I will be surprised if anyone is still reading this after not updating it for... oooh, five and a half months, but putting that aside...

I've been at art school for just over two months now, it's amazing, seriously, anyone who's interested in art should do a gap year and take a foundation course, even if (like me) you're not actually planning to do art as a degree (I mean I'm doing science at Cambridge, how much of a polar opposite can you get?)

Besides, if you live in the UK and are 19 or under, the government pays for you tuition fees anyway Saved myself a grand on that...

But yeah, I'm haveing a great time, I'm going to put up some more artwork, though it'll be very different from the type of work I've put up beforehand seeing as it's mainly traditional coursework. I'm moving most of the old stuff to scraps, and I'm taking a no fanart policy, because if I want to write comics, I want to be able to devlop my own characters rather than using someone else's. I'm still writing the book, albeit very slowly, and I've discovered a new passion...

Badges

(well, buttons or pins to the Americans out there)

I got myself a badge machine a few weeks ago and it's SOOO COOL! It;s a professional one not one of the plastic ones, so it also makes magnets and keyrings too. Anyway, I went and looked up badges in the library, and found a nice book on contemporary badgemakers. I'm planning on specialising in Fine Art for the next 2/3 of the course, so I've been making one of-a-kind 58mm badges (literally, drawings or collages which I just stuck in a badge) so it's kind of like a merge between graphics and fine art. I like them because sticking it in a badge is almost like sticking the picture in a frame, except a lot cheaper, and works much better for small pictures. The pictures are also much more like quick thoughts or ideas rather than full-blown pieces, so I think framing would be a little excessive.

I'm planning on getting the parts to make 25mm badges (which are the more popular type that everyone wears). I think that would be a little small to draw in so I'm ust going to use plain old digital images
in those so I can experiment with regular graphics. I'll probably sell them at some point, we'll see.

Anyway, hope you are all well, I'll go and put some work up...