★ Lilly Ashton ★: May 2014

Gloves & Boots

These are drawings I've made during the past week. I've been experimenting with layering clothes over the basic person shape, rather than constructing the entire clothed figure as the base drawing. It's made me consider more carefully the shapes that the clothes themselves make as separate objects I've also really enjoyed giving my characters more defined hands and feet by adding gloves and boots. The two layers of paint and pen work well together because the base painting lets me construct an effortless shape with lovely texture and colour, whilst the layer of pen on top lets me add precision and definition to the characters and their personalities.

A small drawing of a girl with glasses. Written text above this character says "mothcub".

Listening to: Nina Simone - Feeling Good

Mashed Berry

In November last year I wrote 50,000 words for the sake of it in the brain-melting endeavour known as NaNoWriMo. The story is called Mashed Berry because its underlying plot revolves around magical, mind-altering berries which are utilised in various ways by the story's characters.

Synopsis:

When rich scientist Dean Gaffney and a spooky electoral candidate team up to moderately inconvenience the world, Lilly is forced to help, but how can she help fix this unpleasant situation, and how are a bunch of slightly rebellious alien teenagers involved?

Excerpt:

"Dean Gaffney ordered a suit of gold leaf on the internet and lay back in his racecar bed with his goblet of $900 whiskey. He switched on a shopping channel on his new 6D television and watched intently as a smiley, bleach-toothed man who looked as if he was in receipt of frequent electric shocks rambled excitedly about a pair of dinosaur earrings with precious gemstones for eyes. Dean was quite impressed and wondered if he should get his ears pierced and start a collection of such beauties. He grabbed his mobile phone from atop his personal minibar full of amaretto and 29c lager, stopped for a split second to admire his own name scrawled unintelligibly in diamonds on the back, and dialled the shopping channel’s number. He sang along jollily to the hold music before purchasing the dinosaur earrings for $670. He was going to look gorgeous."

This is an unedited draft, and most of what I've written was forced out with my only goal being to meet the word count at all costs, so there is a lot of truly awful writing here, but there are parts of this story I really love too.

I am presenting the entire unedited text for your scrutiny/enjoyment/embarrassment. Good luck in there.

Here are some of the latest drawings from my notebook. Full of lots of shapes and flowers and smiling folks with blunt fringes.

Listening to: Indiana - Solo Dancing

Diary: "tasty cheddar and spinach sarnies"

All I write about in my diary is tea and food. I guess those are some important things. Is the "bread butt" the best part of a piece of bread? I think so.

Listening to: Moloko - Pure Pleasure Seeker

Fitting Room Focus: Tesco Florals

I have finally ripped myself away from H&M to visit the exciting world of Tesco again - the land of baroque patterning and 1D t-shirts that act as mood rings when their design starts peeling off at the first sign of you feeling thirsty or inquisitive and you're left inquisitively frowning at Louis Tomlinson's face as it flops away from your t-shirt sadly, almost as if it could feel distaste. Those are the two thing you can buy, basically (unless you want a t-shirt for your 3 year old son with the phrase "ladies' man" emblazoned on the chest, and I really, really don't).

Anyway as you can see below, I've accidentally dressed as a plum.

plum cosplay

top - £8

This is not a good photo for my hair, but consider an exercise in honest hair representation. We all, those of us who have hair, know that it rules us, not the other way around.

I needed to show you the only important part of this top - the cool detail. I could easily fantasise that all my tops have a lavishly detailed see-through panel. Why don't they have this? This top makes me question my lifestyle with its fancy panel.

top - £14

After retrieving my mind from the fantasy land of lace panelling, I tried on this top, which has an interesting and very cushiony pattern. If you are in the habit of dressing up as a cushion, this could be the top for you. It's a comfy one, and the cut is nice. All you have to do next is apply tassels around your edges.

top - £16

I saw this top on a rail and I thought the pattern was so cute. I've been wearing daisy patterns leggings recently so I've been in a bit of a daisy haze. When I tried it on, however, it felt as if I had put on an inflated balloon. The shape and size of the thing was impossible to understand, and I wondered briefly if this top had been made for a car engine to wear. It certainly wasn't human-shaped.
Lovely pattern, absolutely awful garment.

I couldn't bring myself to continue after the daisy top monstrosity. It could possibly fit my scanner, but my scanner refuses to wear anything other than crop tops. Speaking of which, here's a bonus H&M shot for any H&M fanatics out there:

"mon petit cheri" crop top - £3.99 H&M, daisy leggings - £3 Primark

Listening to: Yael Naim - Toxic

Sections

Sometimes it's good to cut things down. To take a small section of something and appreciate it singularly. To construct new collages out of small cool things extracted from big things. Discarded paintings, trees, your body. Everything you make, believe, and are is a collection. Don't forget your rotating potential to curate your experiences and images.

Listening to: The Damned - Melody Lee

JENNIFER LOPEZ LOLLIPOP

For my uni assessment exhibition this week I made this quick little art book. The paintings inside are quite hurried and messy as I was concentrating mostly on trying out the book as a form. It was really fun and easy to make - I just painted some A5 pages, folded them over, and stapled them together in the middle.
Here's the blurb I wrote for the exhibition:

JENNIFER LOPEZ LOLLIPOP
Lil Ashton

This book is a prototype testing the book as a relevant form for exhibiting my “world” of paintings, drawings, etc. The viewer is invited inside the book, making the tactile experience of handling the object an important component of the work. Via my interest in small items (trinkets, gifts, zines, etc) this is an effective way for me to create a world/idea and to put myself into a holdable object as a token of a moment or section of time.

The words throughout the book are fragmented thoughts, the wandering of the mind, hopefully expressing the vastness and complexity of one mind (mine) and by extension the enormity of the cultural context that surrounds every person, being, and object - the huge and holistic nature of our environment’s effect and influence on us as individuals. The title was formed unthinkingly, but it is evidence of the pervading influence of pop culture on our thoughts and consciousness, as well as my preoccupation with my own childhood and adolescence as framed by the cultural environment of the 00s.

Having the book hanging from the wall hopefully encourages interaction and in future books I would like to attempt to construct a mode of interaction between myself and an audience, perhaps via questions or instructions, or other modes of invitation for the viewer to act upon my work in some way.