Whoops

Yikes, didn't realise it'd been a month since I'd last past posted, and what a month it has been! Its certainly had its highs and lows but its abit late to start yammering about them now, I'll have to drop back later and tell you all about it :)

Paul Rand on Graphic Design

Ok I'd never heard of this guy until I stumbled across this website In The Arms Of Strangers and having an interest in design, illustration and art decided to watch. Anyway i found some of his comments about design very interesting and thought I'd share the vid.

A 4 minute short about Paul Rand created for his posthumous induction to the One Club Hall of Fame in 2007. Via the Commercial Archive.

One year on - looking better, feeling good

Ok so maybe that wasnt the end, well it was then, but its too early in my life to be proclaiming finalities. Anyway here I am blogging once again, its been a long year, and not an easy one at all. Its taken a long time to be able to get here and post again. After my Uncle died last year I think I went into some kind of mental shut down, a safe zone thet I'm finally emerging from, its not easy knowing he's not around any more and the gaping void it has left in our little family is no where near closing but the edges have drawn together somewhat. I still miss him alot and it hurts not being able to just pick up the phone and speak to him but it slowly gets easier.

Anyway, I finally left my job of 5 years at the bookshop although I still refer to the place as "work", I miss not working with the people there, well some of them anyway. It was time to move on though and I greatly disliked working under the Waterstones regime, to me it felt like the kind of set up the Nazis would have had if they ever established a chain of bookstores but it did me the favour in getting me out of that comfortable rut and I'm now back at University again. Not Portsmouth though, I'm doing a foundation year in Art and Design at Sunderland Uni and I think I'll specialise in animation, I'm tempted by 3D design and Glass but my first love is drawing and painting but there's time for it all to change. The course is generally going well and I've met some great people and am making some good friends although some of the breifs we are being set are a little wierd and one of our tutors seems, well, a little inexperienced and can be rather unhelpful at times, this doesn't help to bolster confidence in him. Anyway its a 9:30 start tomorrow and I'm rather tired so ciao for now :)

:edit:
Just wanted to share this :) One love :)


and the official website http://www.freehugscampaign.org/

The End

Alas, that these evil days should be mine. - Theoden, King of Rohan

Greetings folks, welcome to the end. Thats it, I've finally decided to call a halt to this blog, I haven't posted in a long old time, mostly because everything I've wanted to post about has involved my opinions on my current place of employment, which for those of you who don't know was an ****** book shop and now since the conquest is a **********'s. Needless to say I was never in favour of this takeover, I thought that it would be a terrible thing, both detrimental to *******'s bookselling ethos and to the public in general and I'm very happy to say that so far I seem to be right. Work at the moment is horrible, I hate going into work, I would walk out if I could afford it but I can't afford it and as yet I've had no luck securing another job, I'm even considering telesales which is something I never thought I'd do but it may well be a better situation than my current one.

Also to top off my current situation, my Uncle Vincent died very suddenly on Friday. We are a very close family and needless to say we have been devastated by the loss, it still feels very unreal. He was a stubborn ass at times but he was a great and kind man who would do anything for anyone and I miss him very much.

So it is on a sad note that I call this blog to a close.
Farewell.

Dominic

I got my own Loomis now! YEY!!!!

I decided recently that in my quest to produce better artwork I absolutely had to get my hands on a copy of Andrew Loomis' book "Figure Drawing for all its Worth" and despite the wonderfully worn nature of the second hand copy its all intact and its full of fantastic stuff.

Hiatus

wow, 2 months without a post! I'm going to put this blog on hold for the moment. I may come back to it later. If not it'll just disappear from the web but I'll announce if I'm going completely.
Dom

Quarter of a Century

Hey all,
In case the title of this post is too cryptic for you it was my 25th birthday this week. A dramatic sounding number but a very undramatic day. I did have a fun day and that was good and all but I really don't feel great at the moment. To quote Marvin, "I think you should know I'm feeling very depressed today", well I'm not feeling quite that depressed but things certainly aren't a bunch of roses at the minute. I don't wish to go into specifics but I could really do with a break of some sort at the moment. Anyway it's late, I'm tired, and I think it's time to go to bed. I'll try and write more later.

Why do I keep a blog? An appraisal of the mental state of 2 years of blogging.

Well I feel it's about time for a sit down and look at my state of bloggage. I've decided to shift my blog over to a new URL to give me a new fresh space to blog from, hopefully I'll be able to regain some focus here. And focus is what I've been lacking of late, my last few posts on my old blog have been a waste of time, mere fillers to make it look like I was actually trying to blog regularly but it was just a downward spiral, the spastic death throes of a flagging blogger. It seems however, that this condition is not just confined to me though, one of my fellow bloggers, George Walkley, has just readjusted his blog and my mate Scott hasn't bothered to blog since New Years Eve!

So why this blogapathy? Who knows for sure, but in my case I think it boils down to a combination of things:

1) The time of year. February and March are just depressing months in my opinion and I, like many people get the post Christmas/New Year Blues making it a very uncreative time of year.

2)Boredom. This partly ties back in to point 1 but is independant of the season. When I get bored I just can't be bothered with most things and having to think of something to write in a blog that few people read just doesn't seem worth the effort.

3)Creativity. Writing has never really been one of my strong points, I mean my grammer is usually OK and I'm a decent enough speller but actually thinking about writing in a creative manner does my nut in. I know when I'm feeling inspired I can churn out reams of stuff but after I've fired the mental afterburners the fuel runs out quickly and I feel uninspired again and don't see the point in just writing for the sake of it.

4)Running out of ideas. I've been blogging for almost 2 years now and although every now and then I can rattle off some serious stuff there just isn't enough going on for me to really dugest and spew out here.

Perhaps it would help if I knew why I bothered to blog in the first place? Well, I started blogging back in June 2004. Why? I found out some people I knew had blogs and was caught up in the new blogger syndrome and hopped onto the bandwagon and set up my own blog. Now while it's all fun and games to start with after a while you begin to feel obliged to blog about something, and with nothing apparent around you get hooked on memes which prove to be short lived entertainment. Then once you've thrashed wildly down almost every blogging avenue you finally come back to the question I have reached now "Why do I blog?".

For me just being some guy from the North East of England means that I don't have hordes of fans waiting for me to blog about my latest visit to the toilet nor am I sufficiently well known amongst publishing circles to start up my own book review forum. So what's a blogger to do? Well for me blogging is like keeping a journal and I've had far more success at keeping a blog than I have ever had with a journal or diary. So that shall be my purpose, to keep my diary of observations and musings on life, the Universe and everything but with perhaps a more refined eye and no more memes. Anyway, if someone reads this and decides to start their own blog may I say good luck but beware the pitfalls of blogapathy, for once your set foot upon this path there's no telling where you may end up!

Nerd

61.904761904761905% of me is a huge nerd! How about you?

3 b's

Bored

Beyond

Belief!