I'm kinda proud of it, even if I still haven't thought about how I'm going to fasten it or make the straps. 

Hopefully there will be something more interesting next time, I have the vauge plan of a diy in the future but for the time being I'm afraid I'm a little boring

xxx

Rosie

Living a disposable life

After nearly a month I finally got all of the photos from the disposable camera and figured out how to use my scanner so I could upload them. I struggled a bit at first, I thought I could just take a picture on my phone or camera but with the light and the shadow it just wasn't working so I plucked up the courage and figured out the loud scary scanner. It's actually not as difficult as I thought and it means when I get photos from my film camera developed I can store them digitally and I can play about with collageing a bit more. I;m starting a photography course on the weekend so I'll be excited to delve more into that, we've been asked to bring examples of good and bad images so I'm going to look through some magazine cuttings later.

Jake Bugg or Jackie Boy as we started calling him for no explained reason

Drowners stealing my heart

The Neighbourhood 

The Kooks, not the most flattering picture of Luke Pritchard, we  had to sit outside because it was so packed.

Random band I can't remember but it looks like
everyone's having a good time

Pretty sunset that was better irl

I can't remember who was on for this
maybe The Hives

The lovely Amy and Megan who were so nice to us and tried out some crowd surfing outside our tent. This was just before us trying, and failing to do a running piggy back thing which had me falling on the floor laughing.

Our Welsh Flag + Reading Bra

The hilarious Kathrine Ryan who was at the Alternative stage, she brought the Beyonce wiggle to Reading and we were forever greatfull

During the break before Imagine Dragons we had a little sit down on the floor to catch our breath, the people behind us in the picture were surprisingly nice about us having a little rest on their legs.

Me bringing the festival swag in a flower crown, wristbands and drinking a mix of vodka and who knows what from a flask.

Salute it Mills

What happened to Niamh's face? This was on the last day in our savior of a tent that began to leak and we sat feeling miserable for ourselves before we could leave for the bus home.

Crowd shot from Macklemore who I know I'm not supposed to like and I don't exactly listen to his music but god he puts on a great show, no one could ever say he dosent put the effort in.

Seeing these pictures again makes me really miss Reading and I'm having a dose of latent post-festival blues and listening to bands I miss.

xxx

Rosie

Busy bee is not good at photoshop

So I've been like super busy recently and I don't have a lot of stuff to blog about at the moment as four out of seven days a week consists of catching trains to college, doing art stuff, catching trains back to college in the horrible afternoon heat that goes away as soon as I get home, finishing work that I didn't complete in class, skyping pals in uni and going to bed. It's pretty exhausting and today I've just about caught up on the stuff I should have finished last week, I really wasn't expecting it to be as full on as it is and I cant wait for Friday to have some time to catch up with myself. 

Yesterday was the end of our graphics/photoshop week, in art foundation you make rounds of all of the art disciplines they offer, and I thought I'd put up the final piece we had to produce in an hour, never going to show the drawings we had to do, mine looked awful.

The brief was for an abstract self portrait that shows an aspect of your personality, I chose 'daydreamer' and 'lack of concentration' because both of those are very apt, It took me a while to get started because I was never really sure what I was doing so I just flung a couple of images together and tried to add in some definition afterwards, It took forever and true to the title I got bored quite quickly, I think it was just the boiling hot class room and the tanned colour pallet, I like the grainy quality and it reminds me a little of the scene in The Virgin Suicides when the boys read from Celia's Diary, but I feel a bit of that is me trying to justify making a not great piece of work, 

Screen caps from Sofia Coppola's The Virgin Suicides,

xxx

Rosie

Walks with an old freind

On Thursday me and my friend who I don't ever see enough met up and went for a walk down to the beach for a catch up, because we're both at art school and have the same love for sewing, vintage clothing and pintrest we had a lot to talk about. It was nice to have a wander among the greys of the clouds and the sea, those are the kind of autumn days I can deal with, not endless rain and cold. 

After chatting we both decided we needed to step up our art/sewing game, I haven't really sewn anything since before the summer which is a shame so I really need to start again. Hopefully there will be more sewing projects in the future, fingers crossed.

xxx

Rosie

Creature of the night - OOTN

Because all of my friends are going off in different directions, five of them are all going off to uni's in England, two off to a different art school to me, one back to school to finish sixth form, another off to a college in Cardiff and the last off to uni in Cardiff. Because we're all separated during the day we're desperately trying to meet up an hang out. Last night we met up at a coffee shop/cool hipster bar and ate way too much tapas and fries and chatted and laughed. It was nice to meet up and talk and it didn't feel awkward and weird, like we were forcing the meet up, there were the same jokes and memories and it makes me feel confident that we wont drift apart over the year. 

We went for a very indie teen movie moment walk through town to get home and we were joking about the moon, which lead to us shouting about the moon with American valley girl accents because what else would a group of 18 year olds do?

I consider this an OOTN because I had to rush home and change from the outfit I wore to uni because it was way too hot and it was like six a clock anyway. 

Top - Imagine Dragons top from Reading

Circle Skirt - Topshop

Shirt - My Granddad's

Please ignore my thigh

It gets kinda emotional when your friends leave, especially when you're the one who's staying at home and they're going off to have fun. We had to say goodbye to a friend going up to London to study and they've barely left and I cant wait for half term for them to come back and see me. 

xxx

Rosie

Autumn style inspo

I'm not a huge fan of the fall time, its the in-between season in which it gets dark way to quickly and the mornings are freezing but by 3 o clock the sun will bake you alive, which makes it impossible to dress accordingly. Unlike the rest of the internet I have no desire to drink pumpkin lattes or trudge through mountains of wet fallen leaves, I live in Wales and autumn only brings two months of rain soaked socks. 

While I'm not an autumn fan I do embrace the change in wardrobe, after the summer madness it feels like a good time to refine my fashion game. While I'm by no means a minimalist I think this time of year I can tone it down slightly, jeans have finally made their way back into my wardrobe, and my heart, and I've fallen for striped Breton tops once again. I'm feeling a bit more of a 60's/70's beatnik style, with a bit of 90's sitcom winter wear thrown in. Of course I'm still riding that skinny jean clad grunge train and since leaving school I've had a small crush on flippy school-girl/cheerleader/tennis skirts because have you seen an American Apparel ad. I'm trying to incorporate these looks together in a relaxed aesthetic without looking like I walked got attacked in a vintage store. 

I want to have a sense of effortless while knowing totally that 'effortless' is anything but, I'm reading Alexa Chung's book and she has a great quote that I'm just gonna leave here because I can't think of a good way to introduce the photos and I just really love the quote. 

“Looking effortless takes a lot of effort. When I get new Converse I dedicate some time at home to shoving mud on them so they don’t look squeaky clean.”

xxx

Rosie

A very excusable absence

While its only been a week since my last post, and I did start Art school last Wednesday, I was planning to write a couple of short post to keep myself occupied until the weekend (oh yeah, did I mention? I get Friday's off!) but then disaster struck....

The charger of my laptop finally died after many make shift operations I performed, the many rolls of sellotape I used to try and protect the worryingly exposed wires. So I was without internet use for the week, apart from my phone but I couldn't really use anything other than instagram and snapchat. Usually posts like this have a beautiful message that the break from technology and internet land gave them a new perspective on life but I just got annoyed at not being able to print out my homework. 

I was going to make a long post about the art foundation course but its not been too exciting yet, we've had many a slightly dull drawing practice because as my tutors keep reminding me, 'some people haven't come from a drawing background and haven't experience any proper drawing' but it's a kinda boring having to draw hands all day. I'm excited for next week though, we start the little taster weeks of all the different areas on the course because we'll actually be starting something big and exciting. We've been told that we're doing something sculptural-ish with paper tomorrow which sounds super cool. I just need to remember to bring my scissors.

I will be putting up more posts in the near future, I do have lots of pictures on my camera that need uploading and I want to do some film-type posts soon.

Sorry for the flakiness but I couldn't really help it this time.

xxx

Rosie

P.S I should really  have a tag for all the times I have to make apologies for being a total flake.

An abundance of analouge

For a slight change in programming I thought I'd show the sudden boom in numbers of my camera collection, previously I only had my DSLR (which I take most of the photos for here on) and a teeny little digital camera I use on holiday when I don't want to worry about my big camera. This changed a few months ago when I began looking for an old second hand camera I could start shooting film with, about the same time I started to get interested in the works of Petra Collins and other artists who use film. Incidentally I watched a really interesting documentary about Vivian Maler, a nanny in New York who took hundreds and thousands of reels of film which were recently found in a locker. 

I posted ages back about a simple point and shoot camera that I had bought at the car boot sale, unfortunately the internal battery died just after I bought three rolls of film. I found a couple more at the charity shop but none of those worked so I kind of gave up, every so often I'd punish myself with a look on etsy at all the beautiful vintage cameras they have but that ended my quest.

And, like most things in life, once I stopped looking for a camera I found one almost instantly. 

This camera was found in the carboot sale from a guy who worked in Russia and was selling lots of cameras and binoculars, which promoted the question 'Are you a spy?' from my mum. It's cool because its a non battery powered camera so I only need to put some film in and then I'm ready to go. I still haven't done any shooting with it as I didnt really understand how to use it until a few days ago but I'll go into further detail a little later.

My parents bought this Polaroid camera for me while I was at Reading from the car boot, I don't have huge hope for this camera, a quick google told me that the film needed isn't produced anymore although there is a chance a different kind would fit, I also had a look inside and found that someone had left the batteries inside and they had leaked, which left a chalky gunk inside, I'm gonna take it into the camera shop and see if they can do anything with it. If it does work it will be a little miracle, I've wanted a Polaroid camera forever, since I was a little kid in fact, I liked the idea of having an instant copy of the image in your hand.

I forgot that I did post about this camera until after I'd uploaded it, it's a beauty, a digital film camera that my grandpa gave to me, claiming that 'my christmas present for the next few years was sorted'. I really want to shoot some fashion images with this one, once I figure out how to use it. 

Last but by no means least, the newest addition to my little collection, a gorgeous little Pentax that a neighbor kindly gave to me, he didn't want to sell it because he didnt think he'd get a lot of money for it and thought it would have a better home with me. It was so kind and I cant wait to get properly shooting with it, I'm pretty sure he left the reel of film inside so I've been shooting random stuff, seeing how to work the camera and how to produce the best results until the film is finished. 

He was also kind enough to give me a camera bag and some more lenses to play around with, one that has a super zoom and a wide lense that is good for landscapes. It's kind of fun to have so much to play around with, I really hope the photo's I've taken were a good quality, or even an alright quality. The nicest thing he did was give me a mini lesson in how to use them, it was fantastic to understand the aperture and the speed I need to think about when taking photos. 

Once I get shooting I'll try and post some of the photos up here, hopefully my plan to scan in the pictures will work otherwise I can easily just take photos with my DSLR which works well but feels a little meta.

xxxx

Rosie

Playlist + OOTD

So as summer draws to a close (college starts in three days!) and everyone gets bogged down in work and school I thought now would be a good time for a last minute playlist to keep your spirits up.  I chose songs that are kinda up beat and will hopeful put you in a good enough mood that school wont be as big a deal because 'hey someone on the internet made a playlist so who gives a damn right?'

*please dont use this excuse as to why you didnt do your homework or something, it probs wont end well*

1. The Kooks - Junk Of The Heart 

2. Drowners - Luv. Hold Me Down

3. The Answering Machine - Oh, Christina

4. Vance Joy - Riptide

5.The Vaccines - Teenage Icon

As well I thought I'd include a little OOTD featuring the new purchases I bought the other day when my friends were buying stuff for uni.

Top - Topshop (I think?)

Jeans - H&M

Bag - Primark

Shoes (not shown) - New Look

Butt - My own

xxx

Rosie