Learning lettering, and tattoo aftercare advice

Well it'd be fair to say my lettering still has a way to go, but I'm getting there—slowly.

On my progress of trying to teach myself lettering, I'm doing pretty much everything I can to get some real world practice; and this time came in the call of some chalkboards for our friendly local tattoo studio.

The lovely duo of Matty and Zoe run The Shadow Gallery tattoo studio, which is the go-to studio that myself and the lady friend visit to get our fix of filling our skin with every colour under the sun. They  wanted two chalkboards, looking similar, holding the same information to be displayed inside the shop; and well in return for some tattoo hours, I couldn't see any reason not to accept their offer.

I'm pretty happy with the boards, and although they are a little rough in places (I'll explain soon) they suit exactly what Matty and Zoe wanted. Not to mention the strict colour palette of Red, Black and White hit adorns the rest of the shop like some kind of national flag.

If you have a closer look at either of the boards, I think you'll see a good amount of consistency but a few small flaws here and there keep staring at me. I know I really need to get my "R"s sorted because it's mostly what is letting both of these down, and I know that I'm being a little nit-picky about it, but I put all my effort into every bit of lettering I do, and those small errors bug me no end.

Anyway, I'm going to keep trucking and I'll get those "R"s sorted one day!

I'm like E.L.James, without the sex.

You heard me, I'm a terrible writer – but someone is reading my stuff.

Recently, I've been sending of little writings to a blog, in which to have a small section of the Instagram community flip out like I said the queen had died. I like writing things that people might have a problem with, or just hadn't thought about before—because in my real world I always do my best to be a nice person to people, and wouldn't want to offend anyone. But here on the internet, the opinions are just as widespread as the ignorance; so I care not if someone disagrees.

I'm not really any skilled at writing but I love doing it, and I don't think you can ask for more than that in any situation. So I am like E.L.James, but without the sex; my writing is acclaimed, nor is it even very strong, but for some reason, it's proving popular because people have been opposed like this before. Also, I don't often use the word 'vulva'.

If you'd like to have a look, please do – I'm sure to have more on there soon, for better or worse.

http://www.spiregram.com/

Vincent Walden's not-so-professional reviews: Colt 45 @ Northbound Festival

It's time for another review, and I can see the child-like excitement in your eyes. Don't even pretend that's not true.

So lets kick it all off with a moody artistic looking photo of Neil.

I spent my Sunday, in a field otherwise known as Northbound Festival with the guys of Colt 45 – brought along with a AAA pass with the excuse of having me as a filmer/photographer/documenter for the day. So I did my best of getting in the way, filming when anyone tripped over and parade around the stage when the guys were rocking out.

I was mostly filming the guys, so the images you are seeing are a little pixelated due to them being snapshots of the footage I captured; though they do look pretty cool.

So, I'll actually get to the review. After a few hours of free beer, vegi-burgers and light rain, the lads of Colt 45 mounted the stage to be the headline act for the Sunday night. We had spent ages joking around and bumbling about, but now it was down to business—they had to play a sweet set and I had to stand in the audiences way filming the whole thing.

The set was roughly 12 songs long, tracks from their most recent album, fan favourites and a few covers here and there. The performance was bloody brilliant, I mean it was bloody fantastic.
The crowd hand been bumbling around all day, slowly coming to the stage in the spitting rain, never in large groups but all in small congregations of regatta jackets, ponchos and floral headbands.

The fact that there wasn't a Wembley stadium crowd staring up at the stage added to the quality of the performance. You could see inside the exclusive club of audience members, there were family members and huge fans of the band making loving gestures throughout the set, in the middle of solos and between shouting fits of "HFBDSVEBFFDS" all mixed in with the occasional friendly-aggressive middle finger.

The whole set went off without a hitch, aside from G breaking the smoke machine, Neil singing the same line twice and Adam dropping his stick; oh and then there was me, crouching in a waterproof coat, next the drum kit getting in the way, filming everything, and very quickly running out memory.

I was diving around the stage, trying to capture the sweaty punks, whilst all the time trying not to get carried away with the song, not trip over the wires, trying to allow the audience to see the lads and doing my very best to take all the footage I could without filling my memory card.

Aside from me and my problems, the gig was brilliant. It wasn't tarnished by the rain, nor was it bothered by the smaller crowd size of a Sunday, but most importantly; everyone was loving it – myself included.

A bloody brilliant performance from a bunch of lovely Cumbrians, even if I didn't have a clue what 2/3 of the band was saying.

What's going down – Summer '15

I just thought I'd make a post to inform people of what's currently in the mill and what's to come.

So I doubt you needs this, nor do you really want it – but my god you'll have it and you'll like it; kind of like a conservative government. By now you have realised that if you visit this sprawl of content I call a blog often that I haven't updated it in a while, and there are good reasons for this. The main reason, I'm a busy boy at the moment.

And so, I'm taking this time to tell you what I'm working on, as an almost apology for not being as frequent as before. But if you were hoping for concise explanations, well formatted and lacking in spelling mistake you came to the wrong plice my freind.

1 x Music Video, 2 x Websites, 2 x Posters, 1 x Font, 1 x Christening Invitations.

Also including, photographing bits I've done but forgot to document.