Bestival this year  the last hurrah for my school friends and I  before we went to uni, so it was a pretty emotional/messy one. Turns out it was also the last Bestival to be held on the Isle of Wight. I'm not surprised by this as this year it felt like festival had lost its magic and creative feeling, also the line up was not on par with previous years. Although to be fair to Bestival they had issues with ticket fraud and it was rumoured that Prince was supposed to be their 2016 headliner rather than The Cure. Despite this we had a lot of fun covered in glitter for the last weekend of summer. On this gloomy foggy day in between christmas and new year it seems a bit sadistic to be posting these lovely hazy photos, but looking through them has been a great distraction from uni essay writing and revision/self-loathing at the lack of work I did last term.

Not happy at being forced to watch Craig David by the others.

Are you even at a festival if you don't wake up covered in glitter?

I frantically made this draped silver dress and the choker days before Bestival. I wish it was acceptable to wear an entirely silver outfit to lectures.

 After our indulgent 9am showers.

The epitome of Sunday afternoon feels. Look closely and you can see my glittery homage to Bowie.

 The unhappy (but still glittery) campers ready to get the hovercraft home.

Recently this video went pretty viral on my Facebook newsfeed. It is a video of my hometown and it is visually stunning. Everyone was sharing it as popped up at the point in the term when we were all starting to miss home a little bit, so I guess it hit the spot for providing a certain homely nostalgia. It definitely made me realise how much I had taken my surroundings for granted. Especially living in London now I see how amazing it is to have the beach on your doorstep and 180 degrees of open blue sky- something which is rare, if not impossible to find here. After watching the video I got into contact with Jamie Hancock the videographer to see if I could ask him a few questions about the video/his process and luckily he agreed.

How do you make your location videos? What time of the day do you shoot them? How long does one video take to produce?

I personally love the morning and evening time for the colours produced and feeling you get in the images. It totally depends on what i’m filming really, but for this video of Southsea this is what I wanted. I often walk my dog early in Southsea and it looks beautiful. For this particular video there was no commercial aspect and was just for my love of Southsea. So I just chose a few days throughout the summer to film some stuff and then put something together when I had some free time. But in total I guess it was filmed over a total of 3-4 days.

How did you get into videography?
I’ve been a professional windsurfer for the last 10 years, competing on the world tour and traveling the world. During that time I bought a camera and started to film some of my trips and learnt everything I could about film and the whole process. I still have loads to learn but the most important thing is that I love it, so the learning part is easy. I take care of an international windsurfing brands video / social media and brand image. I travel to Cape Town and Hawaii to take care of their photoshoots which involves heli shoots and all types of filming / editing work. So i’m doing all sorts of things now compared to the days of filming me and a few mates going windsurfing.

How does developing technology affect your work?
Massively. Not too long ago you used to have a specialist in filming, sound, editing, visual effects, motion graphics and for all those things there was specialist equipment for each, Now you can kind of do all these things yourself with consumer based cameras and computers. For the drone industry it is all pretty incredible. It is quite scary how good the technology has become. My personal drone set up was quite expensive and a bit above normal consumer level. I had to sell my car to invest in it all, but the results are worth it.

What inspires you?
I think anything that makes me want to go do something myself. I see other peoples work and just think ‘wow, I would love to do something like that’, which is probably where the Southsea video comes from. I also like to set out to inspire people with my work equally, whether it encourages people to want to film there own stuff and in this case, to encourage people to get out and appreciate where we live.

What is the advice you would give  you've been given about creativity?
If you struggle for creativity then take inspiration from other peoples work out there. For me it’s all a combination of different things. I listen to music and imagine it working to some footage, I then think about how to film that footage and an idea is created, all from a song. I have tonnes of ideas and never right them down. I’ve probably forgotten 90% of ideas I have. So I guess a vague bit of advice would be to write those little creative moments down somewhere for later!

What is your favourite piece of photographic kit and why?
It is difficult to put one above the other because each has its uses. You don’t need a drone to create amazing film, but you can’t capture those unique images without a drone too. So I love all my gear to be honest for the collective type of video I can produce. Plus, without my computer I wouldn’t be able to do anything, and without the hard drives I couldn’t store anything. It may sound a bit boring, but it is just equipment - the final product is what it is all about..

Thats it. I hope you enjoyed this quick interview with Jamie Hancock about his work. I would definitely recommend checking out his website for more videos especially if you're feeling a little landlocked like I am at the moment.

On Wednesday I met Marina Abramović. She was doing a book signing at the Tate Modern from 12-2 and I had my Japanese class from 11-1 so I wasn't sure that I'd make it. When I got to the Tate Modern I almost left because I didn't think id get my copy signed but I was very lucky and was one of the last 5 people to get their book signed!

She was obviously really great although I only got to see her for like a minute, as you can see in the photo I was smiling like a manic fangirl the whole time. She told me to "read the book. just read it" and seemed pretty relieved that I was one of the last ones. The book is amazing its so well written and is one of those books you can't put down. I'm only in the first few chapters but its great to begin to understand the artist behind the work and then further contextualise the work. I can't wait to get to the chapters where she delves into her relationship with Ulay because I love the work that she produced with him.

You guys probably know Sean Ryan better as the Instagram account @badlydrawnmodels. Yesterday he was doing portraits at the apple store on regents street. I've been living in London for the last 6 weeks but in that time I've been adjusting to living away from home for the first time and balancing my time so I haven't been making the most of living here. My resolution for this term is to really appreciate and engage in living in central London. 

So I wandered into the Apple Store and got one of the last slots for a portrait and was very excited to meet Sean Ryan as I've followed his Instagram for a while and wanted to see which features he would emphasise (I particularly love my eyebrows in this). When I sat down he preemptively apologised for his drawing and then begun. It was a very weird experience to have my portrait drawn. I've never done it before and the closest thing I can compare it to is having a haircut. You know that something is happening but you can't quite get the full picture until the end. 

I ended up having a really great chat with Sean Ryan and how he got into his very odd profession and it was surprising. He told me he did a business degree and after that he applied to add agencies to no avail. Then one day he found a sticker book of footballers and started to draw them and post it online. He then told me he rather strategically moved onto models due to their large following and boom "fashion's favourite illustrator" was born. Although he still seemed to be in a state of disbelief over his success and the fact that he get stop do what he loves full-time. this disbelief is shared by his parents who don't quite understand what he does but he mentioned that drawing at Apple has made his dad realise how successful an illustrator he is. I tend to get very anxious about my life plans and how things are going to pan out but it was reassuring to see that things tend to fall into place in their own random way and you end up doing something you probably couldn't have imagined at 18.

Overall I had a lot of fun meeting and chatting to Sean Ryan and I absolutely LOVE my portrait. 

Izziyana was the first person I ever interviewed and this is an old interview from a previous blog of mine but I still find Izziyana's work beautiful and worth sharing. I fell in love with the embroidered patterns, simple honest faces and intricately drawn hair. The simplicity in her current work is just as striking, she now mainly embroiders. I love the positive message below that  she gave 15 year old me who was struggling to draw faces. Without further babble here is my(slightly embarrassing) interview from 2013.

Who taught you to embroider and how old were you?

I actually started embroidering only a few years ago, although both my grandmothers were embroiderers. I learnt mostly through watching youtube tutorials and books.

When did you start drawing?

I am sort of a sporadic drawer. I started drawing since I was small. I go through phases when I would draw a lot, and then I would draw very little.

Where did you study art (if you did)?

I studied photography in university. 

When you were younger what did you want to be when you grew up?

For a really long time, I wanted to be a writer.

What inspires you?

Inspiration comes from everything! The things you read, you see, you hear. Sometimes it is how you feel in a moment, or an image grabs you while daydreaming

How do you spend your days?

Most days I try my very best to keep on working, because there are so many things I want to make. But sometimes it gets a bit hard to work, so I fill up my time with reading or learning something new, which will all eventually go back into the work itself in some way.

I am having trouble drawing faces at the moment what helps you draw faces/tips?

There's no "right" way of drawing faces. Sometimes I wish I could draw portraits like Stefan Marx. A face is ultimately a portrait of a person. Keep working at it and I promise you, the Issey way of drawing faces will be magical because no one else can do it like you do.

If you could give a young artist advice what would it be?

This is a hard one, because there is so many things to say but everyone has their own journey! Yeap, that's my advice, everyone has their own journey and their own truths. Be honest in your work and keep making even if you feel scared or doubtful. Keep making so that you can find your own voice, what no one else can do and say but you.

I 

I was feeling a bit stressed and overwhelmed with work so took a break to draw. This is my hairless cat Milo, I definitely miss him now I live in London - factiming pets just isn't the same. So in a haze of stress and homesickness I produced this from an old mac Photo Booth picture of us.