New artwork is officially a thing

I’ve started on my next fabric artwork project, once again requested by my brother. This time he wanted me to base it on a video game called Dark Souls III, featuring this rather intimidating gentleman who seems to be experiencing serious wardrobe malfunction:

This will be an interesting challenge; it’s not the easiest image to execute with fabrics and will most likely require a mix of materials like leather and paints and some thinking outside the box.

For now, I’ve finished creating the template. From my previous experience I knew better than attempting to do the drawing in Illustrator straight from the image – I reduced the opacity of the image, printed it out, traced over it with a pen, scanned it, then did a vector drawing in Illustrator. Now it’s time for trawling through the fabric stores.

Finally starting a new artwork

It took me two years to complete my previous artwork, and though I was very proud of the result the amount of detail and effort I put into it was pretty draining. So after a year’s break from all things fabric I’m finally starting a new one. This one was requested by my Mum, who asked for a nautical theme with a sail boat. A straightforward image of a sail boat would be a bit boring, not to mention hard to simplify, so I found this blocky cubist-style image as an inspiration that could be fun to execute with fabric:

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Joy – Film Review

joyI watched this movie on my flight from Singapore to Hanoi. International flights are usually a chance for me to catch up with the movies I never bothered to see at the cinema and I often end up watching a whole load of rubbish. Joy isn’t quite rubbish, but it’s not particularly good either. It’s a third straight collaboration between David O. Russell and his Oscar-winning muse Jennifer Lawrence, and it’s easily the weakest of the three. Though ultimately forgettable, Silver Linings Playbook and American Hustle at least entertained me while I watched them, but Joy just never gets off the ground.

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A Bigger Splash – Film Review

a-bigger-splash-review-1I enjoyed I Am Love, the 2009 Luca Guadagnino film starring the inimitable Tilda Swinton, but my big beef with that movie, wonderfully shot as it was, was that it featured zero memorable characters or performances other than Swinton. Not an issue with this movie, a languid, sun-kissed study of increasingly fractured relationships within a quartet of characters hanging around a secluded Italian island.

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A Beautiful Mind – Film Review

2757480_origI’m house sitting at a friend’s with Netflix at the moment, so I decided to watch this movie. It’s one of those staples that seems to regularly pop up on free-to-air TV, and I swear I’ve seen the same scene of John Nash (Russell Crowe) trying to chat up a pretty girl at the bar with disastrous results at least three times, but for whatever reasons I just never got around to finishing the movie.

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Brooklyn – Film Review

MTM0MTYyMzA4OTYzMjc2MDUwI guess I can just get all the adjectives to describe Brooklyn right out of the way: charming, heartfelt, sincere, sweet, warm, unpretentious, lovely, old-fashioned, gentle. Whether it deserved its recent Best Picture Oscar nomination is debatable – it’s more of a filler to make up the numbers than a serious contender – but there’s no denying its modest appeal.

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Artwork in Progress

Eight figures completed, 4.5 to go… unfortunately all four are rather complicated so that’s 4-5 more months, at least. That’s the longest I’ve spent on any of my fabric projects, I’m so taking a long break after this one. I had to start a new sheet as well since the cardboard pieces aren’t large enough. I can’t believe I actually didn’t measure them when I started my very first figure – the yellow one on the left just fits. Phew!

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