Elsie Magazine

Foraging and Firemaking

Today, Elsie Magazine has been on on a survival course in woodland near Burton-on-Trent. The rain poured and poured, the waterproof boots proved to be anything but, and anything and everything was on the menu. We ate leaves from a lime tree, flowers from a gorse bush and thistle stems from....a thistle. And when our appetite was sated, we turned our attention to the joyous and exhilerating task of lighting a fire using nothing but bits of wood, a generous amount of elbow grease and the surprising power of friction. Amongst it all, we found a little time out to snap the curious, the knowledgeable and the downright wet... starting with our instructor Dan (a font of potentially life-saving facts about all things woodland);

 

Followed by Clive - another man whose closeness to nature is unnaturally close...

And then there was John - a man who makes knives and fire for fun and knows a lot about crayfish...

   
And so to the pupils - starting with Mark - he wears a lot of layers and waters a lot of trees...

And James - he's from Australia you know...

Then there was Verity - a woodland manager in the making...
And finally Rob - he's in publishing and cool hats...

Great Day - we all learned a stack load of stuff and had a huge amount of fun into the bargain...rain? what rain? So, if you fancy getting close to nature check out  http://www.survivalschool.co.uk/

random portraits

I shoot these photos of passers-by literally from the hip, without looking through the viewfinder. They capture people off guard and also throw up lots of unusual compositions. 

 

     

On display

When people talk about public art, they are generally referring to things like the Anthony Gormley's Angel of the North or Henry Moore's sculpures or even the variety of wild and whacky monstrosities you see on almost every roundabout in Dudley.

But for me, real public art is what your everyday shopkeeper or house owner deems worthy and right to put on public display. There must be a piece of PHD research just waiting to happen here in terms of the decision-making, the psychology and the sociology of such actions. Here's a few examples...starting with a captivating and seductive window display from a newsagents in Fenton, Stoke-on-Trent;

 


 
Hurry now...you don't want to miss out!   

random illustrations

I started doing these random illustrations as creative coffee breaks. They're great for getting the creative juices flowing and, what's more, they shouldn't take you much more than 30 minutes from start to finish. 

So, how does it work?
Each month I'll be posting ten random pics (that I've taken) - you can see them by clicking on the photo album in the right hand column and download them from - http://www.flickr.com/photos/elsiemagazine. Once you've downloaded the pics, open them and drag them all into a new photoshop file (25cm x 25cm @ 300dpi) and then use them as a palette to create a new piece of graphic art. You can use any part of the images in any way you like and create as many layers as you like, the exciting thing is, you don't know what you're going to create until you've created it. Once you've finished your design save it as a JPEG and send it to me at the email address in the right hand column. Here's a few that didn't make it into Issue 1...

 

Exempt

Newell

 

 

Applause

 Dirt Cheap

 Custard

Good luck!