A few small things of note....

I just today realised that I am in fact on itunes. Look!!

Well, my painting is, 'Understanding Love,' to be exact, as Nizlopi make their latest CD offering available to the downloading public. And with it of course my painted album cover tags along for the ride.

Which I find pretty damn cool.

Speaking of which this particular painting is one of the chosen ones to be exhibited at the Vibe Bar, November 26th as part of the group exhibition. It shall be in silky new 30x30cm print format also.

Observe:


And from today, for who knows how long, signed prints will be available to buy from my website. The eagle-eyed of you may have already spied the shiny new donate button and details of print cost etc. See looky here....


Prints just might be the way of the future people, and it's taken me long enough to get to it. The test runs looked pretty as a picture in eye-popping bright colour with a non-reflective silk finish. Super. They're all signed and come with my own-brand quirky certificate of authenticity.

That is all, told you it was just small things of note. Hope you're having a peaceful one.

Art Book on SALE - The perfect Christmas stocking filler

What you don't know is I've been sat here ages with the blog window swinging wide open without typing so much as a word. I got all distracted see, combing itunes for something I was hungry for. Something electro - but not too hard-core. I'd been dusting off a little Metronomy of late and wanted something of a similar vain. And here I find it, MSTRKRFT (feat. John Legend) with Heartbreaker.

Yes I know - I realised 'Heartbreaker' is also a Metronomy track, and a damn fine good one, so there was probably some subliminal messaging going on here, but it's a lovely piano heavy, vocal smothered beats-based track and it's just what I fancied.

All the songs I seem to buy talk about love. Ever since the Operation Concrete love painting I've definitely become more love-aware as a subject. It continues to fascinate me. The representation of love on tv, in books, in the couples that I know - it all interests me. It's turning into a mini-obsession, I'm thinking now the ball has started rolling on this I can only see it gaining speed until I come crashing into my own love-fest that is. :) Maybe I should get 'Love' tattooed somewhere, to keep this state of mind captured. I've heard Dawn Porter has a tattoo of '143' about her person - meaning 'I love you' given the number of letters in each word of course. Perhaps it's a little obvious.

Now I know you're all just dying to know - how oh how did my haircut go??

You were left hanging right?!

Well let me put your minds at ease, it was.....alright. I'm a terrible customer, I always want the moon and the stars. 'Don't take too much off, I'm growing it, but make it look totally different ok?' By the end of the hour I had a neater and slightly more funky version of the reflection I had before. But I've since enhanced it all with a chunk of platinum on the right side - enhanced or destroyed, whichever way you see it.

Christ Tori mention the sodding book already.... YES! I'm in a BOOK, a real book, bound up, with pages, words and everything.

It's very exciting.

Basically part of Operation Concrete - the group exhibition I'm in - oodles of details in previous blogs - is not only launching a novel, but a book of the art inspired by novel in question, and an album with audible delights. And I've heard them, delights indeed.

Here is the cover:



Swanky I think you'll agree. Go here and buy a copy. (Only at amazon.com right now but I think it'll be coming to .co.uk soon). See I've kept my Love painting under wraps until the launch night, with my firm belief that the painting deserves it's debut night and that would be a bit watered down if I plastered it around the net for all and sundry to see.

I will of course circulate my visual version of Love all over the place like the town bike once the launch date has passed, because this needs to be seen. But in the meantime this book is the only way to see what 'Love' looks like. So get your hands on a copy pronto. And what with Christmas just around the corner, get two copies - one for you, one for a friend. Or maybe three? One for you, your friend and your hairdresser? After all, who doesn't like books? And they're so easy to wrap, which only makes your life easier, plus whoever receives it will think you think of them as all artsy and cultured - they'll love that.

On the exhibition night I shall be selling prints galore. They will make ideal Christmas presents for those friends of yours who can't read. Shortly they will be available to buy on my website, so watch this space. But rest assured as soon as all that shit goes down you'll be the first to know. I'll blog another day.

Oh and I thought I'd dig out this, for the firework-inclined.

One day my prints will come....!

Ahhh this is one of the nicest mornings. Still sat half-pajamas on a very unmade bed, sipping warm green tea from my old lady chintz mug, all grey skies and rain sounds outside. Foy Vance soulfully croons out me from my laptop speakers, reminding me that some men are well versed in words on love. It's been a strange couple of weeks, a mixed bag of unpleasant examples from the fuck-wits, the loveless and the downright depressed.

And there's been a lot to do.

On an art-front things have been moving in the right direction, by the end of the week my prints will come! Ok I've milked that joke enough already.... but it's perfectly true. Yesterday armed with a memory key I visited my friends at Lola Print to talk of paper-stocks and to run off a few samples to paw over. And paw I did. We settled on a lovely 300gsm silk-finish paper to reduce glare if the prints are presented behind reflective glass, and the colour is - mmmmmmarvelous. Tasty.

So. As of the end of this week I'll have 6 varieties of prints produced - 3 @ 30x30cm and 3 @ 30x40cm. I'm also trying out a stack of 10 105x148 (that's A6 to you and me) postcards (guess I could have just said 'postcard sized' you'd have got the jist...) that I've cherry picked from the very very new to the awfully old of my works. Can't wait to see the results. I'm going to sign everything, bind the postcards up in ribbon and package the prints in only the finest plastique bags :) Each will have it's own certificate of authenticity - because there is a shocking number of Tori Treasure impersonators out there.

Tisssk....

So I feel, dare I say it, fairly ready for this exhibition show-down at the end of the month. My time is otherwise swallowed by numerous tasks I have found to do on my own personal bible, my portfolio. Such heavy handed primping and preening on the good book is due to an impending interview at Reading University where I hope to study next year. Just have to show them that like a piece of Brighton rock when you snap me in half it reads 'TORTURED ARTIST' through and through.

Right, tea finished and sun coming out, I'm off to carry on with the above, take a couple of paintings into town to be framed, get my hair cut and go to a salsa lesson. Please keep your fingers crossed that Hannah of Toni and Guy is hit with huge inspiration of all types of grandeur and wonder when she sees my 7 month uncut shapeless mess of a hairstyle.

Make-up and headaches

I seldom get unexpected post. Usually it's very expected - it'll be that £1.99 top I won off ebay, that latest book by Belle de Jour special price at Amazon, or giant red and white taped up delieveries of paint tubes.
Today it was none of the abouve, but a ticket - my ticket - to ensure my place at Winchester Guildhall to see Mr Frank Turner. This will be the 6th time I've seen him live...I think it's 6.
Lucky that, as I knew it had been a long time coming, and the show was sometime soon. As in tomorrow night - shit! Tomorrow night.
Now you really know I'm over-busy when I'm missplacing my gigs.
Frank Turner is on my list of guys you must witness live. He's very good at making the audience feel like his comrades, and we're just at one big party in his front room. His lyrics always have a beautiful story to them, told in a rather english angry accent. Long before I got involved with seeking work that explored 'Love' I was hit by one track of Frank's that I think is a near-perfect personal account of love gone sour. My Kingdom for a Horse. I think it explains that feeling you get in a relationship when you know something isn't working, but you just want to screw your eyes shut and keep hold of the dream. Love is for dreamers.


Sometimes I don't understand the position we're in at all. We're born, all totally seperate from one another, housed inside our own secret worlds, with only the ground we walk on in common. Yet we're supposed to pair off, connect with someone so deeply that we paint them into our own landscape as brightly as we can.

But how over romanticised is that? Perhaps we pair off - several times in one life - knocking boots and reproducing. We live to create another generation that will live to create the next. Bacteria does that doesn't it? Only on a fast-forward setting.

Does it all boil down to the same outcome and just depends on how you choose to frame it? We pretty up the designs with care, attention, thoughts - this 'Love' thing. Is Love a deeper understanding only found between a particular combination of two people, or is it our way of making nice of the fact if we didn't fall in love during this lifetime we would somehow be missing out, that being alone isn't an option, so best believe in this love-thing.

I'm sounding so one-sided tonight, quite simply because I am. I struggle with my own definitions of love, attraction, chemistry and understanding when life serves me a shit-biscuit. Believing in Love is probably the biggest leap of faith any one of us will take. It's got to be a stronger force than religion these days. Despite there being no proof, no real cause or reason, every man and woman alike will say 'I love you' to someone at some point in their lives.

In a weird way it makes me angry that I know I want exactly the same thing as everyone else. My ideal in mind might differ from the next girls, but I'll still sign up just as quickly to be sent to planet love to live on love island and live in love house. And I'm only blogging about this because sometimes you think you're on the right track, and you realise it wasn't even a track, it was just a shadow. But there's no map or bus route, no train will speed on trough. It's back to that leap of faith game that I'm so shit at doing. Ever the control freak, playing God with a paintbrush again. But these are things I just need to learn and stop worrying about. I'm just giving myself a headache.

Some days it's nicer to take the make-up off than put it on. Today's one of them days.

Don't wear cheap mascara. My University Open Day.

I'm going to become an Art Teacher. That's the plan.
Or perhaps it's more like the calling. I didn't so much arrive at the decision as I did have the idea knock on my door. After four years of working in the graphic design industry whilst creating art on the side, I unexpectedly lost my job as Graphic Designer. When I tried to pick myself up and carry on down that route I realised my heart just wasn't in it. Instead art had taken centre stage and being in a career that made use of this was the only place I could see myself. Today I took steps closer to this dream by visiting an Open Day at the University I have had my eye on. The University of Reading.
I consider myself to have a fairly 'colourful' past in the academic study of art (punn of course intended), so was sceptical about today's journey back to school. I had a wonderfully encouraging time when studying art at GCSE. I felt nurtured, challenged and inspired by the way the subject was taught and the people who taught me. I was one of those smug kids who usually always got top marks and a reputation for being 'the one good at art' among all who knew me. Naturally I decided to continue my study of art at and enrolled in the college locally known for being the one to go to if you were serious about art. I took a GNVQ (I think - though the subject titled seemed to be forever changing) in Art and Design. This would be 2 years of all sorts of art from painting to textiles. I hoped by the end of the course I would specialise in one technique or the other, and have a better idea of what my kind of style was and how best to use this in a future career. I had enough time to take a further AS-Level so went for Business Studies in a bid to balance out the rampant lush expanse of freeing creativity described in the course. I was all set. I couldn't wait to begin.

It.
Was.
Horrific.

I dropped out after a year - and please understand I am not the quitting type. It's hard to explain in words in this blog just how much that year really destroyed my confidence and self-belief in my capabilities as an artist. Essentially the first grade I received there was a D - and I couldn't understand why. I'd gone from the smug kid who was known for being good at art to a below average student. For the most part of that first year I spent it fighting with all my art teachers, discussing my low grades, defending my work, justifying it, seemingly to no avail. Other students around me seemed to be sailing through the course which baffled me because I couldn't see how my work could possibly be worse than theirs. My style is quite realistic, without trying to sound arrogant I do think I'm a talented artist - we're all good at something and I'm good at this, always have been from a very young age. But as soon as college started I felt almost disadvantaged for having such an 'obvious' gift for art, when others displaying paint splats, smudges and scribbles seemed to be the real more accomplished artists. My heart would sink when the latest project was unleashed and us, along the lines of, 'Please find a chair at your local skip - deconstruct it and then reconstruct it into something you could wear'.

Excuse me...?? What am I getting from this!? What is this teaching me?
I almost wish I refused to do such literal rubbish now but at the time I just went with it because that was the course, we were all going along with it no questions asked.

I know 'good art' is subjective and you like what you like. But I was never the kind of student to just submit polished works without the numerous sketchbooks and writing to back it up, which made this whole 'shit grades' situation all the more confusing.

I couldn't see a way out of the mess I was in and I didn't want to mess up yet another year. I didn't see any other option but to leave and enroll in another college. When I look back now I know I needn't have worried about that year, but at the time I felt at such a huge disadvantage - having lost a whole year. Although I did pass the Business Studies AS-Level - thank god.

I wasn't totally faultless during this time. I'm well aware I had a stubborn streak and was confident to the point of being cocky about my work, but I was 16 and up until that point a high achieving student. I didn't feel that any tutor helped me to recognise what was going on with my grades. If there was something I was missing, some part of the criteria my work wasn't hitting, no one there enlightened me to this and it wasn't as if I didn't put the time in to understand this.

So 'take 2' and I enrolled in a different college, this time taking a mix of subjects including Art: Graphic Design. I thought by studying art in a specific graphics way I would be on track to a potential career in the future. This started very well, and I really benefited from the other subjects I was also taking - Performing Arts, Media Studies, Photography and Critical Thinking. This time my art teacher was incredibly complimentary of my work and I felt more appreciated and listened to. I was back to being predicated A A and A again. At the end of the 2nd year I received my A-Level results in my final 3 subjects - Performing Arts, Media Studies and Graphics.

I received straight distinctions for Performing Arts. Top of the college for my practical piece in Media Studies - a 6 minute plasticine stop-motion animation. And for Graphics? I received a grade D.

I remember my results were on the doormat waiting to be opened as I had requested they be posted home due to a family holiday that overlapped with results time. I opened them and reeled off the letters to my parents and said something like, 'And for graphics - um - oh I'm not sure what that is?' Which is mental because there it was in black and white. It was a D. But my head wouldn't read it. And only eventually did I react - and how.

This all sounds so dramatic - it's just college grades, no one died. But at that time in my life it was everything to me. Great results were going to equal a great start to a career, my future. Art was my thing, and I'd just got a D in it. I hadn't planned to go to University for the main reason that I was keen to get into the big ol world of work, and with those results, my chances of that had just dissolved.

Much like my mind.

'That's it - I'm shit at art. I'm a massive failure with no future in art. That's it then. I'm shit'. My parents at that time were fantastic and fought for me, writing letters to the college to complain, setting up meetings and doing their best to find out what the hell happened. Turned out that when it came to marking my work some of the teachers has disagreed over whether or not I had answered the briefs correctly, and therefore my grade was brought down. But how on earth was I ever supposed to anticipate this when my graphics teacher had been doing nothing short of showering my work with golden comments and huge smiley faces? There was nothing anyone could ultimately do about changing the grade, other than having it totally remarked, but I was warned it could go down further as well as improve. I think I was too terrified by such a prospect of grades getting worse that I didn't do that.

I just started applying for admin roles. Office receptionist, anything that would have me basically. I did pull together a portfolio of my creative work and showed it to all recruitment agencies I signed with. One agency knew of a 'Desk Top Publisher' (DTP) in the Creative Services department at IBM and sent them my details. Now DTP's are basically Artworkers, people who have a grasp of Photoshop and InDesign who can make text edits or minor art re-touching. It was stressed at the interview that the job would be largely uncreative. I assured them I'd be totally fine with this, and I got offered the job.

In under a year I was promoted to 'Junior Designer' after the Creative Director deemed it that my creativity was wasted as a DTP and I would better serve them working in a more creative role. THAT job was my life-saver. Clients liked my work and asked for me by name and the more exciting projects I got involved in enabled me to work all over the world including Paris, Rome and Barcelona. I worked in that same company for four years. It was a huge confidence shot in the arm to feel I'd succeeded in a creative career without the need for a top-notch A-Level result. I'd made it based on my own ability.

Only now I'm back at academia's door, asking to be let in, hoping for a top-notch degree result - and it worries me.

More than worries.

I can't be an Art Teacher without a degree, it's a must, but I wonder how successful I will be in the education system of art when I crashed and burned so spectacularly in the past. And I'm not just talking letters here. I may have gone on to build a good career for myself but I didn't paint anything for about 4 years after I finished college. I felt I'd 'lost it'. It took me a long time to rediscover what Art meant to me and what my style was. I had to regain that belief in my work and feel like an artist again.

These days - I know I am an artist. It's who I am.

I know my own style, I know my work, how I work, why I work. I think it's because of my own experiences in learning Art in and out of various schools that I've got this desire to teach. I want to help other people understand their abilities and how they can handle them. I want to create discussion about Art, what the point may be, to help people discover their personal styles and reasons for creating work.

The visit to the University today was mixed for me. It brought up a few old wounds from the past because I can't help worry that history may repeat itself. I didn't understand where I was going wrong then - whose to say that won't happen now? But I did get to meet the head of the art department, and found him to be very informative, level-headed and helpful. It seems that I might even be able to get on a course that is 3 years long rather than 4, because they may take into account my past working experience as an artist and acknowledge that as reason enough not to need a foundation year in art. I make my case for this as soon as possible then there is an interview to follow. So it's so far so good. I just need to remember to go with my instincts, and that I'll never loose what I've got again. I'm less stubborn now, more calm and secure in my direction. I'll follow the signs, let's just see if they take me to Reading.

TORI'S TUNES to bang your head to

Two blogs in one day? When the blogging bug bites there's no point in fighting it. I fancied pointing you in the direction of a few brain-bopping toe-tapping tracks that have been keep me alive for the past few days, weeks, month or so.

Being an artist fueled by music (and copious cups of green tea) it's very importaint to me even when I'm not up to my elbows in acrylics. It's chicken and egg, sometimes the music ficilitates the art and sometimes I'll hear something new and know we're destined to meet again when canvas is involved. Ed Banger has been my artistic dance partner in a big way in the past, and they're kicking it again with their (amazingly) FREE podcast: ED BANGER RECORDS.


My Ed Banger inspired painting, rather obviously titled: ED BANGER.

Search for it on iTunes and you will unlock a back catalogue that began in 2007. There are promotional vids and the like, but every so often one of Ed Banger's artists will release a mega mix around 1 - 2 hours long. Audible chocolate silky smooth beats to get the heart thuding.

And it's not just the Ed Banger home-grown tracks that deliver, I've been a great way to be introduced to various acts included in the mix from all over the world that you're not gonna catch on Radio 1. It was the DSL MINIMIX that got me into Pheonix that whisked me away to their (Amazon exclusive) download of their album 'Wolfgang Amadeux' - which is rather farking marvelous.


Latest mix is courtesy of DJ MEHDI. If 'haute couture' is french for 'high fashion' then Mehdi has whipped up some haute musique with 'Black black and black'. While you're checking that out read his blog.

The mix also features a satisfying dirty(er) more grown-up seeming take Uffie's 'Pop the Glock', probably due to the fact a new music video has been recently released which resembles a parisian Skins trailer - lots of deeply attractive young dirt and make-up covered people fawning over eachother half naked paired with some acid-bright colours and background.

Nice.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4k4SSO0RaCc

I'm told by the people of frozen yog heaven 'Lick' in Brighton that Uffie failed to make the show she was once scheduled to perform there due to missing a flight. But nevermind, time for some yogurt, mmmmmmmm....

How to turn paintings into prints

I ask you this: You've got a painting, a pretty big painting, on chunky canvas painted with acrylic paint - how do you get this digital, and good enough quality, to make reproduction prints?

THAT right there is what I've been answering for pretty much the whole of September.

Making and selling prints has been something I've planned to do for a while now. I knew it was a smart idea judging by the fact people would be far more likely to spend a few 10's on a print as opposed to a few 100's on the real deal. I'm a big believer in owning original artwork and supporting us fledgling artists, partly for my own sake of course, but I do think owning an original painting is a rare and lovely thing, because how many things in your home are totally unique, one offs, one-of-a-kinds?

But pricing art is an art itself that I'm sure I'll never understand. I've seen coloured splodgy squares with a price tag of thousands, and stunningly detailed watercolours with change for a fifty. There's not a lot of consistency and sense as far as I can see. You just need to come to a number that suits you, recognises the materials, times, effort that was involved, and all in all is realistic to what you're willing to let a painting part ways with you for. There's not such problem with prints. Although not unique, it is a great way of letting a greater audience share in the image you've created. It's spreads your message that bit further, it's making your work accessible to everyone.

So print making always made sense, I just hadn't gotten around to it yet.

However this latest project I'm involved with (Operation Concrete) required me to go get all digital at last so to be included in an art book that will be published. It was a nice big shove into the world of print making.

You've basically got 2 options:

1. Scan your work, thus achieving the most detailed digital version of your painting, free from all light problems and colour issues. From this scan your work could be blown up to billboard size - stopping traffic the world over.

2. Photograph your work using a kick-ass top notch camera. However with this you encounter having to do some post-processing, fiddling with levels and colours to balance out the natural or artificial light.

So obviously it's a no-brainer and any artist in their right mind should scan their work immediately. Yes, this is great, given that your art is no bigger than A3. I found it near impossible to find a flat-bed scanner bigger than A3. Apparently they are rather rare, and instead large scale scanning is done on a machine where work can be fed through, hence the subject you're scanning needs to be flexible. This is mainly used for maps, blueprints, that kind of archiving.

So plan 1 was to scan my work in pieces of A3, then Photoshop it together. This might work for some styles of painting, but after hours of nudging layers, rotating in painfully small increments I threw in the towel and when back to the drawing-board - or in this case, Google.

It was surprisingly difficult to find a clear answer from all the pages on digitising artwork I found online. It seems everyone is finding their own way to combat the problem. So I thought sod it, bleedin well ask someone how they did it. I stuck 'Basingstoke Artist Prints' into google and Louise Height was top of the list. A quick phone call later and Louise kindly put me in touch with the photographer who took photos of her work for her website. The photographer in question was Chris Hawkins who speedily answered my e-mail asking for more info. Chris was familiar with photographing art and was able to clear up this whole digitising art business once and for all.

The answer to digitising art work is simply this:

• If your work is large (over A3) but flexible the best way to capture a high quality digital version is to scan it using a machine where the image can be fed through - as large flat-bed scanners are rare and expensive.



• If your work is A3 but cannot bend you could use a flat-bed scanner as A3 is a pretty standard size in most print companies/offices. You could also make a couple of scans and piece together in Photoshop - this is rather fiddly but can be done.



• If your work is both larger than A3 AND cannot bend - painted onto canvas for example - then you need to find an experienced photographer who knows their stuff (like Chris) and get it photographed in one of two ways.



• Digital Photographing
  This will allow you to print up to A3 but not really any larger. For my purposes this was ideal. About an hours shoot will cost you around £60 with an optional £20 processing charge if you need help with working with RAW files.



• Film Photographing
  Take pictures of your art using film and you can blow it up to billboard size if you wanted to. But how is developed film digital? - I hear you cry. Well develop your pictures at A1 for example and then feed that through a scanner and voila! You've got a high resolution larger than life size digital file. You'd have to get a quote from your photographer for the cost of this one.
  
  Photograph by Chris Hawkins. (One of my faves).
  
  

I did the former and spent about an hour with Chris, who is a rather interesting fellow who has photographed all over the world. He told me photography is a reason to stop the rushing through life and just take in the view - great reason that. I've ended up with some great shots for the art book and future print, but it was very strange to race through my collection one-on-one like that with someone I didn't know. I felt like I should introduce the paintings by name and justify them. But then I'm a weird artist type, often forgetting how personal my work is to me, and how uncomfortable it can sometimes be to have someone comment on them.

However Chris was professional and complimentary of my work and even dashed off a blog about it all before I'd even driven myself home! Puts me to shame as this one has taken me ages.

But the subject of turning paintings into prints has been a biggie and needed a decent explanation. Unfortunately - or fortunately I guess - life has been massively busy recently. I've been mad at work, still learning salsa like a trooper and doing the important stuff like planning the outfit for the Operation Concrete launch night.

Lastly I urge you to check out the latest Op Con news - official info coming very soon.