New digital download prints on the shop...

I've been enjoying getting into the world of Etsy and it definitely gives me a sense of accomplishment to see how much work I have, I pretty much always feel like I need to be doing more, so it's satisfying to see that I actually have a lot to show for myself!

I noticed that you can sell work as a download also on the site, and I went back to the many digital illustrations i've done over the years and threw up a few different examples - shown here. All work available for download can be found here.
Yay art!

3d Visual Elements

As part of the Applied Art course, we presented our 3d visual elements group project today. Here are a few shots of our installation. We focused on using cardboard, newspaper and bamboo and a limited number of motifs throughout the piece. We aimed to use careful construction, repetition and composition to balance geometric with organic forms, and heavy lines with lighter lines. We've to take it all down tomorrow, it's going to be hard after the work and thought that's gone into it!

Lisbon, Elvin Meeting

Last week myself and a colleague, Shane Cronin traveled to Lisbon to attend the third ELVIN (European Languages Virtual Network) project meeting. ELVIN is a European Union (EU) Lifelong Learning Programme Project aimed at creating an informal social network to support and facilitate language learning.

DEIS has developed an online social network which will be opened up for piloting on the 1st of November (stay tuned for a link!). This meeting concentrated on developing pilot action plans for the upcoming usability tests.

In the meantime myself & Shane got to enjoy Lisbon, it's a fantastic city! It reminded me of an Edinburgh in the sun, it's very old with layers and layers of old streets and arches, quite the labyrinth! One of the highlights was spotting the Blu and Os Gemeos murals I blogged about a while back. So exciting to see them in real life! I'd love to know the process behind doing something like that. The black silhouette photo above is on the building next to the Blu and Os one. It's very striking as it is, but I wouldn't be surprised if it's still under development. Here's a few photos from the weekend. More on my flickr.

Beautiful Spanish Architecture

So still slightly obsessed with all things Spanish after my trip last weekend, I came across this STUNNING work of architecture on thecoolist.com. It's incredibly understated, pure and functional. It's also very intelligently designed, carrying the Azahar Group's green agenda throughout all aspects of the building. See more here and here.


This second image is of a canoe shed in Andalucia, one of the loveliest sheds i've ever seen! It really reminds me of the Azahar building, beautifully simple clean shapes and perfectly complementary to it's surroundings. See more on weheart.co.uk.

Poster for France / Slow Motion Heroes

Posters for new Cork band, France (now known as Slow Motion Heroes - changed the name just as I finished the posters!).

I spent a lot of time drawing the actual buildings, lots of messing with perspective grids in illustrator & reading up architecture books for inspiration! I also experimented a lot with the style of representation, using real-world textures on the buildings and eventually discarding these in favour of a hand-drawn look. I shaded the buildings using a crosshatch technique with drawing pens, eventually using these for the more muted image and using hand drawn, unfilled buildings for the more colourful image.

The name of the band, "France" being synonymous with a place, I wanted to create a landscape, turning the country into an imaginary city. I had a number of different ideas for the landscape, which eventually pared down to two, as shown above. One involved a fantasy, dreamlike place. The other is more "real world", based on the view from my family home in Carrigtwohill, which to me (maybe not to everyone!) represents a tranquility that results from a certain amount of removal from the rest of the world, but also, conversely, excitement, energy and the possibilities of the great unknown!