Dead With Tequila Update...

If you haven't checked out this Dead With Tequila post yet, you can see it here...

Dead With Tequila Post

Also if you could complete this survey I will love you forever; so far the longest it has taken someone to complete it is 30 seconds. 

Complete Survey Here

Dead With Tequila Christmas Message

The Dead With Tequila Store has Some great stocking fillers! So don't miss out!!!

Can I pick your brains????

Hey awesome people of the world!!! How are you all doing?? 

I need a favor (cheeky, I know), could you all be so kind and spare 2 minutes of your precious time, to complete a quick survey for +Dead With Tequila . It's 5 real quick multiple choice questions. 

Thank you in advance for your time, it really means a lot to us, and you'll really be helping us out.   

Take the survey here!!

UPDATE: Dead With Tequila

If you have't taken a look at this already then you should so hat you don't miss out.

http://deadwithtequila.blogspot.co.uk/2014/11/a-myan-pyramid-and-purple-skull.html 

It's all new and it's AWESOME!!

Don't miss out on this!!

http://deadwithtequila.blogspot.co.uk/

So much to do, so little time. Oh and Dead With Tequila update!

So finally after being out of college for a year, and having a few failed job interviews, I got a call the other morning from one of the people that interviewed me, asking if I would be interested in doing so work for them on a casual basis. Of course I jumped at the opportunity. Turned out that they needed me to start that day. It's not permanent, just a few weeks, but hey, it's better than nothing, and they're paying me (mostly to mop toilets, fun).

As well as working, I took a trip to London the other week, (and dragged a friend along too,we'll call her R), to go to Theatre Craft at the +Royal Opera House. Great event. Found this really useful for finding out more information about backstage careers; I've got so many leaflets still to sift through. If backstage theatre is something you want to get into I would highly recommend going to next years event; even R had a good time and found it useful, and she's not even interested in backstage stuff. 

This hasn't been my only trip to London this month, I went to a uni open day with R to be her objective opinion. Would have been great if it hadn't rained, damn British weather, (we walked down the Embankment and got wet after finding out the queue for the aquarium was a 90 minute wait). Will be going back to London again next week for another open day, so we have every intention of going to the aquarium this time round, (looking forward to the sharks. I like sharks, I have an unhealthy fascination with them.) 

Total change of subject here, If you haven't checked out the Dead With Tequila store lately then you should know that we've just uploaded some new stuff. Great stocking filler items. There's some more shamballa bracelets, couple more elasticated and also some more wire bracelets. But keep your eyes peeled  because we've also got Earrings and bag/key charms coming soon to (soon as in probably next week when I'm done uploading it all). Here's a link if you want to look at the new stuff, or the old stuff (not that it's that old). 

For Dead With Tequila Store Click Here!

Do you know how to tell if you're a patient person? I'll tell you. You're the ones that have read my ramblings in their entirety and are still reading. You are awesome!!!!! 

Dragons in the mirror

So a friend of mine has a birthday coming up, and mentioned, after seeing a piece I did for Dead With Tequila (She's my business partner in crime), that she would love one of her own. She doesn't know it yet, but she's gonna get one. 

I decided to go with an oriental theme, and work a dragon in to. So I then went about drawing a dragon and thought that some of you (or none) might be interested in how I went about this, so I've taken pictures at various stages to show my process.

I started with a basic frame that I could then work off of. Kind of like fleshing out a stick man. 

I then added the shape of the body around this and also defined the basic shape of the head and feet as well as adding some horns.

On top of this I added minimal detail to the body: The under-belly, spines down the back. I drew the whole head in  before I spent to long on it (would have been easy to get carried away on the details).

Here's a close up of the head.

I then went and added in blocks of scales. I didn't want to fill the whole body in this way as it would a) take forever, b) would look messy and c) I would essentially have to do it twice as all of this have to be inked, and i'm not that patient. 

 

This shows part the dragon (let's call him .....Cedric. Why not?)  after he's been inked with a 0.5 mm fine liner.

Haha... Weapons at the ready.

Letraset Promarker Cool Grey 2 (if your interested)
Black, Dark (midnight)Blue and two different shades of red  WHSmith colouring pencils.

No I don't use a fancy brand of pencil; I love these ones, they're a reasonably priced set, the pigment is great, they sharpen well and they really nice to use in my opinion. Some sets on the market are and obscene price, which is fine as an investment if you colour a lot, I don't colour a lot and these do the trick for me. Rant over.

So I've gone around the outside of Cedric with the Promarker for a couple of reasons. First reason: I've got to cut him out and then stick him on something. If I had to cut around every single toe and frond on his mane, bits would get cut off and I'd loose the will to live. Second reason gives him a bit of a lift; after all he's going to be a predominantly black dragon going onto a black background.  

Okay, next step was to add the undertones. He is going to be predominantly black, but I wanted him to appear to have a red tint to him. So to achieve this I colour the patches of scales with the darker red and the go straight in on top of that with the lighter, more orange red to intensify the colour. 

This is the same process that I used on the under-belly but repeated a couple of times. 

It starts to look a little something like this.

With the lighter more orange red, I start to expand these patches a little so that when the black is added over the top it has a more gradual blend to it.

This was the finished result. I had a bit of fun with the head to add some interest. 

Basically I added black lightly over the red scales to blend it all in, and added the dark blue to areas that would have had shadow on them.

Some close ups further down. 

This was the finished product... 

World domination...

We've recently decorated our kitchen, and decided that the walls would look great with these hung on them.

Hocus Pocus .....

What to do on a rainy bank holiday weekend? I got bored and thought that it there's know time like the present to go and label my spice jars.... Because I'm weird like that.... think of me what you will...

Monster cup of Coffee.

So had a great day out in London yesterday with my awesome friend (you know who you are!). We took a walk around The Victoria and Albert museum, and the British museum. I now never want to see stairs ever again! In between visits we decided we better stop for lunch, and so found the nearest Costa Coffee shop. I asked for a large coffee... What I got was so big it needed a handle on either side of the cup!!! Officially the biggest cup of coffee I have ever seen!!

You seen this yet???

Have you checked out my store yet? 

Check it out...

deadwithtequila.storenvy.com/  

I Got Something To Tell You....

Finally after 9 months of hard work I am proud to say that my store for

DEAD WITH TEQUILA 

will be opening

WEDNESDAY 30th JULY 

2pm GMT

Get more info at 

deadwithtequila.blogspot.com 

Tell Everyone!!!

Life is a snowball...

In November of 2013 I finally signed the paperwork and dropped out of college after 9 months of illness. I threw away my ambitions of a PhD and a life as a psychologist; my supposed dream life. But the stress of college and the constant nagging from staff about university and exams and a million other insignificant things had finally took it's toll, exhaustion had kicked in and life came to a halt. For as long as I can remember I've always had a direction in which I'm heading; this time I didn't. I had been on the path towards a clinical pysch degree for so long, the sudden derailment from that path had kind of left me spinning, no longer knowing where I wanted my life to be going. Although I wasn't sick anymore, I was still wandering around day after day with that dead look in my eyes. I've always been a creative person even as a kid, always been dreaming up mad, weird and wonderful ideas; a friend of mind put it as that spark in the eye, you always know when my brain is thinking of something a bit crazy. I guess I lost my spark. One 30 Seconds To Mars show later and the spark was back (thanks for an awesome night by the way!!)

Over the next week madness ensued. With there being very few jobs available to young people today, and after having a couple of interviews and not getting the job, I decided to make one. I met up with a close friend of mine and said "Go into business with me." . This was met with a blank stare and a pause followed by "Okay, what we gonna do?"  

I got her hooked on jewelry making and I got the paint brushes, pens, pencils and my digital design software out and we started on our first trip into the unknown world of business. Together we make Dead With Tequila. We aim to create and provide original quirky art, and jewelry at affordable prices. I don't believe that someone should have to be a millionaire in order to have and original piece hanging on their wall. 

In the next few weeks Dead With Tequila will be diving into the rabbit hole head first, and opening it's hypothetical doors of it's online store.  I shall be tweeting about it and so will Dead With Tequila. Spread the word because, 90% of our products are one off pieces so once they're gone, they're gone. Hope you see something you like! 

Remember

Dead With Tequila 

SOON

 

My first Zentangle!!!

So I recently discovered the art that is Zentangle, and love it!!! I was just messing around for this but am actually quite impressed if I do say so myself.

Reverse Candles

Painted this back in October. I used acrylics on stretched paper. Basically this is a slice of randomness from my brain. But I think it would be rather cool if candles did have black flames, don't you ?????

Shoe Graveyard

I did this as part of my art coursework. We were all told to bring in an old shoe that we could paint; so naturally, not wanting to sacrifice my own awesome shoes, I stole one of my mums (just kidding she let me have it, promise).Three weeks later and with much growling in frustration I finally ended up with this... 

Polaroid Project...

So this is still work in progress I'm gonna keep adding to it over time.

Book review : Requiem For A Dream

Requiem for a Dream by Hubert Selby Jr.
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

So I stumbled across Requiem For A Dream purely by chance, and thought 'it's a bit different from what I normally read, but hey, lets mix it up.' Books about addiction and social psychology (as much as it interests me) and chasing dreams are not the kind of thing that occupies my self space, (paranormal stuff and vampires, are a different story, pardon the pun).

I read loads of reviews saying that this is a book that will stay with you long after you read it, and in my experience, that is a load of rubbish; but this time, people were so right. Once you get past the distinct lack of punctuation, (namely speech marks), and how it's mostly written in New York dialect and slang, the world and characters that are created are so real and believable. You really get inside their head and can understand their need and thought processes as to why that next fix is so important to them. I think it's important to point out that this book is about more than addictions and the affect they have on everyday life. Requiem For A Dream is very much a book about the lengths that people will go to, in an attempt to achieve their dreams and change their life.

This book also looks at the consequences of the heroin and diet pill addictions that plague the main characters of this book; the psychological toll it takes on the individual. You also get a glimpse at the end of the book at how unjust the medical/psychiatric system was the time. I genuinely felt for the characters in this book, felt their pain and struggle, and also felt sorry for how they were judged by others and how this just adds fuel the the already burning fire, and drags them further into their problems.

As a reader, you're on the outside looking in at these peoples lives, and I get it now; after reading this, I get how people can end up on this downward spiral in life. Requiem For A Dream is one of those books that you have to read at least once in your life. This book really does get under your skin and stays with you, there's something almost haunting about it. Read this book.

View all my reviews