Friday 29 January 2010







BRILLUSTRATORS' PROJECT: "WE FEEL FINE" (STRONG LANGUAGE WARNING!)

The latest Brillustrator project required us to visit "We Feel Fine", a website containing phrases and sentences relating to emotions that have been harvested from blogs the world over. Our task was to choose a piece that fired our imagination and to illustrate it one or more images.
As is probably apparent to anyone looking at these pictures, I've had personal experience of depression and as I trawled the website I kept noticing related statements and so it just seemed the obvious or even necessary route to take. I found it quite emotionally difficult to do this, but ultimately it has been something of a release; enabling me to express, understand and perhaps exorcise feelings that have been festering for a long time.
The aim for me was to show just how debilitating my depression was and how viciously unpleasant and unforgiving my "inner bully" could be, hence the strong language!
I'm feeling a lot better now, by the way, I might even go so far as to say that I feel fine!
Antidepressants, Brillustrators and Dr McG be praised...

Friday 22 January 2010

RHYS HAS THIS TO SAY:

Firstly, a chance piece of eaves-dropping late last year led me to expose myself (in a non-arrestable fashion) to a slender young lady called Katie Green (yes, THE Katie Green!) as she stood behind the counter in CREATIVITY, the pre-eminent craft shop here in Bristol. She too is a crafty illustrator who had started a group of like-minded individuals going by the name of "BRILLUSTRATORS" and I'm pleased to say that I've been welcomed into the fold. It's been such a long time since I had regular contact with other creative creatures that I'd forgotten how interesting and inspirational it can be and with the added benefit of a comforting sense of being with "my kind of people"... it's really cool.
Secondly, next to Katie stood Sophie Swindells, internationally renouned cyclist, dancer, illustrator (we're everywhere!) and craft guru who just happens to be the daughter of Pip, the owner of the CREATIVITY empire! Through getting to know these lovely people I've realised that my passion for getting my fingers mucky could actually lead to a crafty source of income and in fact I've just been commissioned by Pip to produce a spring window display for Creativity!!
So, who knows where all this might lead, eh?
Keep your eyes peeled for www.craftybugger.co.uk