(mtv add)

I saw this image a long time ago and it still makes me smile , so much so that i have taken the text and placed it into one of my own cross stitched works , which i shall be uploading once it is complete. I love this image because at first glance it looks 'sweet' or even 'cute' but when you look closer you realise ,, no there is actually something sinister and horrible been said, i love the juxtaposition of this sweet yet horrible combination, it makes me smile every time.



(Robots in Disguise video art)

This was done as part of a music video for Robots in disguise, and also to promote the Barry M makeup brand. I like how the artist has painted with makeup  to create  a new slant on a 1940's s 'pulp fiction' style image, It also reminds me a lot of Roy  lichtenstein's work,( only 3d)

Love will send you BATTY

This is the latest addition to my drawing book, I'm pleased with the line quality on this and the characterisation of my 'batty' characters, I suppose if you take the typography out of the equation, this isn't quite as melancholy and full of woe as my other illustrations might be, although in the beginning it was intended to be.

(unknown artist)

I'm not sure who did this but i like it, i like its crudeness, i like the fact that you can't be all too sure if the writing is in blood or paint, I'm drawn in by all the small bits and pieces on the floor , again not quite sure if they are bits of bone and flesh or just other artist materials. I find it pretty yet brutal to look at , but none the less very appealing

One for sorrow, with a bit of luck

This is the latest offering from my drawing book. I'm extreamly pleased with the way in which my work is moving, my characters seem to be more alive and vivid than they ever have been, I still like to put typography with my work but feel that my illustrations are getting better and better, so much so that i feel you could look at them and understand and work out what was going on in them without the writing.

this idea came to me when i saw two magpies nesting in the tree in my garden, this warmed my heart as it is a fact that magpies mate for life, and so if i see one alone i always feel a bit sad as they ether havent found anyone yet , or their mate has dies, either way they are alone. Then i got on to thinking, what if they had chosen a partner and ended up realising they resented or hated them , if they mated for life the only way out would be death. I like this image as we can clearly see that the lady magpie is poisoning a cup of tea,, what i like about it is that we dont know who she is poisoning the tea for,, is she killing her husband , or herself?

The bad faerie's tooth collection kit

I made this yesterday as part of my collaboration project, we were asked to do something with a matchbox. When making this piece i firstly thought, what's tiny enough to fit inside a matchbox ?, I then thought about teeth, as they were one of the few things i imagined you could place inside a match box that seemed quite interesting. As usual my themes usually revolve around love , loss heart break and revenge, obviously with a sprinkle of the macabre on top. So as not to disappoint i turned this into a revenge theme. I've always adored faerie tales and loved how in folk lore faeries are very dark characters indeed, nothing like Hollywood and Disney would have you believe. I manipulated some of these folk tales of changelings, revenge and mischief and made it something of my own. I thought, what if there was a faerie who solely dealt in revenge? she'd go round to the liars, heart breakers and adulterers houses in the dead of night and rip out their teeth and stitch their mouths, i had the idea that she could collect the teeth as though the teeth contained the lies people had told, i thought obviously teeth are in your mouth so would have 'witnessed' as it were all the lies that had passed the lips, so thought maybe the teeth could harbour these feelings and lies,, the character i invented would collect all of these as a way or revenge against these people. The kit contains:

 1 bottle of ether

(to silence their screams)

1 pair of pliers

1 tooth collection jar

1 needle (to stitch up their mouth so they can't tell)

1 spool of yellow thread ( the colour of cowards)

1 skeleton key

I'm very proud of this piece not just for its aesthetics but also for its context. I have tried to make the kit look very dirty and worn as though it has had a lot of use, as I'm sure if my faerie did exist she would have her work cut out. I have deliberately refrained from using a lot of colour as i thought if i were to use red as blood spatter it may cheapen my idea, as it is so obvious that the box would have blood on it, i feel that by using black to represent the blood it makes my box look ever more frightening than if red were to be used as the black could be blood, or dirt or rust,, who knows, it adds to the mystery. The only colour i have used is the yellow thread to further draw on my theme of cowardice, using the yellow thread to represent this. The tooth collection jar has red blood inside and also contains individually hand crafted teeth . The bottle of ether is purple, not to represent anything, i just like the colour. Overall i am very proud of this piece, i like its aesthetic appeal i like its meaning and the story i have created for it. On the back of the box and on a label for the box is a poem i wrote to go with this character and theme:

If you've been bad make no mistake

the tooth faerie will stake her claim.

Be thee lier, heart breaker, adulterer and more

She'll slice the tongues of deceitful whores.

Fear all yee cowards, backstabbers and biter

she comes while you sleep to collect your deceit.

My youtube chanel is finally underway!

http://www.youtube.com/user/charlottevictoriana?feature=mhee

I have always played various instruments and sang at the top of my lungs, written songs and rhymes, mainly as a hobby and a form of amusement to myself, but recently more and more people have been telling me they like my voice and want to hear more of what i do. Well here it is, i haven't had chance to upload everything but fear not i am working on it. You can expect to see lots of smiths and Morrissey covers, some cure, perhaps 80's Madonna and classic Springsteen, along side some of my own little songs too , i hope you all enjoy it.

old ink, self portrait

I thought it might be nice to add some of my older work. I'm very proud of these as they were some of the first ink drawings, however i feel that my work has developed dramatically over the last six or seven months. I feel that my mark making ability is much stronger now and also my fear/ hatred for drawing backgrounds and nothing much other than beautiful ladies has also dispersed. i like my old work because it shows how i have developed, but i much prefer my newer work for its quality and content.

Some of my earlier work done for Uni and her ukelele album art

http://www.unimusic.us/gallery/fan-art/

Again i wanted to show anyone who cares to look just how much my work has changed over the years. I still love what i did for Uni and her ukulele, however i think if people saw what i was doing within my work today they might find it hard to believe i ever drew in this way as it is dramatically different , i;m still very fond of it though and proud that two of my works are in an album, and on peoples shelves.

The Lovers Grim , puurfect Gun,(jess and moi)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-CQ8VFzV4s&context=C4f18f00ADvjVQa1PpcFM1DD0KuxN4IYnFjfbuAbR0oVSG2XeIOKU=

This is a song i wrote when i was feeling rather frustrated yet cathartic towards a certain person and situation. I have always turned to art and music in some form to 'heal me' this is one of those situations. I recorded this with my friend Jess as i feel our voices complement each other. It's also another one of my attempts to try and relate to a wide audience of other perhaps disheartened individuals. Sometimes you can shout so loudly that you lose all ability to speak, yet no matter how much you and everyone else can see what is going on, the only person you want to understand and see refuses to. I suppose it is a song about my frustrations when i have lost my voice,, or perhaps i never even had one, at least not to the person i wanted to be heard by.

Gallery review for second year 'Future' exhibition

When i first entered the gallery space to view the exhibition I immediatly felt overwhelmed and bogged down by the sheer amount of work thrust upon me. I'm not sure that it was the amount however that weighed upon me or the way in which it was 'organised' I felt as though I didn't know where to start or what to look at, which was a huge shame as when i did decipher some of the work there were a fiew hidden gems, unfortunatly a lot of these were hidden beneath the mass of what i saw as unorganised. I in no way want to sound  cruel by saying this as i understand that there was a reason for the way in which the exhibit was put together, I just found it very chaotic and hard to view, I'm sure that even now i have missed a lot of the work due to this. Another thing that I noticed was that,although the exhibit was named 'The Future' it wasn't directly apparent to me how or what it had to do with the future. I felt a lot of (not all) the work was merely filler to the sheer amount that had to be produced, and I felt that this was such a shame as , as i said before there were a lot of hidden gems and I feel in a way the things that were very similar were detracting from the other pieces.

Kittie could always make the other cats laugh

This piece is based on something one of my friends said to me, which made me laugh so much when all i wanted to do was cry and feel sorrowful about someone who had deeply hurt me. Sometimes when I'm wallowing in self pity all i need is for someone to say something so silly yet witty that i cant help but laugh. It is times like these when i want to portray the nice and funny things, the 'glimmers of hope' as i call them. I depicted myself and my friends in this piece as cats as I've always seen cats as the ultimate creature of attitude, i feel if a cat did have an opinion on this situation they would have said something like this and then laughed about it.

Benson's regret

Benson's regret is based on my uncles dog (yes Benson is a real dog) It all began when my uncle was telling me a story about when he and Benson had been walking through the woods together, he tolled me that in this particular wood there lived an owl, which he had named Alan the owl. Benson had befriended Alan and often liked to go and see him on their long walks in the woods, however Alan had enemies, these enemies were/are four large crows, whom my uncle said liked to 'bully Alan the owl, flying up to his nest and causing general mayhem and upset. Benson didn't like this at all and every time he went to see Alan the crows would always be there. Benson , been the chivalrous chap he is always had a fight with these four crows, they would swoop down and peck at him , but he would always fight them just to defend his friend Alan. This is a long and arduous situation that is still going on to this day. I found this story amusing and also very romanticised at the same time, how a dog could befriend an owl that he'd met in the woods and want to defend him against these bullies. The way in witch my uncle tolled the story made me immediately imagine these crows as crooked looking villains who would creep up on travellers and mug them, i then thought they would look 'funny' yet sinister with weapons, i find crows rather dark and sometimes intimidating to look at anyway and thought this would add to the general feel of unease.

I'm very fond of this image as i feel my mark making has definitely developed over the past few months. I'm pleased with the way in witch my story can be seen within the image as i have used background to further illustrate the situation.

(Phobe Eason)

I love the context of Eason's work, this been one of my favourites, i feel the general melancholy mood of this piece in paticular fits in with the type of mood i try to create within my own work.

(Max Hernst)

Hernst's work is dark, sometimes disturbing and confusing but none the less intriguing. I'm a fan of victoriana and anthropomorphism so needless to say these images appeal to me and influence my own work. looking at some of the images reminds me of a lot of Gustav Dore's work, it seems similar in style and content, I love all the hidden pieces within these works, there are often dead 'things' sometimes animal , sometimes there are human legs poking out from beneath random places, i like the fact you don't really know why these legs and animals are there, which to me further intrigues me .

( David Lachapelle)

Lachapelle has been one of my favourite photographers for a long time. I love the way he makes the vulgar seem vibrant and appealing through his use of colour and pop culture.

(Allison Carmichael)

Again i like how Carmichael uses words to create images, i also like how she can make 'ugly' words look beautiful.

(Craig Ward)

I love the statements that are made in Wards work, and i also love how he combines image making with words, I've never seen this done before so it intrigued me.

(Louis Waine)

louis waine's world is certainly a world I would like to live in .

(Walter Potter)

I first saw Walter potters kittens tea party when i visited Jamaica inn. It made me smile because obviously i love cats and the macabre ,, but also made me quite sad to think all those kittens were dead. I feel a mixture of sadness and delight when i look at all of his work, but i find that in most cases of the things i love , there very rarely seems to beauty without sadness.