Floreali

I've been re-adjusting my life routines to fit around uni work after the first week has been complete (and soon to the the second week completed). It's always a bit hard in the first few weeks to get used to the daily tasks that kept me focused and working. But I think that I am settling back into the flow of things!

I've been keeping myself constantly creative by working on personal projects, as well as keeping myself inspired for my thesis writing by researching heavily on my chosen subject area, which as I previously mentioned here, is on zines vs. mainstream magazines and their connection with the female experience, drawing on their role in the "Riot Grrrl" third-wave feminism movement of the late 80's/90's. It's a topic I'm passionate about and find deeply interesting, so I'm happy that I've chosen a topic that is going to keep me interested so I don't wind up in a rut of complete boredom and regret!

Studio work has recently ramped up, meaning that I'm going to be inundated with projects for the rest of the semester, which is good because I like keeping busy ad I know that taking on more work will enable me to keep pushing myself to produce the best work that I possibly can.

This past week in images:

1. Reading a biography of Frida Kahlo, who is without a doubt one of my favourite female artists - she is iconic and her story is such an inspiration. What she did with her short life is admirable.
2. An illustration featuring model Soo Joo I completed recently, which can be viewed in its entirety under the Portfolio link.
3. Flat-lay of a recent outfit I wore this week, featuring boyfriend jeans from Dotti, leopard tank from Cotton On, shoes from Catwalk by Innui and a book about Egypt I received for my 21st birthday.
4. Mango season! Yum!
5. Kate Moss illusration finito!
6. I succumbed to the ugly Birkenstock shoe trend, but I am not ashamed of that fact as they are soo comfortable!

I've made a mix which I will probably be regularly using whilst I write my thesis - its due on the 25th of June and I am quite stressed about that! I want to make it the best I can, so hopefully the songs included in the mix will help me to stop procrastinating and work on it!

❀ Grrrls Thesis Mix ☾ from bambisvalentine on 8tracks Radio.

Until next time! x

White Moon

I feel like a huge burden has been lifted from my back now that I've submitted all of my assessments - the next stressful part is the anxious wait to find out if I did well or not! Crossing my fingers for positivity!

I've been deeply researching the Riot Grrrl movement of the early 90's for my Masters thesis and it's really inspiring and just moving to me - I can't really express my feelings about how wonderful I think it was. I just feel that a-lot of the ideas that emerged from it still resonate in the 21st century and it deserves more recognition as a milestone in the timeline of feminism. I just feel so connected to it, I don't know - I only learned of it through Tumblr (thank the Internet Gods for Tumblr) about 2 years ago or something and ever since I did, it's been on my mind and I knew I wanted to somehow develop a research project based around it. My particular branch of research in this movement was the importance of the zine, which I feel is largely underestimated as a tool for expression and communication between young women (as an alternative outlet away from mainstream media's gaze and perturbation), even in our modern technological world filled with ebooks and e-zines. I believe the tactility of a physical zine holds such a greater feeling of power and concreteness, which cannot truly be replicated with a digitised zine (even though I adore e-zines and PDF magazines, I'll always return to the print versions). I feel such an urge to just create things at the moment - if my hands are doing something I need to be doing something otherwise I'll become so bored! I actually want to start my own zine, just for my own personal self, but I would share it with the lovely readers of my blog, of course. But now I'm just rambling again! I have too many feels at the moment. I think it's largely due to the emotional debt through perpetual stress I've stored up over these past 14 weeks that I've been studying and now all I want to do is let it all go. I'm going to start working on some illustration ideas that I've kept shut up in my journals - now I've got some time to kill I want to put them to good, productive use!

I haven't been able to access Instagram that much as the wifi in my place has issues connecting to extraneous devices except for laptops, super weird (but I did discover a way to upload via PC so I'm using that instead, it's just a-lot more cumbersome to use). The following is a digital moodboard of sorts of things that have been keeping my imagination alive this week (I need to make pretty things for my blog!):

I'll leave you with these teasers from Lana Del Rey for the Tropic mini-film (if you don't already know about it), which I am extremely excited about! (Please release it soon Lana you are my lifeblood!) The coloured lighting effects remind me of the Aurora Borealis aka "The Northern Lights", which I'd really love to see once in my lifetime, so beautiful. Keep on dreaming. ♥