Thursday 24 December 2015

Merry Christmas everybody!

Merry Christmas everybody! I hope you all have a lovely holiday, and have a very happy new year! Bring on 2016!

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P.S. are you kids looking forward to a visit from Father Christmas and all his little helpers? ^^ xxx

Wednesday 9 December 2015

Travelling to Japan!

Out of all of the countries I've travelled this year, Japan was the place that stood out the most to me! I visited mostly Tokyo and Kyoto, but also shortly visited Nara and Osaka :)...

... and IT WAS EVERYTHING I'd DREAMED IT TO BE! Everybody there was so nice to me and so respectful and cute! And EVERYTHING was cute: the houses were cute, the trees were cute, the cars are cute, the people are cute, their uniforms were cute... One of my favourite things was that you could be walking down the street (almost anywhere) and in the split second that you recognise that you're thirsty there's a drinks machine no more than a few metres away from you!

And the toilets... oh my... that was a real treat, while backpacking to leave a country with some of the worst toilets in the world, to go to the place with the BEST toilets in the world! :D

Japan is such a nice place to visit in terms of aesthetics - so many beautiful and interesting Shrines and houses and Gardens everywhere! I loved every minute of my time there, and can't wait to visit again someday (and get me more of that delicious noodle soup!!)

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My only regret is that I don't follow Anime very much! I was having kittens over all the video game merchandise I found in Akihabara, Tokyo! Imagine if I'd also been finding posters and figurines of my favourite Anime characters! Maybe I'll have to get into Anime properly before I visit again!



Saturday 28 November 2015

Kindle Fire HDX - Autodesk SketchBook - Digital Paint - Review

During my travels, sure I could sketch in a sketchpad, but I didn't want to be completely cut off from painting digitally. So on investing in a Kindle Fire my thought process was that I could kill several birds with one stone -

1) having something to read on,
2) having something that essentially could act as a personal computer,
3) something to Paint and Draw on!

I used an app called 'Autodesk SketchBook', it's free and it's pretty good but you pay a small fee to unlock more advanced features (to replicate a normal digital painting program much better).

However, painting on Kindle is a bit like smudging paint around a canvas with your bare fingers (even when using a stylus). It's Jittery, unresponsive and generally very frustrating to work with. You'll find yourself constantly drawing and erasing areas you didn't intend the paint to cover. You can create nice artwork, but it's a bit like two steps forward one step back the entire time, because the stylus just never is precise and accurate enough.

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Nevertheless, I've soldiered on with a few pieces and did come out with some nice artwork, but I feel that drawing these on my normal Macbook with Graphics Tablet would have taken a lot less time (maybe four times quicker).

So my conclusion? Definitely don't rely on digitally painting on your Kindle, it just isn't developed enough to work properly for that. I have heard that this isn't the case with painting digitally on Ipads, so maybe it's worth trying, though I have no experience of that myself so couldn't say for sure.

Overall? 4/10 - I'll be sticking to my beloved Macbook and Intuos Tablet for now :)

All the best,

xLouisax

Tuesday 28 July 2015

Travel time!

So I've been a little busy over the past several months going on an adventure around the world! I just got to a point in my life where I was happy with how well I've done with my career. I'd graduated and got a good few years of experience working as an Illustrator and Designer and worked incredibly hard for every day of my life up until this point, so I thought it was definitely a good time to go off and have a gap year which I never had the chance to do before!

And its been great!!

I've ended up in Australia where I'm staying with a friend I met on the road and working part time in a local cafe to help save up for my next portion of backpacking around Oz!

I couldn't possibly share everything I've done while travelling this year because I'd need an entirely separate blog for that, but here's a few photos to give you guys a glimpse of my adventures! This whole experience has been incredibly inspiring and rejuvenating and I'm looking forward to coming back to London to work! 


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Thailand

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 Vietnam and Laos

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Cambodia and Japan! <3 nbsp="" p="">
Peace out,

xLouisax