Been away in Wales over the weekend.

Doing an Uni project at home and baking buns which turned out looking nice, but tasting horrific! I think I might have to throw away the entire stash. A shame really. :(

Buns! Buns! Buns!

Think the reason the dough got so bad was because of some dodgy yeast that I used. I thought it would be fine, but seems it kind of killed everything. O_o

Italians coming here tonight! Adriano has promised to make some Tiramisu. I can’t wait!

Will also get bird on Saturday. The baby bird. :D Wheee. Will take pics.

I just got home from my assessment. It was the first assessment I’ve had where you have your grade given to you on the spot, so I was a bit nervous.

In the end, I got so much constructive criticism that my brain melted. “Your typography is horrendous!” to quote one tutor. “You need to think!” “Step back! Pause! Don’t just slap everything on!” I was pummelled (if that would be the right word to use?) from two different directions, sitting in the middle with a big smile on my face. Man, I’m a masochist. My tutor said that she liked the fact that people could be frank and to the point with me, just like I am in class to others. She didn’t sugar coat anything while criticising my art.

In a way, this is a shock to the system when you’ve grown up with people who’ve always told you that your artwork is ‘nice’ and ‘pretty’. To suddenly have someone point out all the errors and grill you for it is really a special experience to say the least.

My grade was average. Not even close to the highest grade. At this point one year ago, I would probably have a breakdown and eat a tub of icecream, but this is something I need to get used to now. Illustration is competitive and ruthless at times. If you show obvious weakness in some areas, you will be shoved aside. You can’t let this get to you. When someone gives you criticism, don’t take it personally. See it as an opportunity to improve.

Next mission? Learn typography.

My time for personal assessment is tomorrow after lunch. I will be assessed by two tutors, one of them being the head of Illustration. They will tell me my grade on the spot. I’m… … Nervous to say the least. Normally, you get your grade in a nice little letter, not in your face by tutor after 10 minutes of looking at your work. This is way more personal.
Need to pick up a parcel. Hopefully it’s the birdie food I’ve been waiting for. Along with the UV lamp. Stuff is coming together here.
Have to finish the essay tonight so I can hand it in tomorrow. Not feeling very inspired to write, but hopefully some fried egg on toast will spark some wondrous writing talent I never knew I had. … I’m not expecting any miracles though.

Have been feeling very anti-social due to University work. I have a sort of love-hate relationship with this. I love working. It brings me so much self satisfaction I just cannot explain really. But I also love friends. As a buddy of mine said, I need people around me. Otherwise I’d go a bit nutty. And yes, Illustrating is a very lonely business. Even our tutors say that. Get as much social interaction as you can, because you will be spending a lot of your time at the drawing table on your own.

When I spoke to the budgie breeder Colin over the phone, we decided to meet up the evening after (yesterday evening) to have a look at his budgies and discuss my plan about getting one myself.

The reason why I’ve never liked phones is because you can’t see the person on the other end and read their body language. But at the same time, it’s quite interesting since you build up your own picture of the person by just listening to their voice. The same happened online while I was chatting with WoW people over ventrilo. Some of them I had no idea what they looked like, but you could still sort of tell by their voice. … Anyway! Trailed off there.

So yesterday evening me and Tom took a bus to Colin’s house which is a bit outside Bristol. I was planning to go on my own first, but Tom wouldn’t let me. Fair enough. I was going somewhere I had never been, to a person I’d never met and try to find the house on a Friday night (bad night to be outside. many drunkies). Tom was a bit apprehensive since I acted very naively about the entire thing, but I just got a good feeling about the person over the phone. So yeah… I was relying on a good feeling. Hm. I’ve never been a logical girl. Always relying on feeling. :P

We arrived at the house safely and were greeted by an old man who was smiling widely and immediately asked us if we wanted some coffee. Back home, I hadn’t had time to drink my coffee since we were about to miss the bus, so I said yes! :D We sat down in their living room and began chatting about birds and other things. We were surrounded by photos of Colin’s family and relatives. It felt very homey immediately. A bit like my grandmothers house, but with less stuff. :D

What I DID notice though was the silence. Where did he keep the birds? Budgies are known to chatter all the time, but the house was strangely calm. Not only that, but he also claimed to have over 150 budgies(!). Tom had asked him hos many he had and he had chuckled and replied: “You count them. I don’t know!” But he then settled for around 150.

I was very eager to see them and finished my coffee quickly. Colin’s wife entered the room and asked us if we wanted a biscuit. It was just so sweet. I have her character in my head now. Might have to draw her.

Colin finally got up and told us to get our coats on. It was time to see the budgies! I was trying not to bounce around too much to give them a good first impression of me being grown up, mature and responsible. Inside I was squealing. :D We went out the backdoor to a detached house in the back of their garden. When we came close to it, I could hear the distinctive ACK ACK ACKA CKA CKACKACKAKCKASAJSHJKA of a trillion budgies. Colin turned to us and said: “You might feel a bit deafened at first.” He opened the door and we entered a world of budgies. I was blown away. He had two huge avaries with free flying colourful birds and what seemed like about 50 nesting boxes against the walls of the house.

Here I could probably go on and ramble about how awesome the birds were and about the individual birds I spoke to, but to cut a very long story a bit shorter, I went to the side of one of the avaries and began chattering with one of the blue budgies there who came up to me curiously and started chatting back in that distinctive purring way. He even rubbed his head against the bars. At this point, I tried to be a bit objective or whatever you would call it, checking for any signs of ill treatment or otherwise, but all the budgies had a wonderful coat, a lively temper and food and water in abundance. This was the opposite of the petshop I had visited earlier.

Colin then brought us to the nesting boxes and opened them. For the first time in my life, I saw baby budgies that had just hatched. They are sort of transparent! You can see their inner organs and what they have in their stomach. It’s amazing. I also got to listen to one of the eggs where I could hear chirping inside. Colin said it would probably hatch very soon. We saw baby budgies in all stages, from newborn to 3 weeks old where they have started getting feathers.

Before me and Tom had arrived at this wonderful location, my mum (Hej Mamma!) had called me on my mobile and asked about the budgies. When I told her about the plan to get an older budgie for a few weeks while waiting for the babies to grow, she said: “Be careful! You know that you won’t be able to hand it back once you got it! I know you Jennie!”

Yes, my mum knows me. :P But I will try my best. Because I know that an older budgie is a lot harder to tame. A lot.

So what’s the plan now? I wait for the accessories to arrive next week, prepare the house, and then visit Colin again with the intent of bringing a birdie with me home.

capslock warning. IT WAS AMAZING :D!

I have been literally BOUNCING around in the flat, giggling like a schoolgirl!

I just got a phone call from a budgie breeder in Bristol who turned out to be an extremely nice old man with his wife in the background. We had a conversation for about half an hour or something where we discussed budgies and me coming over there to have a look myself. This is not a breeding season, so none of the breeders have any babies at the moment, but we cut a deal where Colin (the breeder) will let me start off with one of last years late baby batch until this years budgie babies come of age. This is such an absolutely perfect plan which I never thought he would even suggest.

I can’t wipe the smile of my face right now. Absolutely positively beaming!

Tomorrow me and Tom will visit Colin and his wife to look at budgies!

I can’t wait. Can’t wait! Squeeee! :D

… And saw the small cramped cages in the back room. There were five budgies in a cage not even big enough for one. They only had one perch and no toys or anything. The cage looked more like a box with only an opening up front, making it very dark. They all seemed unwell and lethargic, making no noise whatsoever (budgies are known to chatter continuously while awake).
I was very upset when I saw this and just wanted to take them out of there, but it is a sad fact that if you buy birds from petshops to ’save’ them, you are simply helping the shop to buy more.

I’m still upset while writing this and fighting urges to go back. In happier news: My bird accessories have now been successfully ordered and will hopefully arrive next week. I just texted a breeder in Bristol… and my phone just went Bing! Maybe it’s the breeder! *poofs*

This is the last week of work on this project. On Monday at 9.30, we will bring everything in and have individual assessments with the tutors. I’m working my balls off and think of nothing else than getting this project done. This is like giving birth for a week! Soon the baby will pop out! When that is done, I will have some well earned rest.

Had an entire day of presentations. Would write about that, but my brain is pretty gooey at the moment.

I’ve come to another wall. Had plenty of those lately. Basically, I am trying to figure out why I’m doing this and how I will go about doing it. I’m feeling very overwhelmed with all the different techniques, materials, styles and approaches that can be made to convey messages through illustration. Always feel like I could (and should) do so much more. Why am I not drawing this journal instead? Why am I not doing advanced people studies? Why am I not properly researching new artists on a regular basis and documenting it? etc etc.

Nothing I do is ever enough to please myself :P I can always do more and better.

Today is one of the deadlines of my three projects, namely my Pastiche. This is the project I am least happy with and I will probably not scan the final piece since I’m *that* unhappy with it. My tutor told me to choose an artist that would be challenging. He suggested Thomas Rowlandson after I had gone through about 5 artists (Rowlandson being one of them).

Thomas Rowlandson was an English caricature artist living in the late 1700s to the early 1800s. He did etchings, something which I’ve never ever done before this project. It is really hard. Extremely hard in fact, and I feel like I’ve failed a bit, but to be honest, I couldn’t really expect to do a new printing technique and be good at it straight away. :( Bleh.

Other than that! If money arrives in the right places this week, we will be ordering the cage and accessories! Which means that I am getting closer to my budgies! Yes. I have been nagging about these birds for ages now. <3

Yes, it is so exciting I have to write it in capslock.

Here are my two very first serious homepages with their own bought domain names.

www.nebo-comic.com www.jenniegyllblad.com

This is a great day!

jenniegyllblad.com is still under construction. I grabbed the domain name so I can add my future portfolio on there.

nebo-comic.com is up and running though, for the very first time! I am adding pages to the comic whenever I get them done.