In 2017, my Art class were doing our out-of-place projects. I painted and drew a picture of three thirsty clones of myself in a North American desert, the clone in the centre standing in front of a cow skull and next to a big glass of water. The big glass of water is out of place as water is scarce in the desert, but is needed to stay alive. This painting was exhibited at the Turner Contemporary as part of the 2017 Thanet Schools Art Competition, and stayed there for a week. It was then taken back to school to be exhibited around there and locally in an art gallery in Ramsgate. I was finally able to take it home on 11 October 2019.
On 20 January 2018, I drew a picture of my house and used acrylic paint to colour in the picture, and used a printed print screen of my house from Google Maps for reference.
On 2 February 2019, my father and I were at his friend John’s art studio. I used coloured chalk and colour in a surrealist picture named Welcome to Fuzzyville!, which depicts a 10-year-old boy named Oliver M. (based on myself) arriving in an unusual, jagged, fuzzy-looking city (with red, orange, yellow, green and blue buildings and blue, jagged, fuzzy clouds in the magenta sky) and looking around in astonishment.
On 18 March 2019, my class from college went to the Charles Dickens Mosaics on Saint Peters Road to study its mosaic pictures and murals for our research for our mosaic projects. On 19 March 2019, we used little stones and tiles to make some mosaic pictures. I made mosaic pictures of a pair of shoes, an ice cream and a car.
For my mosaic project, I chose to make a mosaic address marker. I did an analysis of three examples of my chosen craftwork (three other mosaic address markers), and designed the draft mosaic address marker (on 27 March 2019) and the final mosaic address marker (2 April 2019). Both were designed using the following equipment: a pencil, some pieces of paper, a rubber, stones, tiles, sand, poly(vinyl acetate) glue, a spoon to mix the sand and poly(vinyl acetate) glue, and a piece of wood.
The draft mosaic address marker was designed using big, flat tiles (coloured red, yellow, green and blue) for the border, grey stones for the background, pink stones for the address marker numbers, and a piece of wood. I think my design is good, but I put too much glue on the piece of wood, making the address numbers ’31A’ (made from the pink stones) impossible to read. Here are my improvements for the next time: I could add more colours to my mosaic address marker, put less glue on the piece of wood and use smaller tiles or stones in my mosaic address marker.
The final mosaic address marker was designed using small, grey stones for the border, small blue stones for the background, small golden stones for the visible address marker numbers, and a piece of wood, and used less glue than the draft mosaic address marker.
I got my fingers covered in glue when I was trying to rearrange the stones in the draft mosaic address marker and the final mosaic address marker. Tasting or swallowing glue could cause an illness. Glue causes irritation to the skin and eyes, and may also cause allergies to people who are allergic to glue. I got to take the draft mosaic address marker and the final mosaic address marker home on 2 April 2019.
On 27 March 2019, in my Personal Social Achievement lesson, I drew and painted a fox named Ferguson the Fox (I based his design on Tom Cat from Tom and Jerry) and a cute sun on paper plates. The drawings were pinned to the Student Gallery wall, and stayed there from that day to 27 June 2019.
On 23 April 2019, I got to take a surrealist picture that I made on Adobe Photoshop home. The picture is named Ride ’em…in the Rain!, and depicts a red, green-nosed Mexican dog (with hairs somewhat similar to Crash Bandicoot) riding on a green missile with ant-like antennae and a crocodile-like face and waving his sombrero during a stormy, rainy day, which is out of place as no person could ride a missile when it is raining in real life. The picture was inspired by the scene in which Major Kong rides the H-bomb in Doctor Strangelove (1964).
On 3 May 2019, I drew a picture of a kitten named Tiddles the Tabby, and showed it to my mother, and she liked it.
On 22 May 2019, I had a Taster session in Art and Design, and made a picture named Dead Ringer. The picture depicts a phone (which looks exactly like my old Xiaomi Redmi 4X phone, explaining the meaning of “dead ringer”) getting splashed with water by an unseen bully or troublemaker at a circus and dying (phones ring, and water is dangerous to electronics like phones; the phone’s death explains the picture’s title and is a pun on “dead ringer”). Half of the audience focuses sadly on the phone, while the other half of the audience focuses happily on the other acts and performances in the circus. The picture was made using a combination of watercolour paint, oil pastels and coloured pencil. I got to take the picture home, along with a necklace with my name on it (which I made in one of my Personal Social Achievement lessons) and ink drawings of some other pictures, two of them being ink drawings of a still photograph taken from The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966). I coloured in one of the ink drawings of the still photograph taken from The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. The ink drawings were made in a Taster session in Art and Design on 14 May 2019.
On 25 May 2019, I was in my father’s bedroom drawing a picture of the garden outside his flat. I put lots of detail in the picture, including the flowers, grass, bushes, et cetera. There used to be a fox and her noisy kits living in the shed with its door hanging off one of its hinges in the garden. Because of that, I added the fox peeking out from behind the shed’s door in the picture.
On 5 June 2019, in my Personal Social Achievement lesson, I made a self-portrait of myself. I used glue to “paint” the outline of my head on a white canvas, and pasted blue paper and strips of coloured fabric onto the outline of my head, my hair, my ears, my glasses, my eyes, my nose and my mouth. The self-portrait was pinned to the Student Gallery wall, and stayed there from that day to 27 June 2019. I made a second necklace with my name on it and a necklace with my sister’s name on it, and got to take them home.
On 10 June 2019, I made a surrealist picture on Adobe Photoshop. The picture is named Sacré Burn!, and depicts a French elephant-like alien peeking out of a drum and, to his surprise and horror, seeing a dark pit filled with detailed fiery flames in a dark cave, which is out of place as no person could survive in such a dangerous cave. The picture’s name is a cross between ‘Sacré bleu!’, a French expression of surprise, exasperation or dismay, and “burn”, which is what fire does.
On 18 June 2019, I made a surrealist picture on Adobe Photoshop. The picture is named Under the Weather, and depicts Ferguson the Fox lying in his bed and feeling ill, complete with a thermometer in his mouth, while the sky pours with rain outside, and a rain cloud rains on him, which visually explains the meaning of “under the weather”. I was originally going to use Oliver M. in the picture, but decided to use Ferguson instead. Ferguson was originally going to have his tongue hanging out of his mouth instead of the thermometer.
On 19 June 2019, in my Personal Social Achievement lesson, I made a house using popsicle sticks, orange popsicle sticks, blue popsicle sticks, a glue gun, blue pieces of cloth, paper, a pencil, a rubber, a little red button and a green ribbon. The house was pinned to the Student Gallery wall, and stayed there from that day to 27 June 2019.
On 21 June 2019, I made a poster about saving our planet. My sister was thinking about setting up an Instagram account for saving our planet, so I designed the poster for it. The poster depicts the Earth surrounded by an evil plastic bottle diving towards the sea, a fish afraid of meeting his demise, which is caused by plastics in the sea; a bird with a blood-filled cut in his body, footprints from the humans, signifying our responsibility; a rubbish bin, and pollution in the sky, represented by a pair of devious, yellow eyes with red pupils and a devilish smile with yellow teeth.
On 4 August 2019, I was in my mother’s friend’s son’s bedroom drawing a picture of the back of Nottingham Forest Football Club. The picture was finished on 5 August 2019.
On 24 September 2019, I began drawing a picture of Oliver M., and finished it on 25 September 2019. Being a 10-year-old was a good time in my life, because I had the toys that I could play with, was energetic and fun-loving, played with other children, and took part in many activities.
On 1 November 2019, I began drawing a picture of a Goth girl with black hair and sparkly, dark eyes, which I found harrowing, and finished it on 2 November 2019. This is my take on a painting that I encountered at a possible college placement on 31 October 2019. The painting was done by a student at the college, and I was told that the painting had a mixed review because of the creepy look of the Goth girl depicted in it. However, it was given to one of the teachers as a present, and therefore, it was displayed on a shelf in her office in the college until June 2020.
I began production of a 77-second short film titled Oliver and the Stinkbombs in September 2019, and finished it and uploaded it to YouTube on 12 November 2019. The film’s plot goes like this: Gary Smith sneaks a stinkbomb into Oliver M.’s sandwich before running off. Oliver walks up to the table and sits at it and takes a bite out of his sandwich, causing the stinkbomb inside to burst and emit a ghastly, grizzly, stinky stench. Oliver coughs and gags, and Gary laughs and points at him from outside. Oliver angrily yells, “GARY!”, and chases after Gary, telling him, “Get back here, you dirty prankster!” Gary runs off, and Oliver screeches to a halt (like a Hanna-Barbera character) when coming across a box of stinkbombs that Gary bought from a joke shop. He declares, “He can’t get away with a disgusting prank like that. I’ll show him!” The next scene shows Oliver in a hangar, standing on one of the wings of Gary’s futuristic-looking plane. He sneaks one of Gary’s stinkbombs into a parachute pack, and runs off with the box of stinkbombs. Later, Gary is flying his plane in the sky. Oliver watches Gary with a telescope from inside a bush, and says, “Here he comes.” He then jumps out of the bush and lands on a see-saw, sending the box of stinkbombs flying into the sky towards Gary’s plane. A huge, loud, stinky explosion occurs. Gary, wearing his parachute, falls from the explosion, coughing and gagging. He laments, “My stinkbombs!”, and he shakes his fist at Oliver, saying, “I’ll get you for this, Oliver!”, and pulls the ripcord of his parachute, which causes the stinkbomb inside his parachute to burst. Gary is trapped in a stinky cloud and coughs and gags, and lands in a pigsty with a giant SPLAT! Oliver waves at the viewer, ending the film. The film can be viewed here.
On 28 September 2019, I began drawing and cutting out characters and props to use in my scene for a book project done by Young Animators Club for the Folkestone Book Festival. The scene was adapted from The World’s Worst Children‘s (2016) Dribbling Drew. I finished drawing and cutting out the characters and props and animated the scene on 12 October 2019. On 26 October 2019, photographs of myself bending/leaning forward were taken, and I edited the background around myself out on Adobe Photoshop, and printed the photographs out. On 30 November 2019, I cut out the photographs of myself and animated them against a white background. The scene shows Drew walking across the museum, climbing onto a glass case with a dodo in it and sleeping and flooding the museum with his sea of dribble, and I am then shown wading through the sea of dribble. The scene can be viewed here, here and here.
I also did a surprise stop motion animation with some big cardboard robots/aliens (made by children in a project from the previous week). I animated the big robots/aliens, while another student animated the little robot/alien.
I began production of a 72-second short film titled A Week in the Life of Dad and I in October 2019, and finished it and uploaded it to YouTube on 16 January 2020. The film was made using Adobe Animate CC and was based on my holiday in Denmark in July 2019. The film’s plot begins on Monday, with Oliver M. and his father planning to go to the Westway Sports and Fitness Centre to play table tennis. However, it began raining outside, so they watched two films (Ready Player One (2018) and Alpha (2018)) on Oliver’s father’s computer together. One bright sunny Tuesday, Oliver and his father went to the Westway Sports and Fitness Centre to play table tennis. On Wednesday, Oliver and his father flew to Denmark and went for a walk in Skanseparken in Nørresundby (Oliver’s father used to play there when he was a child). On Thursday, Oliver and his father went to the very top of Denmark known as Grenen. On Friday, Oliver and his father came across an automatic car-like lawn mower named Robert, and went to Lindholm Høje, a Viking burial site and former settlement. On Saturday, Oliver and his father went to Nordsøen Oceanarium, where they saw seals swimming around and being fed some fish and blowing raspberries, and Ørnereservatet: Eagleworld, where they saw different types of eagles and falcons, including a Verreaux’s eagle/African black eagle. On Sunday, Oliver and his father flew back to London, and after all that activity, Oliver had a nap on his father’s bed, which ends the film. The film can be viewed here.
On 27 February 2020, I designed a National Book Token for World Book Day’s Design a National Book Token Competition, depicting a boy reading an orange book while he is surrounded by a red star, a yellow star, a green star, a blue spiral and an orange, purple and pink spiral.
On 5 February 2020, I began drawing a dog named Robert the Terrier. The picture was finished on 9 February 2020. On 16 March 2020, I coloured Robert in, gave him shading, and gave him his name. I was originally going to name him “Walter Woofer”. Robert has green fur, a head and face similar to Tramp from Lady and the Tramp (1955), with yellow Sylvester the Cat-like cheeks, a Scooby-Doo-like muzzle and a blue Wowser-like nose; and big Bugs Bunny-like feet with yellow toes, and he wears a blue Conker the Squirrel-like cardigan with yellow stripes and white Mickey Mouse-like gloves.
On 31 March 2020, I drew a draft version of a picture for a postcard to post to Arts Education Exchange, named Captured Coronavirus. The picture depicts Oliver M. standing in the middle of the temporarily carless road outside two houses, waving and holding a jar with the coronavirus trapped inside, begging to be freed, which symbolises the fact that the virus is gone and Oliver can now go outside. I drew and coloured in the final version of the picture during the first week of April 2020, finishing it on 7 April 2020. On 9 April 2020, I posted the postcard to Arts Education Exchange through the letter box.
I began production on a 72-second educational short film titled How to Use the Toilet in March 2020, and finished it and uploaded it to YouTube on 1 May 2020. The film was made using Moho 12 as an entry for the Canterbury Anifest’s Animation in Isolation competition, and teaches autistic people who may have sound sensitivity about using the toilet and keeping safe. The film’s plot begins with Oliver M. drinking from a glass and beginning to walk away. Suddenly, he starts shaking and has a sensation to go and use the toilet. He says, “When I feel that my bladder is bulging after I have consumed food or liquid, I may have a sensation to go and use the toilet.” Oliver then sees a toilet, and enters it. After that, he tells the viewer, “Using the toilet requires many, many steps, like sitting on the toilet if you are a girl, or standing if you are a boy. The important steps afterward are wiping your private parts and bottom, putting your pants back on, flushing the toilet and washing your hands.” After the important steps are shown and explained, Oliver is shown holding a pointer. He says, “We must always remember these steps in order to keep ourselves safe from dangerous germs and viruses.” As he says this, he taps on a picture of a green, grinning germ, who laughs evilly. The scene cuts to a young boy who finds flushing the toilet frightening. Oliver says, “For some people who find flushing the toilet frightening, especially if they are at a young age and have sound sensitivity, they can wear ear-defenders or focus on something positive.” He walks up to the boy and gives a pair of ear-defenders to him. The boy is then seen coming out of the toilet wearing the ear-defenders after using and flushing it, with Oliver congratulating him with a thumbs up, saying, “Well done!” Oliver then waves at the viewer, ending the film. The film can be viewed here.
On 29 April 2020, I began drawing a frog-jar hybrid named Dylan Jarmen. The picture was finished on 8 May 2020. I based Dylan on a jar in the British Museum, and his name comes from the fact that he was inspired by the jar. Dylan hails from Texas, is coloured blue and has big feet with yellow toenails and a kangaroo-like tail, and he wears a brown Ash Ketchum-like hat with a green spiral and a yellow star on it and a red Yogi Bear-like necktie. Living inside Dylan is a grumpy, purple gopher named Grumper.
On 12 June 2020, I drew a poster in response to Arts Education Exchange’s Illustration Activity Pack, and coloured it in. The poster is named Soapinator: Power in your Hands, and depicts a hand holding a hand wash bottle labelled ‘Hand Power’ and using it like a gun, aiming it at the panicking coronavirus. The title is a play on Terminator. The poster teaches people how to stay safe, be clean and avoid infecting others during the pandemic, and is a ‘Protect Others’ Poster.
On 19 June 2020, I drew a poster in response to Arts Education Exchange’s Illustration Activity Pack, and coloured it in on 20 June 2020. The poster is named Kindness Holds!, and depicts a man stretching out his arm to help a teenage boy onto the shore from the sea. The poster teaches people how kindness brings people together during the pandemic, and is a ‘Message of Solidarity’ Poster.
On 9 July 2020, I drew a poster in response to Arts Education Exchange’s Illustration Activity Pack, and coloured it in on 10 July 2020. The poster is named Join the Confabulate Club!, and depicts four robins standing on a small, round table in the middle of a garden. One of the robins is speaking to a friend of his on the telephone. The robins symbolise the renewing of social contact and growth. The poster is about maintaining our mental health during isolation, and is a ‘Mental Health’ Poster.
On 30 August 2020, I drew a picture named Help for the Homeless for a postcard, and coloured it in on 31 August 2020. The idea is to show some of the resources that can be helpful to the homeless people, and there is a charity in Folkestone that actually does this. The character of the young Oliver M. offers the homeless people a breakfast tray to keep them from starving, while Gary Smith offers them a big, nice, comfy bed to relax and sleep in and keep warm. This picture was originally going to be entered in the Secret Postcard Show in 2020, but due to the coronavirus outbreak, it was unlikely that it would happen.
On 18 September 2020, I edited a photograph that I took in the garden using Paint and Adobe Photoshop. The picture is named Caterturtle or Quadroshell. It depicts a turtle with four shells instead of the normal one shell, making it look like a caterpillar. If I were to find the caterturtle in real life, it would be in the wild. It would also be an anomaly in nature, and would be the ancestor of modern-day turtles (Charles Dawrin’s theory of evolution by natural selection). The idea is about a creature that has never been heard of or discovered before, but lives in the imagination and is a part of lost natural history. It was intended to be entered in the Lost History exhibition on in September 2020.
I began production on a 55-second short film titled Dangers of Smoking in September 2020, finished it on 13 April 2021, and uploaded it to YouTube on 24 April 2021. The film was made using Adobe Animate CC as part of an assignment for one of my BTEC Information Technology units at school, and conveys the message to 14-19-year-olds that although people think that smoking relaxes the brain, it actually stimulates it and causes health problems. The film’s plot begins with a man walking into a tobacco store, and coming out holding a cigarette. He smokes the cigarette and blows a cloud of smoke into an old lady’s face. The camera zooms in on the man’s body to reveal his lungs and tranchea. The lungs and tranchea fill with brown-spotted tar with smoke billowing from it, while his heart beats at an alarming rate. The man, feeling the effects of the tar and fast heart-beating, throws the cigarette away and begins to cough (I remember hearing the coughing sound effect in the audiobook version of The World’s Worst Children 2‘s (2017) Humbert the Hungry Baby). Grey, squiggly lines indicating the man’s affected health and bad breath escape his mouth. His affected teeth turn green, and each time the man coughs, his teeth begin to turn brown. The scene cuts to a close-up shot of the coughing man’s mouth, showing his now-brown teeth, flapping tongue and slightly disfigured gums. After this, the man notices a young woman smoking, and takes the cigarette from her, much to her anger. He smokes the cigarette and blows a cloud of smoke, and the camera zooms in on the man’s head to reveal his brain. After a few seconds, the brain is suddenly struck by six lightning bolts, indicating its stimulation, and the man suffers from a stroke and falls to the ground, unconscious. The film ends with an iris out, and white text against a black background saying, ‘The screen of illusion: smoking is dangerous!’, with trails of smoke rising from the ‘d’ and ‘!’ of ‘dangerous!’ “Urgency” by Dylan Sitts is the song that plays throughout the film. The film can be viewed here.
I began production of a 1-second animation of a rabbit jumping on 19 May 2021, finished it on 26 May 2021, and uploaded it to YouTube on 6 June 2021. The animation was made using Adobe Animate CC as a test of the software’s easing techniques/features in my spare time, and can be viewed here. I also produced a 5-second GIF animation of a crocodile snapping his jaws in June, using Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop and After Effects, and uploaded it on 30 August 2021 (video can be viewed here).
In September 2022, I drew a picture named Smashed Bully using Adobe Photoshop. The picture depicts Oliver M. furiously smashing a pink-skinned bully in a white shirt, black trousers and black-and-orange shoes with a giant frying pan, while his younger self holds a sign calling the bully a “beastly jerk”.
On 9 August 2023, my mentor Lydia Hibbert and I were doing watercolour-painted line drawings. Mine was of six city buildings in the middle of the desert, with a colour scheme inspired by What’s Opera, Doc? (1957). I filled in the lines on 11 August 2023. Five days later, I finished an abstract shape line drawing of castle towers and churches in Folkestone, which I had begun doing on the same day as my watercolour line drawing, and was made using Adobe Illustrator. I also did a line drawing of another Folkestone building on ProCreate, using different paintbrushes and its Alpha Lock tool to add a What’s Opera, Doc?-inspired colour scheme, shading and detail to the buildings, cars, ground, sky and clouds. From 23 August 2023 to 6 September 2023, I used paint rollers and shape cutouts to make four prehistoric abstract shape paintings, in which a caveman lies in wait to beat an approaching dinosaur with his club, and did six city-corridor thumbnail drawings.
From November 2023 to December 2023, I drew a picture called Skydiving Race to enter in the upcoming Secret Postcard Show in 2024. Oliver M. and a girl named Natsuki Marutani soar through the sky above Folkestone, enjoying the thrill of their jump, while the mischievous Gary Smith holds a bomb, scheming to distract them with it and win the race.
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