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I think that my university course has been amazing so far. 

We’ve focused more on illustration fundamentals, in order to get a solid knowledge base.

It’s all quite new to me, and I’m still a bit confused as to what is what, but finished work keeps stacking up and I’m slowly but surely building up a portfolio while experimenting with new ideas and techniques.

One of our main tutors, Liam is doing a fantastic job at guiding and encouraging us, and he is also and AMAZING artist and print pro (I’m not only saying this because he’s meant to read and grade me on this blog btw), he is actually an inspiration, as I’ve wanted to do screen printing for a while now, due mainly to my interest in pop art. 

I feel like I’m learning everyday, even when I’m at home, thinking about briefs, or out on the street observing people and things in a different way than what I was used to.

And things are only going to get better by the looks of it, and me and my comrades are going to improve a lot during the next couple of years. Looking at 2nd or 3rd year illustration students, I am amazed at the quality of the work that they produce, under the guidance of our talented tutors. 

Hats off to you guys!

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I thought about writing a post about myself as I don’t really know what else to talk about today.

I like weird things, I dress weird for a girl, I say weird things, I hang out with weird people and I see things quite differently from the majority of the population, but so does everyone else right?! 

I’ve always been an outcat, an outsider, not fitting in, first cause of my super tall lanky appearance, then cause of my high I.Q. 

I find it hard to have girlfriends as I always speak my mind, and not really into very feminine things. Men find me very intimidating cause of my height and general attitude. 

The great thing about being born a weirdo though, is that you’re naturally cool, you don’t even have to try to be different, you just are.

Also, there’s not much else you can do but art. ‘Real’ life is a bit demanding at times, as we’re sensitive souls and need a lot of respite. 

All in all, I couldn’t wish to have been any different, as I’m f***ing AMAZING. 

It’s all about me, folks! 

If you want to know me better, buy my art.

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As well as being my sister, mother and best friend, Irina&Silviu are very talented traditional collage artists and photographers. 

Below is an excerpt from their about section, as I think their own words describe them best:

‘In the beginning there were Cortázar and jazz, Heidegger and fried eggs, endless ramblings and Thomas, the German Shepherd. Then it all turned irreversibly poetic, our cooking improved, books multiplied and so have we, together with our experiences of each other and the memories we collect every day. Our story is a writers' Café hidden in the middle of a pine forest with dim light and Miles Davis playing in the background.

We are Irina & Silviu and we do everything together. We met at University in Transylvania while studying Philosophy and we have been inseparable ever since, from translating philosophy books to changing diapers, making collages and poetically documenting our life through photography.

Our collages are recipes for alternative worlds, while our photography poetically depicts what we believe to be the best of all possible ones: that of hic et nunc, a narrative whispered through scenes that write themselves in shadows, textures, glances and reflections, chapters from rooms of laughter and future ventures.

World of Other is our way of connecting with fellow artists, makers and entrepreneurs and collecting glimpses of their existence, while Poetics of Other stems from our love for black and white imagery and quietly depicts these encounters.

For the past 8 years we have called Wales home, the land of hiraeth and rugged coastlines, currently living in Monmouthshire.

We document a limited number of love stories each year. If you feel a connection with our aesthetics and vision we would love to hear from you and start a conversation.’

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For the last zine of the year, I found inspiration from famous questionnaire by Éric Poindron,  that my friend answered. 

The images are inspired by the Rorschach test, and have been created with acrylic on paper folded in four.

I’ve added the text in Windows paint, as I find it gives a similar feel to a typewriter.

I wanted the zine to have a simple appearance, easy and cheap to reproduce, so I printed 4 images per page, on normal printing paper,  which i then cut out and stapled together, nothing too fancy, as that, in my opinion, goes against what a zine should be.

A Zine (/ˈziːn/ ZEEN; short for magazine or fanzine) is most commonly a small-circulation self-published work of original or appropriated texts and images, usually reproduced via photocopier.

I’ve given some copies of my zine away to some of my peers, as an early Christmas present, and they seemed to find it interesting, regardless of it’s printed quality. 

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I am obsessed with Father John Misty, his style, his lyrics, his art, his wife, EVERYTHING about him.

I’ve been listening to his music for quite a while now, since ‘Call me Nancy from now on’ came out, heard of him the first time through one of my friends that had interviewed him while getting a tattoo in Berlin (how cool is that right?!).

He recently played in Cardiff and I’ve made great efforts to go and see him, and I exorcised all my demons whilst he was preaching. 

I love the man, his music has helped me so much and is great inspiration for the existentialist life style that I’m trying to lead.

His album art is also amazing, he’s a painter himself. 

From what I’ve heard and what he advocates, he used to be involved in the psychedelic scene in the States, played some festivals that some shaman acquaintance helped organised. 

I am a MASSIVE FJM groupie and that’s that. Did I mention how witty he is?! I love him.

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I’ve made quite a few zines in only a couple of months. Pictured above are my first zine, about a ghost that dies of sadness and drowns in their own tears while waiting for someone to scare.

The second image is part of a group zine, where we had to illustrate lyrics to one of my tutor’s favourite songs. The lyrics I had to illustrate were ‘Si Shovell fills a Reebok pump with the pulp from his belly’. 

I have done a lot of research trying to figure out who Si Shovell is, and it turns out that he is no one. 

I also had a look at a lot of old school shoes, drawing shoes is something I really enjoy doing and must say quite good at, given that my surname also translates to ‘shoemaker’, so it must be in my genes.

I truly enjoy making zines, they are a cheap, fun way to get your ideas across, and I love the hand made, rushed feel that authentic zines give you. 

Growing up in Romania in the 80′s and early 90′s, Xerox machines were all the rage, and I remember my older sister printing high school zines that included poetry and collages, handwriting, rants about teachers and parents and all things cool. 

I’m actively researching zine makers, especially female ones, and I do believe that there is a niche for feminist zines, as started with the ones made by Bikini Kill and other riot grrrl bands. 

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For the abstract narrative brief I came up with more than one scenario. 

I was given two random news paper cut out images, one of a man feeding a monkey, and the other one of a desolate field, covered in fallen trees. On the back of this last image, there was also an image of a couple, which I ended up using in my final narrative.

The scenarios that I came up with had drugs as part of the story. A man gives a monkey the acid and the monkey’s brains explode. Or a man gives a monkey a psychedelic mushroom and the monkey has a bad trip, running through the jungle until encountering an odd couple, when he thinks he sees Satan.

The idea for this came from a theory that I like, which says that human consciousness and reasons have evolved because our ape ancestors have eaten psychedelic mushrooms, which created different pathways and activated neurotransmitters in the brain.

Some early sketches I did involved a little girl travelling through a post-apocalyptic world, walking through polluted waters and human waste, which I think would make a good follow up to the initial story and would be in a way a fable for human evolution in general.

In a much more cheerful note, I’ve made a narrative about my day, which involves a cute Pusheen cat and lots of delicious food, which is the kind of world I want to live in.

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Going back to my first post, after the Oxford trip, we each had to illustrate a letter from the alphabet. 

I was assigned the letter T, so I chose to draw a totem poll, that can incorporate all different elements that caught my eye whilst visiting both museums. 

I used acrylic paints and traditional medium.

The above image shows the Virgin Saint being chased by an evil spirit, and managing to escape due to the aid of a young bear and flying warriors. 

She is also carrying flowers in her hand, I chose the colour red as it reminded me of Christ’s blood. 

The mountain setting is a tribute to my home town, a valley surrounded by high mountains. 

The inspiration for the different elements came from christian icon paintings, Indian drawings and patterns, as well as shamanistic culture. 

I’ve added the baseball cap just to give it a modern twist, in the original painting the Virgin is seen wearing a halo which to me represents purity, wisdom and enlightement.

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We had to illustrate an idiom for one of our assignments.

An idiom is  an expression whose meaning is not predictable from the usual meanings of its constituent elements, or from the general grammatical rules of a language, and that is not a constituent of a larger expression of like characteristics; a language, dialect, or style of speaking peculiar to a people; a construction or expression of one language whose parts correspond to elements in another language but whose total structure or meaning is not matched in the same way in the second language; the peculiar character or genius of a language; a distinct style or character, in music, art, etc. 

I chose to illustrate a Romanian idiom, worrying about a block of salt falling. This idiom would be translated as worrying about something  bad happening, before something actually happens. I’ve derived this idiom from a story written by one of my favourite Romanian story tellers, Ion Creanga. Unfortunately I couldn’t find an English version of the story to attach.

The characters pictured above are seen crying without an real reason. They are waiting for the block of salt to fall on the baby’s head, and their cries disturb the baby as well, instead of doing anything to remove the block that may be a danger. They are worrying about all the bad things that may happen and come up with different scenarios in which the baby can be injured. 

I’ve used basic Windows paint editing, and as it was one of the first assignments for university, the style is quite rough and I can say that my Windows paint skills have improved since. 

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Since my last post, we have twice visited Jacob’s Market,  an antiques centre and art gallery behind Cardiff’s central train station.

This is a great place for drawing and feeling inspired by, there is a very cosy coffee shop where there is  always chocolate cake and frothy milk in your coffee, and a contemporary art gallery on the same level.

The building also has an amazing roof garden with a great view of Cardiff and it’s development, and it was a great place for perspective drawing this last Friday.

Walking around the many stalls, you can find gems, anything from vintage clothing, to antique toys, memorabilia, precious stones, music instruments, books, comics, the list appears infinite and one can easily get immersed in the quirkiness of what initially appears as clutter.  

I first visited the place years ago and fell in love with it straight away, and it makes me happy to see the same reaction in anyone visiting it for the very first time, so I would advise anyone that hasn't done so yet, to go exploring for themselves.

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On Monday it was time to explore Cardiff and go on a drawing scavenger hunt. We grouped in teams (we came 2nd!) and started from the Central train station, first (badly drawing) the statue of two giant hands holding a piece of rope, then heading towards the City centre.

While we kept seeing the Snowdogs that are displayed all throughout town at the moment, we also met a real life Dog and his homeless Man. In exchange for some tobacco we were given a canvass covered in mud from Dog rolling all over it, with a drawing of a spliff on it.

Cardiff market is where I drew the bird and the sleeping hamster, unfortunately they had no kittens to observe at the time. We encountered a bunch of oddities like a life-size Elvis, a giant panda and also caught a glimpse of the infamous Man that was shouting about fruit.

I particularly liked sketching some of the animals hanging over the Castle walls, but walking around Cardiff and seeing the Dragon flags hanging high, Dragon logos on taxis, giant Dragon love spoons, all I could think of were Dragons!

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Great day out exploring and sketching at the Pitt Rivers and Ashmolean museums in Oxford.

The above sketch of a Votive Stupa is for an Alphabet based on some of the interesting artefacts and displays that have caught my eye.

I did not have a digital camera to record, so I took film photos instead, which probably wasn’t such a good idea for shooting indoors without flash, but great for referencing afterwards.

I was interested in materials, textiles and patterns in particular and amazed at the vast, eclectic collections contained in both museums, covering a wide range of subjects including rituals, shamanic practices, samurais, and artefacts from around the globe, paintings and priceless art objects, jewellery, amulets and charms, smoking paraphernalia, to name a few.

Oxford is also a very lovely, relaxed place and it was nice to enjoy a cup of coffee at the Pitt Rivers museum and soak in some sun on the short walks between museums. The day seemed too short for the amount of things to see and places to explore and I will definitely go back again.