Projects

A collection of 33 posts

Bookbinding

Making stuff

Recently, I've been really intrigued by bookbinding. I've taken to watching many videos on YouTube showing how you can approach various types of books, how to stitch and glue them together, how to make your own book cloth etc. This weekend, I wanted to try something relatively simple and make

Film

True Grit

Six weeks down, fourty-six to go! This week's piece was infulenced by our recent viewing of the Coen brother's take on True Grit (definitely worth a viewing or three). I hadn't really intended on doing a portrait of Jeff Bridges but I thought it'd be an interesting challenge so I

Projects

Unfinished study

I think I'm starting to get into the swing of things with this project now. I'm drawing more regularly and starting to push myself into learning skills I weren't expecting. Over the last two weeks, I've found myself becoming more keen to try producing more realistic work, derived from real

Film

Chaplin

It's no secret that I'm a big fan of Charlie Chaplin and it was only a matter of time before he was the subject of one of these illustrations. To be quite honest, I'm surprised I left it this long and it's only week four! I believe this shot of

Projects

Hand

A little late posting this one, I've had a bit of a busy few days working on another project. I decided to try another study of basic form which ended up being my left hand. This one was admittedly rushed as I've had little time to focus on this project.

Projects

Wife feet

This week has been a bit of a struggle to do something that I would be happy to post. I toyed with the idea of doing a Sherlock based piece to mark the final episode of series 2 airing this evening but I wasn't happy with my tests. They were

Projects

Marilyn

So I'm kicking off my 52weeks, 52works project with a pencil portrait. I've not done much pencil work since my college days so I thought it was a good starting point as it's something I want to improve on as the year progresses. I'm my own worst critic so there

Projects

52 weeks

For years now I've been banging on about getting back into a more regular routine of creating art, primarily illustration. I've periodically picked up my pens to do a bit of illustration but these occasions are few and far between. The quiet periods is partly (and probably mainly) down to

Photography

Project 50 // Black and White

Nearly on the final stretch of Project50. The shots here sit within the Black & White category.

Photography

Project 50 // Colour

Continuing to focus on certain areas, this time I was trying out colour for emphasis (or absence of contrasting colour in some cases).

Photography

Project 50 // Composition

Another set of photos from Project 50, this time trying to focus on composition. I think I've achieved some interesting shots with an odd one which isn't too great. I suppose it's a plus that I know where some went wrong and can learn from it.

Photography

Project 50 // Exposure

As I wrote [https://blog.nocturnalmonkey.com/back-to-basics/] before the project began, I wanted to split the project up into 5 separate sections to focus on different disciplines. The first ten days focussing on exposure and relying less on corrections in post-production. Corrections to exposure that is, I allowed myself

Photography

Back to basics

My active participation in photography has lapsed rather badly this year due, in part, to time restrictions, lack of inspiration and in many cases, plain laziness. There have been occasions where we've attended an event where my camera could have been put to good use but I decided not to.

Reading

Need to read

I'm currently sitting in the office of Oli [http://twitter.com/#!/oliverker] and Chris [http://twitter.com/#!/christophercox] having just got back from this year's DIBI conference reflecting on the work I do and the drive to learn even more. On the drive down from Newcastle, Mark (aka greenboyroy [http:

Photography

Project 50 // Week seven

On the home stretch and still not completely out of ideas, although some days I was admittedly cut down by late nights and... ahem, alcohol. Day forty-four ~ New boots Tonight we went out for a few drinks and some food. Lu bought some new boots so I thought I'd shoot

Photography

Project 50 // Week six

Week six has been a mixture of inspiration and... well, not so much. Despite that I kept on going, really just trying to find my feet with off camera flash. Day thirty-seven ~ Magicman I've been interested in close-up magic on and off for the last ten years. I don't really

Photography

Project 50 // Week five

Five weeks in, only two weeks to go! This week has been interesting as I've made the first small steps in to strobist photography! Using Rick's recommendations [http://ricknunn.com/strobist-startup-kit/], I got my hands on some great gear for a decent price. I'm still working out how to get

Projects

New exercises

For quite some time now I've been eager to pick up my pens and pencils again to do what I spent most of my teenage years doing, drawing. Before I discovered the wonders of the web, I was very much an analogue type of person, the only time I touched

Photography

Project 50 // Week four

Nothing much to write as an introduction this week. Some days I've been filled with inspiration, others I've been completely lost for ideas but still keeping it going regardless. Day twenty-two ~ Starman This shot was inspired while browsing a blog post displaying some lovely examples of bokeh photography [http://photo.

Photography

Project 50 // Week three

It's that time of week again, for a round-up of the last seven days. Like last week, it's been pretty tough to come up with ideas and it hasn't helped that the weather has been poor. Anyway, I managed to keep up with a shot a day. Day fifteen ~ Luisa

Photography

Project 50 // Week two

Continuing on from last weeks [https://blog.nocturnalmonkey.com/project-50-week-one/] round-up is week two of Project50. This week has been quite tough, a couple of days I was lacking inspiration and others were no brainers. On with the show! Day eight ~ Reflection First self shot of the project. I experimented

Photography

Project 50 // Week one

It's been 7 months since I finished the behemoth project that is Project365 so I decided it was time to start another one. My decision to start Project50 was greatly influenced by a few photo buddies wanting to do it too. Project50 is very much like 365 in the way

Projects

Taking on another project

On the run up to Christmas 2009, I started seeing lots of chat and murmurings about something called Project52 [http://project52.info/]. I seem to remember seeing mentions of it the year before but this time there were a fair few people chatting about it, so I went and had

Photography

283/365 // The Busker

We went to the album launch of Roger Davies' new album, The Busker. It's currently only available on CD but it'll be on iTunes in the near future.

Photography

280/365 // Collie

For my birthday, Luisa's niece and nephew bought me my first Hero of Burgertown toy which happened to be named Collie. It's kinda strange since I've got a mate named Colly who shares a studio with Jon Burgerman. Todays photo is dedicated to those chaps down in Nottingham-land.