I will never get paid for this...

I think people who make a living from blogging probably post more than once every other month. Although technically, since I'm squeaking this into March, it's one a month. Just.

So. Since I last posted, Spring happened. I'm sitting here looking at blossom. And readying myself for the apple tree to kapow into bloom. And wondering whether it is actually quite warm enough yet for flip flops, because my feet are kind of cold. But never mind. Because Easter is just around the corner.

We changed the name of our Sunday School at church. I, however, keep referring to them as 'Pleasure Seekers' which apparently, isn't very helpful. This is a combination of two different elements first designed by my friend and fancy artist, Grace Wallis (whose studio you can check out at the Mistley Quay Workshops, next to the Mistley Quay Cafe which is so great I can't even tell you). We sent each other about 4 million emails over this. It's pretty jaunty though, which is really what I was going for.

 I've been working on this for ages. Not that it has really taken all that long. I just kept doing things, and then not doing anything with them. However, I was hurried along by the fact that the church APCM is this Sunday, which is, yes, April 1st. I suspect this might have been a massive error in scheduling. We shall see. I do love a good twiddly bit of writing. And acorns. And, more specifically, whistling in their cups. It's a life skill, people.

This was one of those projects where my remit was both vague and yet very specific. It was a bit of a Hail Mary play from those organising it, and they asked me to do it, kind of last minute. I was sent all of the emails between the organisers, plus several text files with slightly differing versions of the above. And the fact that there was to be an image of hands. And the image at the bottom. Neither of which I had. Or was sure of. So I guessed. The hand border sort of happened on its own, coming from a combined need for the (mysterious) hand image and something to finish it off. I'm not sure that it isn't very slightly creepy. Like some of the Russian clay-animation I watched at university.

This was one of those incredibly maddening projects where it turns out, many hours in, that you didn't think it through well enough at all. This seems to happen most with me when wrangling with a particularly tricksy noticeboard that stands outside of Mistley Church.

Here. Thanks to Google Maps I have found it. It looks innocent enough. It is, however, my kryptonite. It happened once before, at Harvest. This was, at least, on the computer, so rewrangleable. But still. Maddening. I somehow forgot that the poster had to fit in this noticeboard, therefore necessitating four landscape A3 posters. Which could also be used in other places. So it also had to fit on one A3 poster. And as this noticeboard is only readable from the pavement, it had to be bright enough to make you come and look at it. And, since we're trying to promote a 'One Church, Two Locations' message, it had to include all of the services for both places. Oh, and since we're a church, I also needed to include something of the actual message of Easter, rather than my first attempt which was a very nice sunrise. It might as well have been a jolly Easter bunny. And chicks. And eggs. Anyway. I'm over it.

I do, however, really enjoy writing like this. I'm particularly pleased with the Sunday text. And the benefice name came out really nicely. I'm not so sure about Friday. It seems a bit squashed up. Given some more time, I probably would have taken another go at that one.

So. I now need to turn these into service sheet covers. Which will, no doubt, take about fifty times longer than I think it will. Oh joy. Never mind. I'm having my hair cut later. It'll give me some kind of reverse-Sampson strength. Hopefully. Enjoy the daffodils!

Marathon failure

I've been busy. And it has been snowing here. Which naturally means that I have to play outside rather than sitting in front of the computer. So I've failed spectacularly at the marathon. Maybe next year. Or I'll designate March. Or July. Or something.

I did this yesterday though. And I liked it. I think I might need a copy for my kitchen.

Right. Off to achieve. Ticking off to-do list and all that. Make a snow-angel for me.

Indecision

Snow has stopped play. Or rather, the thing I normally do on a Thursday has been cancelled because it's too cold and the heating wasn't working. So. One whole day in which to do several actual work things, and then maybe, maybe, see if I might have time to draw a Picture Book. We shall see. Until then, you should watch this. I saw it yesterday. And was frozen throughout. And learnt some very useful lessons about wolves. So. Just in case it gets even colder and wolves reappear, arm yourself with a knife, broken whiskey miniatures, gaffer tape, and trees. Please, please, climb trees. They can't, you know. You, however, can.

Catch up

So Picturebookruary begins on Wednesday. And I have only just started to think about it. And it feels like it has come round alarmingly too soon. Except, of course, my god-son, born on the 31st of January, is about to be 1. So to him, it has been a while. A lifetime, if you will.

So. While I think about that, pondering whether there really are enough hours in the day to do this again, I'll catch you up with some of the other designage that has been going on here.

 What's that? These are all remarkably similar? And isn't that the angel from the Messy Church poster? Fine. Dag nab it. Yes it is. But I was going for a theme. And those angels took hours. My only regret really was that on the above poster, the snowflakes didn't quite work. That's what you get for crafting individual snowflakes. A proverbial slap in the face.

I really liked this colour palette, though. And it really wasn't my own idea. I took a whole heap of inspiration from the murals of David Hetland, about whom I can find next to nothing. The only thing I could find was this flash presentation on the Minnesota Public Radio website. Given how beautiful they are, it's a crying shame that there aren't better quality photos available of his work.

The minimalism of this poster was necessitated by a) my hatred of the kinds of posters you see outside churches (small children, gazing wistful, lit by candles. Meh) and b) everyone having forgotten that this poster needed doing. Never have I worked so fast.

Oh, and having left it so long, now there's another Messy Church poster:

 Yes, it's about one degree outside today, and yes, snow is forecast, and yes, I still have paper snowflakes up in my windows (it's Winterval, don't you know), but as the nice man decorating the bathroom right now said, people are fed up of winter. So I embraced spring. And what is more springy than lambs and swallows? I'll tell you: nothing. Except maybe rabbits.

Busy busy busy

So the colours don't line up (though they didn't need to - thank you divided-notice-board). And I had an afternoon whacking my head against my keyboard because I didn't really want to add the information for this poster. It was better unadorned. And the snowflakes are not, in fact, each unique. Quite the reverse. But that was going to take a couple-of-days-job (it took several runs at it before it resembled the scene I was actually shooting for) rather than three weeks. And given it was only up for a week (and may be still up since I keep forgetting to take it down) and was only visible from the animal sanctuary cafe across the road, it probably wasn't worth it. But still. It turned out pretty good. Or at least, within a mile of how I imagined it.

Starting December as I mean to go on. In a way...

The chances of my posting throughout December are slim. I had planned to post regularly throughout November. I failed. I did, however, read the foreward, preface, and first chapter of Behold The Lamb of God: An Advent Narrative this morning, while sitting in bed, drinking Christmas tea, bathed in fairy light-glow. And I felt that I should mark the occasion.

Have a very Happy Advent.

Radio silence: Part IV: Mistley-palooza

So I'm making up for lost time.

After Mistley Movies came a pretty concentrated spell of work for the Mistley Church Hall Centenary. Now, here's the thing. Should you search online, you may well discover something of a lack of information about Mistley Church Hall. You can try to search for The Institute, which is what it used to be known as, but you'll find similarly little information. I did, however, find this picture, courtesy of the Essex Record Office.

It's actually of the whole of Mistley Quay, including our old friend, Mistley Towers. Check out the previous post for some pretty Robert Adam designs, and swoon over the neoclassicism. Try not to whistle the Pastoral Symphony and imagine multicoloured ponies. I dare you. Anyway. In the bottom right corner, half chopped off, there is Mistley Institute, or Church Hall. Google Street-view is the only other way that I've found to get an image of the hall. Here:

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I should say, to stave off any danger of being beaten by the nice man who runs the hall, that it looks much better right now. It has been freshly painted and looks, dare I say it, pretty good. This is, therefore, not a fair representation. Use your imagination.

Anyway. Long story short, this year is the hundredth birthday of the hall. I was asked to do an all-events poster, and then was asked to do one specifically for the Hog Roast and Barn Dance, and the tickets for said Hog Roast and Barn Dance. I got to flex my Seven Brides for Seven Brothersian muscles. Fun.

Having no decent pictures of the hall, I pieced one together off of Google Street-View (yes, I'm that dork) and then incorporated it into my line-drawing border. It came out pretty nicely, I think. I am a sucker for a proper script font. And calligraphy. And twirly bits. I should use a more technical term, but you know what I mean. 

 

My first attempt at this didn't come out very well at all, which was weird, given that pretty much every single one of the above elements was there. My Mum, however, gave me some sound advice, and after splitting up the text, making some bits bigger, some smaller, it came out pretty much like this. And then she told me to colour the images, and I objected, then tried it out, then reluctantly agreed. I think she might have been on the phone the whole while as well. Anyway, I was really pleased with this one. I cannot, however, take all the credit for the dancers. I adapted them from images I found which were, originally, 1950s embroidery patterns. I love these patterns. I think I may need to learn to embroider properly, just so that I can have cushions with these on. I did, however, tone down the fussiness of the girls. They originally had flowers on the dresses and bows in their hair which was all a bit too much. I also couldn't decide what colours to do their dresses, until, having decided on the boys' shirts, I then checked Seven Brides for Seven Brothers and matched the right shirts to the right dresses. Yes. I know. 

Naturally, the tickets then also had to match. You can't use all those fancy fonts and then do something in Arial. That's just not on. So I did these as well:

I actually designed them to be on white, but they were printed on colour, so I thought I'd recreate them, as they were. They took a while, but I was pretty pleased with how they turned out. I really enjoy doing this kind of writing. Until I get better at it, I semi-trace a good script font, adapt and add as I go, and then go back over it to thicken some lines and neaten others. I don't really write very well on an angle, so I really need to learn better. It's much easier on paper than a graphics tablet, for some reason. Practice, however, makes perfect. Or at least, better.

On the same theme, although not entirely related to the hall centenary, I was also asked to do this:

Again, the text was a big deal for me. I also discovered that I can't draw a single brass instrument from memory. Not entirely surprising, perhaps, with French Horns and Tubas, but surely I could have just about worked out how a trumpet looks? Uh, no. Being terribly self-referential, I wanted it to look like this, which, I suppose, in turn, had been supposed to look like this. I really enjoyed this kind of line drawings, though. I had been planning it on paper, and they came out pretty similarly, which was a nice look. I don't like them to look too clean and computer-ish. That said, I was also asked to do a Harvest poster for the church notice boards by hand. To make it more interesting, they had to go outside the notice boards, as we cannot currently get into them. I merrily got on with it, made stencils, sponged on jaunty harvest colours to the exact specifications of the notice boards. It was only two minutes before finishing that I remembered that the notice board was bigger than the A3 laminator to which I had access. In fact, it was more than twice A3. I would have had to chop it up into tiny rectangles before it would fit in that laminator. I kicked a few things. I stopped harking on about how much I was enjoying doing a poster by hand. I wistfully imagined just changing the size under 'Resize' and then printing the right size. I ate my dinner in gloomy silence. Then I spent all evening cutting up my poster and sticking it back together in a size that was laminatable. I even missed most of that episode of The Great British Bake-Off. All in all, a bad night, but the poster came out pretty well. All that, and I never got a photo of it. Thank goodness I can make things look pretty hand-drawn on the computer. Never again. Never. Again. 

Have a nice weekend.