Art and what I do.

I've been talking with my friend for a while and this conversation came up:

I think I made the modelers happy telling them how cool they were 24/7

cause they were like "some jerk artists tell us they're the -real- artists and we're just workers! DX"

I'm not going to reveal which friend or who I was talking with because I don't know if I'm really allowed to say anything but the gist of it is, the modellers are the people who take other people's drawings and then bring them into the 3-D world. And it made me once again think about my position and what I want to do with my life. 

What I want to do is to bring other people's work into this world. I like looking at images and those images inspire me to make things. If you put down a piece of paper in front of me that's blank, I will stare at that blank piece of paper and not really know what to do with it. I don't design nor have I really tried to design because my inspiration doesn't work that way. However, put down a piece of art in front of me and my mind will work over time, thinking of the fabrics or materials which can be used, putting together the construction method in my head or devising a few methods of construction and then choosing the best one.

Not always choosing the best one first off, my experience levels are still growing so often I would choose the wrong one.

But it comes back to that point.

Am I an artist?

artist |ˈärtist|

noun

a person who produces paintings or drawings as a profession or hobby.

• a person who practices any of the various creative arts, such as a sculptor, novelist, poet, or filmmaker.

• a person skilled at a particular task or occupation: a surgeon who is an artist with the scalpel.

• a performer, such as a singer, actor, or dancer.

My dictionary brings that up when I have a look for the definition. It's not really something that I have been able to find. Everyone I talk to gives me a different definition of what they believe an artist is. I've been told by a few people that they think I'm an artist and been told by a few others that they don't really think that I am.

Personally, I don't think I'm an artist. To me, the artists are the people that inspire me. The ones that create the images that get my creative juices going so that I make things that are featured on this blog. I can't design things on my own. I would love to be able to design pretty dresses or accessories with my own trademark to sell but the things I sell on my etsy are all going to be creations from images that other people have designed. They will always be fan recreations. 

I want to make it into the industry and not be well known as the artistic creator or anything but I want to be able to work under these people and be asked to create these things into the 3-D world. I would love to be able to work in theatre or a movie production set and be able to work on the set or the costumes and put together these things. I'm not a good painter so my set work would be more limited to the actual construction and painting colour onto things rather than actual scenery or such but...that's what I want to do.

I don't know if that makes me an artist. I don't have the confidence to label myself as an artist.

All I know is...this is what I want to do and for the next few years, it's the dream I'm going to be pushing to catch with my own two hands. 

Nodame Inspired Piano Bag

I got inspired yesterday to create something that I saw in a drama a while ago. As soon as I saw it, it was the most adorable thing and my boyfriend agreed. The bag itself is actually quite easy to make. I've made one for myself and I'm going to make another 3 for my etsy store.

:)

Making it from a nice peachskin fabric so it's a little bit fluffy and soft to touch. All of the insides are overlocked together so it's all neat even without any lining. The black keys are individually sewn on and the black lines on the white fabric are also machine sewn on.

I think it's looking cute. I'm going to use it to carry uni books with me when I go to school.

The dimensions of the bag are 37x31x5cm. The handles go up 18cm. 

A look (kind of) of the inside of the bag with the neat edges. 

And just because I can a little close up of the keyboard itself. The keyboard took the most time because of the detail I chose to put on it but it was a lot of fun to make. 

I don't think I'll have any problems making another three of these. But if they sell well I might make a few more, who knows. 

Valentine's Day!

I celebrated Valentine's Day with my boyfriend on Sunday as we were able to spend the entire day together. It was an absolutely fun day that started with crepe and ended with stew and with lots of hug and cuddles in between and lots of crying by me at the end of the night (no, he wasn't being mean to me...he introduced me to Chihayafuru...an anime that had me get really attached to some of the characters). 

For Valentine's Day though, I hadn't gotten around to making him the cookies I had planned on making for him for the whole week before but I had made him a bag to put the cookies in already. The bag looked something like this:

And I am really glad that upon receiving it, he recognized straight away what it was, just means I got the symbol right. He's a starcraft player and this is one of the team logos. The bag itself took about half an hour to make and I put it together mostly with my overlocker and only used my sewing machine for the last stitch on the end.

The first thing I did was cut out two bit rectangles, that made the two main panels of the bag. Then measured the two long sides and one short side of the bag and cut out a long rectangle that was about 2cm wide and the length of the measurement I had just taken.

All of the sides were then serged together. I cut out a handle for the bag that was the same size but just a bit shorter than the rectangle I had cut out earlier and serged that to the top of the bag when I was neatening the top edge. With my sewing machine I then sewed a line on the top of each part of the bag just to make sure the handle of the bag stays in place.

Oh, this symbol? I totally forgot to talk about it. I had found a vectored image of the logo, traced it onto the bag and painted it on with fabric paint. :) Very simple process and a very easy way of making the bag look cute.

So...because I forgot to make cookies, what did I put in it? I can't just give him an empty bag right? Saturday night, I freaked out and made something else to put in it instead. 

Little heart onigiri! Took about half an hour and if anybody wants to know how to make it, I can put up a tutorial later because I didn't really photograph the steps, I rushed to make this little plush.