2016 and what it might mean for me.

I've neglected this blog for far too long.

I'm in a strange sort of limbo at the moment, having been back from India a month, and heading off again in another month.

My noticeboard, which has evolved into something of a Travel Shrine. 

However, a few things to mention before I get into all of that;

• http://joyfulpostpanda.tumblr.com/ --> new artsy Tumblr thing, where I'll be posting edited images themed around all things India and travel. 
• This blog has officially hit 10,100 views! I can't really believe it, the little project I started at the age of 16 to showcase some GCSE Artwork is still going nearly 5 years later. I'd like to think that it's moved on a bit since then, but it remains a sort of hybrid between an online diary of sorts and a notebook of thoughts & ideas for me. Thanks as always to my regular followers, as well as anyone just dropping by (usually re-directed from Google Image searches, as my Blogger stats inform me!)

So, I didn't think that I'd been up to that much since returning from India, but I've actually been quite busy, travelling hundreds of miles up and down the country by train, visiting friends and family before I depart for another 5 months+ jaunt abroad, 

It's important to touch base with people in between these adventures, otherwise I worry that they'll think I've forgotten them. Plus so much has physically happened since they last saw me that I need to fill them in on some stuff (and vice versa) or we'll never be able to catch-up!

And what next?

Well, here's a small hint...

Not quite to scale, obviously. 

Guess who's back (back again?)

Third Year, and its pros/cons

*quick note on photos, I haven't got a digital camera at the moment, so I'm waiting to finish up with my current disposable one before I can get it developed. Hence I don't own any of the photos in the following post, they have been shamefully taken from friends' Facebook pages!

Ok, so this term has been tough. There are quite a few parallels with first year, to be honest;

a) the return of the feeling that you actually have no idea what you're doing
b) the tendency to return to familiar friends/ things rather than try to find new ones (although this isn't entirely true, obviously)
c) the desire to go home and cry about how much work you have to do can be overwhelming 

Just kidding about that last point.

Well, kinda.

So I did actually find that the work/life balance was harder than it had been in 2nd year, or at least. the last half of second year, This basically has to do with the fact that I am spending more time solely on work this year, due to the fact that 100% of my degree is based on my 3rd year performance. There was also the added challenge of the fact that the day before term ended my new thesis supervisor casually informed me that I should probably be on the hunt for new primary sources, seeing as my current proposition probably wasn't steady enough to support 12,000 and original insight etc. I#m trying to tell myself that this isn't the same as starting from scratch but...it's hard to deny that it'll be a lot of work until it's handed in.

Yes, our sports field really does look like this when the sun sets. Problem?

It really is a return to first principles then, I feel like I have, in many ways, come full circle. Just as I felt like I was getting the hang of this whole uni thing, suddenly I feel like someone came along and took the bottom out of the swimming pool I was wading in.

For anyone reading this - don't be scared. The fact that I've worked the hardest I've ever worked during my final year of university is really unsurprising, It's like the fact that I'd always worked "the hardest I've ever worked" every year at school, as I went through GCSEs, AS levels, A2s etc. Although GCSEs were slightly different because there were just SO MANY exams that summer, about 25 hours in total if I remember correctly.

At least there's only 15 hours of exams next June, yay!

Christmas formal

Now for the positives, I had to get my kicks somewhere. Here are some of my highlights of the last term, so that when I look back on this post I don't think that I just spent the last eight weeks completely miserable;

> Movie nights with friends including a copious amount of sweet food. So simple. So satisfying.
> Watching The Imitation Game with flatmates, at the cinema. Yeah, I cried.
> Going to see a student performance of Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials (they did the same as the Golden Compass film really, covered all of the plot from Northern Lights and then half of The Subtle Knife). There was a fake snow machine and paper mache heads for the daemons. Need I say more.
> Seeing the Japanese studio Ghibli film The Wind Rises with subtitles. Shown in a lecture theatre, by good old-fashioned projection.
> College Christmas party. Chocolate fountain, photo booth and the chance to dress up whilst listening to live Christmas music.
> That time I was having a bad day and the Christmas tree was put up in the middle of the library quad (ditto the time that I was sick of work, checked my post and had received a chocolate bar from an anonymous friend - and all of the times I know for an actual fact that my friends hid chocolate in my kitchen cupboard!)
> The Christmas tree in kitchen quad that was decorated with food including lemon slices and chili peppers

NOT the food Christmas tree from my college, sadly. This is the big one outside Balliol, on Broad Street. 

I still managed to do some stuff outside of studying and having an (albeit infrequent) social life. This included a photoshoot for the new undergrad prospectus, helping to run a stall at Fresher's fair, volunteering in the museum that I know live opposite, and even a quick morning of office work for the department I often volunteer with at university.

Songs that got me through term:

Nope, definitely not a record of the latest trends, nor are they really modern classics. Just what I've found featured highly on my Youtube watch history.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m7T9Yd_sNMs 

John Legend - All of Me

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PIh2xe4jnpk

MAGIC! - Rude

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DNFi-nOZlAI

Kate Rusby - Village Green Preservation Society

That's all I can think of for now, I think this post is long enough. I might update again quickly after Christmas, but we'll see how it goes :)

2 Years Later...

My most recent Polyvore design

2 Years ago today I started this blog, beginning with images (coincidentally, images that I started using when I first opened my Polyvore account, at around the same time) from my GCSE Art and Design course. It started as a blog about art, concerning the creation of different types of artwork that I'd learnt about, but now my blog is much more about myself, somehow, and how this increasingly is shown through my art.

So basically, where as the the art did all the talking previously, now I do the talking, and the art is simply a more visual explanation for my thoughts.

I'd like to think that I've learnt a lot, since that 16 year old, bored after GCSEs (although admittedly I am very bored after leaving school, and genuinely cannot wait to get my results, go to university and start learning again, but that's just me I think) who had little direction in life other than some mediocre artwork and a random blog. Not that the art has really improved dramatically, although it has evolved somewhat (I primarily use Polyvore rather than GIMP to make images, and rather than photo manipulation I tend to use internet images and "arrange" them into bigger pieces rather than create the components themselves from scratch if you know what I mean).

This post is a pretty big milestone then, certainly, I know there are much older blogs around, but as far as Blogspot is concerned, the average lifespan of a blog seems to be under 2 years, so I think it's an achievement that I have continued to update this, if only for its consistency rather than for any extraordinary content, after all I'm not trying to change the world, I just want some way to record the things that I do and that I find interesting, I'm not fussed about having 100s of followers, although of course I like the idea that at least someone is reading what I write.

At this point I'd like to thank my actual followers (currently at around 15 I think?) for putting up with this nonsense, in the hope that they find something (if only occasionally) worth reading on here. As a side note, I have had over 3,900 views on this blog, which is far more than if I had decided to never publish it!

So here we are, I'm not world famous, I'm not a celebrated blogger or by any means a talented artist, I'm not a budding author or even an exceptional writer, but I am I believe, much closer than I was 2 years ago to finding myself, though if there's one thing I can be accused of, it's forgetting the past in favour of obsessing over the future, as opposed to say, living in the moment. (Ironic for a potential History student, right?)

For example, I tend to forget or overlook the things I've already achieved, the work I've done, however small, and instead I worry about what the future holds, where will my life go next etc. (to be fair, until I get my A2 results I don't even know where I'm going to be living in 2 months!) This however, is no way to live, there needs to be more of a balance I think, between positive reflection and active (but not anxious) anticipation of the future. That can be my target for the next year, until this blog's next milestone ;)

Maroon 5's song Payphone actually sums up the above scenario pretty well;

"You turned your back on tomorrow
Cause you forgot yesterday..."

The only way to the future is to remind ourselves of the best parts of the past -

"Who controls the past, controls the future: who controls the present controls the past"

- George Orwell, 1984

Who would have thought Maroon 5 and George Orwell would ever have belonged in the same sentence? Only on this blog!

A tree, a real life representation of Carl Jung's tree of self actualization....just kidding -

(A photograph I took on a shady walkway in Calpe, Alicante, if this picture is rotated it makes a really nice desktop background!)

And... here are the final outcomes, after 10 hours (5 hours each) in my GCSE Art Exams, here are the pieces I produced, one in coloured pencil the other in watercolour, same design different effects, everyone I've asked seems to have different preferences too....

Decided to put things into context and show you how I used my "wor,k rest and play" ideas (at the beginning) to develop the outcome of my art exam, here is some of the planning I did in my sketchbook.

Parties, games, fun, and for me, travel, friends and life in general. This image, titled "Play" really summarises this for me and was also created in May 2010 with my other GCSE Art images.

At the moment it's summer, and being a post-GCSE student I have the whole of July & August to relax, and half of June too! This design is based around the theme of "Rest" and is one of my most popular images on Polyvore - but it's not one of my favourites to be honest.

GCSEs are over, and it's one of my summer resolutions to start an art blog, no matter what the outcome!

Will now begin to demonstrate the main purpose of this blog, art, by uploading various pieces I have created, for all the world to see :D

The programme I used is a website called Polyvore, which is free to sign up, and I found easy to use - all of my work I have posted was made using this site - it's great;

I'll start with oldest work May 2010, this piece is part of a set I made for my GCSE Art Exam brief, based around the theme of "Work, Rest and Play"