Skin Art

This is just a brief post.

Some of you Internet travellers may have seen the photos of a girl with writing all over her skin. Her name is Ariana Page Russell and she has a skin condition called dermographia (which is a bit of a loose term). The link is here:

http://www.arianapagerussell.com/work/skin-two/

Well, I have a similar, if not the same, condition which is called urticaria. It’s basically hives all over my body and it’s immensely painful and itchy. I take a lot of antihistamines and use lotion but it still returns a few hours later. It doesn’t really affect the things I do but I’ve almost torn my skin to shreds at times.

Recently, I wondered if I could do the same thing as that girl Ariana did with her skin.

It turns out I can but it’s not an experiment I’ll try again. It upsets my boyfriend so I’ve promised him that after taking one photo that I would stop.

So, here you are, the one and only photo that I will take of my urticaria.

Ouch My Leg

Yes, I messed it up but it does spell ouch!

Art

I’ve been doing art for as long as I can remember and it’s an aspect of my life that’s very important to me. It definitely runs in my (large) family and for years I thought it was natural to have brothers and sisters who all dabbled in art and music. My brothers have been very inspiring with their art and music for years, even though they themselves were scattered around the globe. (We’re natural born travellers it seems.)

So, from my brothers I learnt drawing, sketching, painting, calligraphy and photography. I’ve already shown you some of my photos so today I’m going to show you some of my drawings and sketches.

Some of this stuff is real old as I used to draw a lot, especially as a teenager. I then hit a dark patch for a few years. During this time, most of the art I made did not survive but luckily one or two pieces are still with me.

And some of these pieces are pretty new, within the last year or so when my artistic streak was revived by having my very own protegé. (Which, I must admit, is freakin’ awesome! You can check out his stuff on onequickclick.wordpress.com)

Enjoy!

Starting from around 2000:

"Dead London" from the record inlay for "War Of The Worlds"

Dog Playing A Harmonica

"Rose"

Leonardo Da Vinci's Anatomical Studies

From 2004:

Turbalance Part 1

The other parts to this are gone forever (either destroyed or given away) but part 3 of this was very calm.

Okapi Study

From 2007:

"Hand Of Fire"

In 2007/2008 I decided to challenge myself with doing a giant-sized calligraphy piece based on the spoken word song “Coded Language” by Saul Williams. It took a few months due to laziness and lack of a deadline for myself. It also took 7 A2 pages, at least 4 or 5 black pens, going over each and every letter at least twice (my pens kept on running out of ink and it was pretty visible otherwise), an entire eraser rubbed out of existence and a whole lot of patience.

I’m only going to show you a sample or two but you can view the rest here.

Coded Language Pg 1

Coded Language Pg 4

Coded Language Pg 5

Coded Language title with Irish Sign Language

Check out the video on Youtube.

And last but not least,  a stencil I made using the template for a pumpkin carving starring My Tallests from the cartoon “Invader Zim”.

My Tallest stencil