It’s been a while since my last blog post but with good reason. If you have been following me on Twitter (@graphicscove) then you would know that I have been working for a design company for the past 3 weeks. All I can say is it’s been great! I’ve already learnt quite a lot being there and I’ve also discovered a lot of areas that I can improve my skills on. So far I’ve worked on a range of different things from logos and leaflets, to websites and website coding which has all been great!

Currently I’m on a 3 month trial period with the company (as with all jobs these days) but hopefully I’ll be able to stay on and continue for many years to come. I’ll update this blog with what I’m doing and new design bits and pieces that I find when I can. I’m not entirely sure if I can display the work I do there on my site/blog so it’s probably best not to. On the other hand I can use all the skills I acquire from work and put them into my own projects.

This is also the first day I’ve had at home for a fair few weeks so why am I still writing about graphic design and not resting? I’m also on a day out to France tomorrow so maybe there’s another photography post on the way next week, we’ll see

- Steven

I have finally finished creating and coding my first WordPress plugin! The plugin displays a small corner image (See above for an example) on your website on St George’s Day, the national day of England. The plugin uses a php script to show the image only on April 23rd so you can activate it now and leave it for the day to come around, and when the day is over it’ll be ready for next year.

Sensing this plugin would be popular within the English community (And anyone else celebrating St George’s day) I’ve also put together a non-wordpress version. The pack contains everything you need to add the banner to your own website including the html code needed to show the image, just read the readme.txt file. Below are the two packages ready to download:

HTML: .zip
Wordpress Plugin: Download from WordPress.org

I would love some feedback on this as it’s my first plugin, plus any suggestions. Either leave me a comment below or message me on twitter @graphicscove

- Steven

Here are some screen shots of a few parts of the theme:

More to come soon!

- Steven

As cold as winter is where we’re all to cold to get out from under the covers in the morning, you can’t deny it makes for an excellent photo opportunity. Below are just a few of my snaps from my garden.

- I’ve always loved animal tracks, whether they’re on the beach, in concrete or in this case, snow. Whole stories spring up from just a couple of tracks. Think about when you wake up in the mornings to snow covering the garden, see how many animal tracks you can spot.

- This rough snow build-up on a wooden fence just shows how the wind can work the snow into amazing patterns.

- One of my other favorite thing to do with snow is how they rest on the branches of trees. I always feel it’s giving the tree highlights, making them pop out of the background, even though when it’s very bright it hurts your eyes!

I hope you’ve enjoyed these winter pictures, again I hope to keep adding more photos, and as always you can follow my photography work on Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/graphicscove/

With 2012 being a new year I thought I would explore more photography this year. Obviously I’m not going to take a picture every day like my drawing project last year but I will definitely put myself out more to take photos. For this I recently created a Flickr page for all my pictures. You can find me at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/graphicscove/

Follow me, add me as a friend, track my work or whatever Flickr users do, I would love feedback on my images, I’m not a professional but I would definitely appreciate some constructive criticism. I hope to get some photograph series’ going that I can perhaps post to my blog, but we’ll see what happens.

Below are a couple of images already uploaded to Flickr that have been hiding away on my hard drive for a while, keep an eye out for more soon.

- Steven

2011 has come to a close, and so has my daily drawing project. For those who don’t know, I set out to draw an animal once every day during 2011. This would keep me fresh in continually drawing and allow me to experiment with different styles, media and even the content. While I enjoyed each and every day, sometimes I didn’t have time and the most I could do was a quick squiggle, but even then it opened up new and interesting ways of doing things which I could tackle in the days following when I was less busy. I managed to use a variety of media, from the traditional pencil and paper, to chalk and ink, I even had a day where I drew with just my fingers on the touch screen of an iPhone. Overall the project has helped me to improve my drawing skills and there are a couple of things I want to do this year which has lead on from my daily drawing project, but that’s secret for now

I would definitely recommend a project such as this. It doesn’t have to be drawing, it could be writing a story, or taking a picture, or even a video, the choice is yours. But doing something once a day is a great way to improve yourself and when you put your mind to it you can achieve great things. A whole 365 days non stop of drawing once a day sounded very daunting to begin with but at the end of it I’m glad I pushed on and made it to the end. When I look back at my life one day this will be in one of the things that I really enjoyed and that I’m proud of.

I will get the last drawings posted to my DeviantART project folder in the next couple of days so the collection will be complete. I also have a physical collection too which I’ll need to finish off since I’ve only filed the first 6 months (I ran out of plastic folders for the rest).

Thanks to everyone who followed my project. You can view all my drawings in my DeviantART project folder at: http://graphicscove.deviantart.com/gallery/32582961

- Steven

Above is where we were in the hall, preparing to walk up on stage. Here I am bellow in my graduation robes

And now I am officially a graduate! This is going to be great.

- Steven

This is just a very quick post to let you know I’m still around and that I’ve received my certificate for my BA Hons degree in graphic design which officially means I’m a graphic designer! Well, not until I find a proper job, but it feels great!

Now all I need to do is look for a design studio to work with which would be ace! If you’re looking for a graduate graphic designer to join your team and you like my portfolio get in touch via the contact page, I’d love to hear from you.

- Steven

So I’m taking some time to blog again and reflect on my animal drawing project where I’m drawing one animal every day to improve my drawing skills.

First off I would like to just say the whole project is completely about developing ideas and trying something new. My first two or three drawings of this project were based on really good drawings I’ve done in the past and I felt I didn’t want to just draw the same things in the same style for the whole year. I know I can draw birds and snakes in the styles I know already, but I really wanted to explore and expand my drawing skills.

Over these first 4 months I’ve discovered some really interesting ways of drawing animals. I have even started to incorporate other media that I wouldn’t have previously thought about using. Even colouring pencils I wasn’t too sure about that as I had been so stuck in my ways of a black and white pencil drawing. Now I feel more confident in trying different media and new things. Even if I end up putting up a really bad drawing for that day (of which I have a few) I don’t feel bad about it. It was a trial that went wrong. I could make up all the excuses under the sun why it didn’t turn out right but the best thing I could do would be to pick up on where I think it went wrong and to try and improve that aspect in the next drawing.

Some interesting styles I quite like is drawing as an extension of a ripped picture. We all remember the child books where they asked ‘Draw the other half of the picture’ and it’s a great way to improve your anatomy drawing. Unfortunately I’ve only managed one picture like this on the project so far but with another 8 months left on this project there’s plenty of time to keep trying new things. A second style I really like is what I discovered with my coloured pencil pictures. I feel the crosshatching works really well as not just for shading but for colouring as a whole. It’s definitely a style I want to keep on doing. Lastly I’m really interested in this last style I’m working on using very small and minimal lines to create a full picture in the minds of the viewer. My self proposed animal project at university flowed in this direction and at the end of it I decided to carry on with looking at animals with minimal lines and how animals can blend into their surroundings. I never had time before but as I’m dedicated to this project I have enough time for anything.

Unfortunately there are not 365 different animals I can think of to do a different one every day so there are many duplicate animals in my projects, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. While I would like to explore many different animals, sometimes practicing the same animal over and over again makes you better at that animal (Practice makes perfect!). Recently I’ve felt like moving away from large animals and moving to insects instead. This could be interesting so we’ll see how things go!

- Steven

(I was provoked to write this by the following reference, take a look, it’s interesting)
References: Smashing Magazine

A couple of weeks ago we were set our major project at university and so far it’s been going great! For my major project I have chosen to recreate how a plant works and its functions through a stop motion animation using Lego. This was based off my original one minute film where I replicated the human body with Lego bricks.

I have a blog dedicated to my major project (Which I can’t show at the moment) but I’ve been planning and filming quite a bit. I hope to be able to post the final outcome here on Graphics Cove when I complete the project in a few months (An excellent excuse to create a films section in my portfolio!). I will also be adding some of my past creative videos to the site as well so keep a look out.

- Steven