What a weekend!

My sister came to visit me in Bristol, a long promised trip (since her birthday in June!!!) We started off by going to see the new Harry Potter film at 11pm with all my flat mates. It was decided by everyone that the film was suprisingly good. I though the pace worked and the actors have stepped it up a gear, finally! There were two suprises in the film. The first being that I found I really like Emma Watson! I thought she looked absolutly beautiful and she was probably the best actor in the film. This is quite a bit thing as I though she was rubbish in the other films and somewhat stuck up in her interviews. But I'm glad she was good, I don't like not liking someone, even if I'm never going to meet them.
The second suprise was the bit of animation that was placed in the middle. I thought it was a good idea but why godness why did they have to do it in poor quality cg!!! Just because it's there doesn't mean you have to use it! It was our opinion collectively (as a house) that the animation should have been done using shadow puppets or chalk and charcol animation. It spoilt it a little bit, especially after the rest of the film was so beautifully shot. I guess you can't win everything though.
Saturday was jam packed with a shopping trip to cabot where I speant a lot of money (oops)
I also managed to get myself a free dinner at a family friends, the best couliflower soup I have ever had, hands down! (I wish I had some right now....)
Then to the Tobacco Factory for the Stroud Theatre's production of 1984. To be honest, I had just said yes so I could see my mum and my brother (I'm such a home bird) and boy am I glad I did. Embaressingly I didn't know what the play was, I have head of it in different forms (V for Vendetta for example) but not by that name.
It was acted out by 8 people, 1 set and some rather beautiful and disturbing animation.
I think it was probably the best thing I have ever seen.
Seven of the actors swapped between narrators and characters, seamlessly and one man played the main character Winston. It was very proper acting, complete with alot of spitting.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=hiyv1sxMu0Q

There was a scene where Winston is thrown into room 101, the door are on wheels and make a screen behind him. The actor is there for a while but the projection of the animation stays longer and gets more horrible. He is swamed by a sea of rats which cover him wherever he try to escape in the room. Truely it was heartbraking.

I have never cried at a play, but this one upset me to the core and I just wanted to cry until there were no more tears.

More arts!

So this weeks life drawing was not so successful, I don't know if it was the fact that I was over tired or it was really cold but I just couldn't connect.

Having said this I think it was a really valuable lesson in perseverance. I felt I couldn't just get up and go, so I stuck it out and got to the end of the session.

I like that every week we try to incorporate narrative to the poses, here are some of the sketches that I managed to do. The range from 30 seconds to 5 minutes.

I was getting more into the drawing by this stage, we had embarked on the 30 second challenge and it was fun. Though I don't know about you, but I found drawing 3 figures really hard to draw in such a short period of time.

Weirdly it was doodling some Tangled art that calmed me down. I'm really excited about the film and have probably spoilt it for myself by watching every clip I can find and pouring through a lot of online art work. It was pretty happy though as one of the clips made me laugh out loud, defiantly a good sign.

Buses and sorrow

 This week in life drawing we had to place our subjects into frames, as if we were storyboarding. It was a really fun excercise. I'm only just getting into storyboarding and it was really interesting to see that where you place the people really effects the mood and even their social standing.

This picture was particularly challenging because we had to draw them looking up from a mirror, as if they were under the floor. Unfortunatly we ran out of time and had to finish there, but it would have been fun to try a few more poses from this angle -  

Yay

http://parkablogs.com/content/book-review-art-of-tangled

I'm so chuffed that I have pre-ordered the art of Tangled!! It honestly looks like its going to be the best art of book yet... well, for I want. There are loads of character poses and shiv! How exciting! Now I just have to wait till the 4th of December to get it!