BOOM!

These three words represent my tripartite theme for 2013... Filter. Light. Cojones. Filter. I could spend days and days online reading everything and nothing. I want to be more discerning and time-precious and conscious about how much my life is spent doing things that don't pay off. That includes less life-sapping social network and site surfing. I am striving to reduce online consumption and FILTER through to get what is necessary. And as an social media addict like me, that won't be easy, but by the grace of God I'll succeed. If you have any tips on effective online filtration, do me a favour and leave it in the comments section or on my Twitter, please! The next word would certainly help me with that... Light. Illumination. Enlightenment. Wisdom. Call it what you will, I will doggedly pursue it. When you know what you're here for, you waste no time on things that are leading down the wrong route. It's easy to get side-tracked, but I would love to be ab...

I'm dental-hygiene crazy. I floss once or twice (maybe more on some occasions) each day and when I do it, I feel like I'm at the hygienists. Flossing your teeth is just as important as brushing them, but I think people ignore the former activity - at their peril. If I was to conduct a survey (and give people truth serum beforehand), I bet 70-90% of people would tell me that they don't floss - or just as bad, don't floss BEFORE brushing their teeth. Think about it. Compare it to cleaning the kitchen floor. Flossing your teeth is the equivalent of brushing the kitchen floor to get rid of the debris, you know, bits of onion, chicken, rice, languishing on the floor before mopping it, which is the equivalent of brushing your teeth - not the other way round. Learnt my lesson there. Also, I don't rinse my mouth after brushing it, I let the active ingredients in the toothpaste do their job and I think my teeth thank me for it. No, I don't have pe...

Do you ever think we will live in a world where we don't need defence-mechanism phrases such as "Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me " because people are responsible enough to know their words do make an impact? I hope so. I would love that.

BOOM! spoke to the 28-year-old artist who resides in London town. Hi Alice!  BOOM! loves your pics – how much drawing, sketching and painting do you do in a 24-hour period? What’s a typical week like? Sketching is an integral part of the painting process. I spend on average seven to eight hours in the studio per day. At least two hours of that time will be spent sketching, in the conception, duration and completion of a painted canvas. My particular use of the sketching process is to produce rapid outlines as well as fully finished, detailed drawings which not only mark out the contours of the face and figure, but also serve as a process of analysis, to trace and capture what is revealed by my subject matter. When preparing for a new piece, I will spend whole days sketching in preparation. When painting, I lose track of time, and cannot be trusted to maintain a conversation or remember its contents for several hours afterwards! 'George, Fred and Harry...

My drawing of the late singer Amy Winehouse "Why is that when one - just one - celebrity dies, everyone in the world seems to cry, yet when [ insert x ] millions of people die in [ insert country ] (due to [ insert an economically unstable nation (probably) suffering from a natural disaster or famine ]) in one day, no-one else in the world seems to care?" I've heard this question, or similar, a lot this year, mainly on social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter and especially in light of the deaths of two very public figures (that I've personally felt affected by) - Amy Winehouse and Steve Jobs, while indeed there have been many simultaneous mass deaths in different parts of  the world. The mass of media coverage is one thing, corresponding action from the audience is another, and I guess the latter is what I'm referring to, in the main. From a self-reflective perspective, I think the answer to that question lies in two words - person...

My pictorial interpretation of Steve Jobs as seen on the April 2010 Time magazine cover I was saddened to hear about the passing of Steve Jobs, but it served as a timely reminder to make the most of life. So much so, I wrote a post on Emma Cossey's Blog about his legacy. RIP Steve Jobs xxx