Planet Ruby Starrs

since I changed the blog layout and messed about some people (myself on another email address included) cant read the posts properly they will not stay still and just roll back.. I have no idea why this is and I cant find any help on the blogger site - if anyone can help could you leave a comment here and I'll try and access it - having problems accessing comments as well! thanks - hope I can sort this out...

Another crazy week, this week I managed to lock myself out of the house very late at night wearing mainly pyjamas - thank goodness for kind and resourceful neighbors who finally helped me break back in (took 90 minutes in howling gales)- its quite comforting to know how difficult it is to actually break into our house and believe me we will not be pursuing a burglary career... the start of a new sketch book ..(lacking colour to date) College yielded an excellent tuition session on Photoshop - never thought I would say that but it inspired confidence in my currently diminished abilities and I feel sure I can brush up and charge headily onto the world of digital design - yes I know that is optimistic but that's how I felt on Friday so long may it last - I shall make the most of the feeling!!! We had a lovely weekend in Leeds celebrating my youngest grand daughters 3rd birthday - given the current sad family circumstances it was a very good day - she certainly enjoyed the cop...

Action packed week at college non stop info overload - lots of new words learned, Hetero-normative - not a word that crops up in everyday conversation.... but it popped up a lot this week as we considered fashion and clothes choices, design trends and historical bias for men and womens general attire... Do we wear clothes for modesty or warmth or really to make a statement!  Why are mens outfits so often stereotyped - boring - formal - plain - all similar styled?  Why do we notice when men wear florals, pink, flamboyant colourful outfits, flowing shirts, skirts etc.... and what messages does these clothes send? It was an interesting informative thought provoking lecture and I feel an essay coming on .... I've got to write something for the module - I was going to do boring ethics and sustainability but this sounds more engaging and I'm feeling a wee bit low of sustainability at the moment having just purchased lots of synthetic material - but I will be making works of art ...

fine liner on paper I have just survived a wonderful week of failed van - no car - and an almost melt down of electrics at the house.... nothing totally calamitous just events to mess up the week and slow everything down!  It did mean I got organised and did some proper drawing at home and have set up a good and potentially productive work space which produced work!! Then we had family visit and this entailed me having to be  hospitable and not hiding in my work room drawing and sewing all day - fortunately I have more or less caught up this weekend. I have spent a lot of the week drawing the exterior of the Bowes museum to use as a screen print template - I have used a couple of photographs I took,  enlarging them and then cropping them to use the front part of the house.  I drew them free hand using a fine liner and light box, and having had a practice run I did them again using a ruler for very clear lines - I like both versions but think the more formal s...

The weeks are beginning to fly by at college.. We are in the midst of Material Culture lectures and these are throwing up all sorts of moral dilemmas - can we really save the world - they are very thought provoking and to be honest its a little bit depressing... When you get to your 7th decade and you still cant quite get your ethics together - my latest most immediate dilemma is the cost of printing my final fabric samples... using plastic based synthetic materials would be very seriously cheaper then using organic plant based fibres... but then the dying, producing, manufacturing costs are economically and environmental unsound in both cases and what difference does a few samples make on an already produced cloth... The textile industry is second only to the oil industry in causing the most environmental damage - its a hard one to reconcile and the changes have to start somewhere and in an ideal world it has to be with today's up and coming designers!  There is a definite move ...

I had a quick wander around Light Night in Leeds - it was good but we were with tired small children and the parade didn't start until 7.30 and our little people were very weary so we didn't see it all - what we saw was very impressive, including the high wire chappie in the Trinity shopping centre - our nine year olds were totally entranced - I know they were just waiting for him to fall off!!!! The over sized paper lantern puppets were great - the kids loved them, they were celebrating womens suffrage - 100 years of having the vote...

A great day playing wet media and big paint brushes... Just what I needed to back into a creative head space.  We were asked to bring a object in to draw, drawing from photographs is never quite the same.  I figured it would be a good idea to take something that was relevant to my brief of interesting creatures so I took in a wooden puppet dragon, something I picked up in Vietnam.  Again in keeping with my concept of translating the traditional into contemporary design I decided to stick with a blue study and spent all day mixing various shades and tones of blue ink and procien dyes to paint large dragons with. this is on lining paper and all the inks bled a lot making it blurry I had very mixed results, getting used to wielding a paint brush again was fun, working on a larger scale then I am used to is quite challenging and puts me out of my comfort zone.  I decided to work on different surfaces to see how the wet media worked and it was an interesting ex...

My goodness this going back to college malarkey is time consuming, great fun, slightly over whelming, informative, and I'm busy busy busy.... Its taking some time to find my feet, well to find just about everything actually - this morning I was heading out early as I had some work to catch up on but first I couldn't find my college pass- essential for getting around the building photocopying, computer access - so I couldn't leave home without it - then I noticed I had my top on inside out.. and while righting this and finding pass I lost my car keys!!! this about sums up my life at the moment, its going a bit faster then I am at the moment!!! However once I got to school - I settled down and had a very productive day which finally set me on a path for my creative module and started a vague clarification about my concept.  I always find this bit of the brief difficult so many ideas bouncing around my head and they need sorting and filing into good, bad, and plain ugly. ...