I designed these flyers for Christmas events!

leafy paths in my mind

'Caught some grief from a falling leaf, as she tumbled down to the dirty ground' - Counting Crows

Walking home through leafy autumnal paths… on the way home from work, by the fields near Ruxley lane, I see horses, bugs, birds, ducks, leaves, spiders, blackberries, bumps on the road.

In the mornings on the way to work I saw the same kingfisher swoop its way down the stream two days in a row. A flash of blue.

But on my way home I get my best creative thoughts, inspiration to write songs, poems and draw pictures, in my head.

I am really grateful to God for this. A friend isn't a Christian but in his spare time is writing a graphic novel. Something he had in mind to do for a long time. He finally has been on a roll with it, like he can’t put the pencil down.

He told me he feels a profound gratefulness for this time of creative release.

Today I was reflecting on my day. I'd had a bad affect on a colleague because of a sinful impatient attitude in me. This led me to reflect on past work-experiences. I used to work in a mental health day centre, five days a week.

As the only person in the premises without a severe mental health issue, throughout the day my actions must have affected the heightened fragility of those around me. What damage I may have done back then, when in a bad mood.

:/

And I remember that when I did hit problems there, I spoke to people from outside organisations for help and advice. They told me that REALLY it was the same problems in 'normal' organisations. And there is no normal well run organisation anyway. There are always power struggles and constant battles.This annoyed me a great deal as I really wanted someone to acknowledge the severe difficulty of my circumstances and stand with me and offer support.

This aside, what occurred to me on my way home is that there is a truth behind the point my 'advisors' were trying to make.
All humans are extremely, extremely, profoundly fragile. Regardless of mental health issues, illnesses or any other difficulty of varying harshness. How we treat each other affects us massively.
And I see this as yet another philosophical reinforcement for belief in God. We are so complex and utterly dependent on something bigger holding us together in this mad world.

My animation is up!

http://vimeo.com/6842438

And if you like Neils music, check him launching a new album at the luminaire, kilburn high road, London on Friday night from 7.30. £5 at www.wegottickets.com/event/54145

Ooooh, too much excitement for one month!

life without garfield

http://www.garfieldminusgarfield.net

Races & Faces

The last two weeks sermons at church have been very inspiring and relevant, from Hebrews (one of my favourites) about running your race. Through these messages God has been motivating me to complete this masters course and this project.

http://www.co-mission.org.uk/fcc/sermons.php (the sermons aren't up yet, but I guess they will be soon as some of the admin crew are away)

Woke up earlier than usual this morning and read some of 1 peter. So throughout the challenges of the day 1 peter 1 verse 7 kept reminding me in a new and amazing way of the reality that 'faith is of greater worth than Gold' having an everlasting beauty and worth.

Despite having 2 hours to play with in the morning before tutorials due to waking up, I managed to make myself late as I got distracted by a new creative idea for my project. I was going through my flower pressings collected last week at the allotment in order to photograph them at University under a rostrum camera (as seen above in first image).

One of the flowers stuck to my finger accidentally and to my delight I saw a face appear on my fingertip. Thoughts of super-speedy finger animations and collages caused me to get trigger happy with the camera and before I knew it I'd missed my bus.

In a way I've not applied the last sermons message very well as it was about being 'trainable' and annoying my tutor is not the best start to the week in applying that message as I believe I should listen to and value his advice as difficult as I find it. I might have some nice pictures today but will I have a film in five weeks time and finish this race? For a start I'm going to stop blogging, going out, and watching films and animations now. Research over.

good animations on youtube

At last, found a channel on youtube full of really excellent animations!

http://www.youtube.com/user/pentruochi#play/uploads/43/ziL9-OqYk2M

Encouragements

Hey ho!

Crafting wise I'm feeling fruitful and hopeful. Gary Powell (the external examiner) was an extremely cool chap, full of positivity and encouragement for all. I mentioned God a few times talking about my animation and asked him to clarify after 'are you a Christian' and he said yes, which was good to know there is an uplifting Christian artist about town (I like his stuff).

Also good news on the time-lapse front. I want to use time lapsing live flowers in my animation, overlaying them on drawing. See my first experiment here from the allotment trip from the last post: http://www.vimeo.com/6011686
Having sent out messages to over 20 time lapse artists last week, who've posted their flower videos online in various sites, I recieved one positive answer today.

Dan Linfield: http://www.vimeo.com/danlinfield who also plays the piano pieces in his videos, a pianist, curiously like the subject of my animation. Spooky. The extra wonderful thing about this is he has uploaded about 12 suitable flower videos. Most of the people I contacted had only uploaded one or two videos.

R.e. life...I sold two compact cameras on my second day at Jessops! Woohoo! This had nothing to do with me though... just two extroadinarily passive and I guess affluent customers. I did set off a security alarm in the process. :)

A family member has the swine flu :( but maybe better now than later.