As you can imagine, there is not really that much of an opportunity for any of us to enjoy Christmas. However, in order to get through these last hectic weeks and keeping myself motivated, I have stocked up on Christmas scented candles and chocolate calendars, as well as making a Christmas playlist on Spotify. Also, I went wild and persuaded myself to go out for lunch at Scandinavian Kitchen (a wonderful café and grocery store selling all things Scandi) for some northern goodies:

My Christmas calendar which gives me that extra incentive to get up in the mornings:

I will not be blogging anymore until I get back to Norway I am afraid. Hopefully next term will give me more stuff to blog about!

The Norwegian church is located near the Bermondsey tube station:

While the Norwegian Christmas market is better than its Swedish counterpart in terms of handicrafts, the Swedish one has a wider array of Christmas foods such as Scandinavian gløgg (mulled wine) and gingerbread cookies. However, I did manage to spend an insane amount of money on imported Norwegian rice porridge. I don’t even like it that much, it is just that I get very homesick around Christmas…

I really loved how all the people in the stalls wore traditional costumes, and I found the church to be incredibly cosy and inviting. I had heard so much about the Norwegian fayre supposedly being inferior to the Swedish one, but I thought it was great! However, Henrik and I will be going to the Swedish Christmas Market on Sunday in order to stock up on gløgg and gingerbread cookies (which I think taste completely different than English ones). Don’t get me wrong though – I will definitely be stocking up on English Christmas foods too!

Visit the Scandinavian Christmas Markets in London: http://littlescandinavian.com/2011/11/15/scandinavian-christmas-fairs-in-london-2011/

The SexyFoodie Launch Video is finally out! After lots of hard work and obstacles, Bobby, Tudor and I finally managed in the end! (And yes, that is my hand).

SexyFoodie is a licensed company established by my friend Bobby Ong. It works with trusted restaurants in the Bloomsbury area to deliver cheap and healthy meals to students living in UCL Halls of Residences.

Video description: “This video tracks the life of a fictional UCL fresher, Anna Ivanov. She is a first year UCL undergraduate from Russia doing History of Art. The nerdy boy is another fictional character named Johnny Thompson. He is also a first year UCL undergraduate from Newcastle doing Electrical and Electronics Engineering. Anna is this hot blonde bombshell who just feels mad that her course is filled with girls while Johnny is this nerdy boy who is not so smooth in getting the girls. And it doesn’t help that his course has the highest male-to-female ratio in UCL. E&E Engineering has 6.2 males to every female student”.

Order your meal now at http://sexyfoodie.co.uk/, or LIKE us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sexyfoodie!

It is now November, and London is feeling Christmassy! (And of course slightly commercial – but somehow it manages to retain a bit of its magic nevertheless). We all have reading week this week, which means there are no lectures. While in the past we would have grasped this opportunity to go on a holiday, 3rd year proved to have other things in store for us, such as a massive amount of reading and a dissertation. However, Valerie and I decided to leave the library early on Tuesday in order to observe the lighting of the Christmas lights at Regent Street, and to at least remind ourselves that we live in London, and not UCL.

The crowds on Regent Street:

Before the lights are lit, there is always an accompanying musical show directed by Heart FM on a stage set up directly across Hamley’s. The celebs on stage this year was Kelly Clarkson, Emma Bunton (aka Baby Spice) and Bill Nighy, as well as some dude from British X-Factor and the cast of the musical “Thriller”. All the performers did great – however, I must say that I have never heard anybody sound as good live as Kelly Clarkson. People can say whatever they want about Idol and commercialism, but that lady is amazing.

Bill Nighty (aka. Billy Mack from “Love Actually”) looking confused on stage:

The show ended in a spectacular fashion with a surprise firework show commencing the second the lights were lit:

Yes, I have been to Sweden. Only very briefly on some family business. Henrik and I flew out from London Gatwick at 9 pm on Tuesday, and arrived at Stockholm Arlanda around midnight, local time. We had to spend the night at the airport, as we were waiting to catch a flight up to Umeå at 8:30 am the next morning.

The plan was originally to spend the night on some cosy sofas in the airport’s business lounge. However, because we arrived so late, every single bench was taken – and I was snapping at poor Henrik for talking me into spending the night at the airport in the first place. After walking around for two hours looking for a place to sleep, you can say that I was really really pissed.

In an attempt to cheer me up, Henrik decided to take the chance and have us walk to JumboStay, a jumbo jet outside the airport which has been turned into a hostel. It was dark outside, and we could not tell if we were crossing a field or a runway, but in the end we made it there and were so happy to hear that they had one room available! This happened to be the luxury suite, but the receptionist felt so sorry for us (god, we must have looked really tired), that he gave us a 700 SEK/£70 discount. Being fed up and desperate for some sleep, we decided to go with it.

But seriously – it was amazing. We slept at the rear in the room which used to hold the aircraft’s black box. We also had our own private bath and shower:

The first Pop-Up, titled “Word minus Image”, was curated by Information Studies lecturer Anne Welsh. In this exhibition, Welsh showcased prints which originally functioned as book illustrations. She wished to question what happens to illustrations once they are presented as a self-functioning entities without an accompanying narrative, and whether or not an image can ever escape its words.

The display was a success, and several people stopped by to have a look during their lunch breaks.

All the images are taken by Mary Hinkley and are © UCL Art Museum:

The picture seen here originally came from a book on anatomy. How does it relate to for example classical sculptures?

Yep, that’s me:

And that is my hand:

And here is me on the front page of the UCL website!

Drop in on Tuesdays during lunch hour and have a look!

First we went for pre-drinks at Ines’ place. The birthday girl was dressed up as a psycho Snowhite who had found a gun and turned on the dwarfs:

I look seriously disturbing here…

While queuing up at Proud, we met a bear:

Lida and Val killing time…

At Proud everyone sort of lost each other, and some never showed up. But at least Val and I discovered a great new band called Lester Clayton! The lead singer kept looking at us, and at first we thought perhaps it was because he thought we were pretty. But then we remembered that we looked insane…

While trying to enjoy the music, a middle-aged man started spanking our butts with a plastic sword. I gave him a taste of his own medicine, and he looked really scared afterwards.

Anyway – happy birthday Ines and happy Halloween everyone! And for those who are interested:

~ How to do creepy doll makeup ~

1. Apply pale foundation to your whole face, including your lips. (Funnily enough, I just had to borrow Val’s regular foundation…)
2. Apply red eyeshadow from the lids and up to the brows.
3. Apply black eyeshadow to the lids only.
4. Using a white eyeliner or white face paint, paint the underside of your eyes in a white crescent shape. (The aim is to make your eyeballs look twice as big as normal).
5. Define the outlines of your “new” eyes with a black eyeliner. Don’t forget to draw creepy lashes! Use your finger to “drag” the lines down towards your cheeks.
6. Apply fake lashes. Usually people choose black lashes for these purposes, but I found some red ones from Sainsbury’s which were really striking!
7. Paint cute little lips on top of your real lips. Using black and red eyeliner, draw some stitches going from your mouth and up to your ears.
8. Add a dab of rouge to the apple of your cheeks.
9. Look creepy

Go to UCLU and pick up the latest edition of Pi Newspaper! I am mainly saying this because I want you to check out my review on TATE Britain’s exhibition John Martin: Apocalypse in the “Encore” section! My first step to becoming an art journalist has now officially been taken!

I am not sure if I can get used to seeing my name on print. However, luckily they spelled it “Cathrine” and not “Catherine”, which is what people usually do in this country because they just assume I am an imbecile who can’t spell my name. Which is guess is rather amusing and easily forgivable, as I do come across as slightly confused at times…

Anyway, the review will also be available online later! OH THE EXCITEMENT, RIGHT?!

Tonight was absolutely magical. As a BFI member, Val got hold of tickets for the May Fair Hotel Gala Premiere of the new British movie “Anonymous” at the Empire Leicester Square. “Anonymous” advances the theory that William Shakespeare was a fraud, and that his famous playwrights were in fact written the Earl of Oxford.

The film stars famous British actors such as Rhys Ifans, Vanessa Redgrave, David Thewlis (Prof. Lupin in the Harry Potter movies), Joely Richardson, Jamie Campbell Bower and many others! Val and I got to walk the red carpet with Rhys Ifans and Joely Richardson, which was very of course very thrilling! Nearly tripped at one point, but luckily I managed to walk relatively elegantly all the way to the theatre entrance. Didn’t want to seem overly eager and blind the celebs with my camera flash light, so got some pictures from Getty Images instead:

Here is Joely Richardson looking absolutely stunning! She played the young Elizabeth I in the movie:

Rhys Ifans:

Jamie Campbell Bower and his fiancé…who turned out to be Ginny Weasley!

Professor Lupin!

The whole cast, minus Vanessa Redgrave who was unable to attend:

Val and I inside the Empire Leicester Square before the screening:

The cinema was enormous – and so beautiful:

We both really enjoyed the movie, and lets face it – we are suckers for juicy Tudor drama. Also found it to be very funny – especially the way the rivalry between Shakespeare and Marlowe was played out. However, the topic of whether or not Shakespeare was a fraud has apparently proven hugely controversial here in Britain, especially amongst the locals in Stratford-upon-Avon, Shakespeare’s “place of birth”. In the end though – what does it matter? What is important is the art, and the fact that someone out there wrote these beautiful words for posterity to enjoy. The film pays Shakespeare more tribute than it degrades him.

The class was really intense – we had to do around fifty 1 minute poses, with several overlapping each other on the paper in the style of Muybridge and Marey’s motion study pictures:

The point is to capture proportions and movements, rather than details. I tend to draw stick figures and help lines first, and then add flesh to the figure. Will probably use this one for my portfolio: 

At the end we did a 30 minute pose, in which we had time to further capture details, curves, shading etc. I tried to alternate between light and heavy lines in order to make the drawing more dynamic:

It is always amazing how quickly one goes into a professional mode and forgets that there is a nude man in front of you flashing his private parts from all possible angles. In the end you just start seeing the body as a combination of shapes, rather than an actual body.