Eat Chocolate and Cry – Australian Flute Music – CD Cover

One of my designs – Paperbark – was recently used on the cover for a new CD by musicians Christine Draeger, Lamorna Nightingale and Jocelyn Edey-Fazzone. It is called Eat Chocolate and Cry – Australian Flute Music 199-2009 featuring Australian contemporary composers.  As part of the HSC Music course students must study this content and so this CD is designed a a resource as well as for highlighting contemporary composers and musicians.

The CD was launched at the Australian Music Centre in The Rocks Sydney at the end of September – more information about the cd can be found here.

Apart from all of that I do like the concept of listening to beautiful music, eating chocolate and crying!!

Kookaburra Illustration Drawing

I have just finished this drawing of a Kookaburra.

Again it is drawn using light washed of watercolour and many many dots made with a fine nib rotring pen.

It is a drawing I started last year and is part of my mission to complete unfinished projects.

I am still carving one of the unfinished projects in my linocut work but am still keeping it low profile until it is completed. But it is exciting and I am hoping to get it completed in the next couple of weeks.

I am also designing a few new things. I have to take regular breaks from carving lino and so am mixing it up a bit with the illustration work, new designs for linocuts, some extension design work in relation to more commercial projects like cards  and drawing. It sort of suits me to work this way in many respects I just need to be careful to aim to complete work as well as look at all the new possibilities!!

Waratah Illustration – just finished!

I have just finished this illustration of a Waratah – Telopia speciosissima. I know back to waratahs again! But the two local plants have put on a real show again this spring and I just couldn’t resist.

In this particular illustration I have used a very light wash of watercolour and use fine dots (many many many fine dots) with a Rotring pen to build up the image.

For those that may be interested in papers I have used an antique white rag based acid free watercolour paper. I like this paper with its slightly rough texture – it is cold pressed watercolour paper and so has a ‘bite’ on its surface. The hot pressed papers I mainly use for the linocuts has a smooth surface.

On the RSI/arm/shoulder/neck pain front – I am carving lino again but the advice from the physio is ‘pace yourself’ which is incredibly frustrating but I guess not as frustrating as 2 months without carving and not doing much else. Just need to keep up the exercises, pilates, anti-inflammatory meds, posture correction and warm wheat bags!! But still some progress forward is something to be grateful for.

Now onto a bit of carving this afternoon I think….can’t say what yet…but it is getting there albeit slowly….

Visual Arts Teaching – Textbook and Curriculum Resource

Last year I was contacted by Lynda Kuntyj and asked to contribute to a resource textbook to help support the new Western Australian Visual Arts Curriculum for Primary/Secondary students.

I am very interested in promoting the visual arts and in teaching/tutoring, having a degree in art education. After speaking to Lynda, who is obviously passionate about teaching, I contributed some of my images, working arts practice methodology and tutorial text.

Impact Publishing released this book early this year and you can find out more about this book here. There is a pdf file with sample pages from this book that you can download – this includes 2 of the pages with some of the information that I contributed.

This is one of the textbooks from of a series of three. They all look quite helpful as resources for art teachers and students even though it is the WA syllabus the information looks like it would be useful generally.

Old tree…and memories

There is an old tree – part of a long ago area of mangroves – that stubbornly is still clinging on. It is on the way into Yamba from the highway at a place called Oyster Channel.

I remember this place from my childhood – the much awaited last section of road on the long drive to visiting my grandparents. Every holidays my dad got, we as a family went to visit them from our home in Sydney. For my father it was always a home coming – to his beloved Clarence River and his favourite pastime – fishing. For us it was swimming, the beach, ‘the pictures’, walks to the shops, reading, general lazy days, wandering days around town and a sense of freedom.

Of course there was always nearly every day – the fishing and the getting of the bait for fishing – yabbying in low tide on the mud flats in stingray holes with yabby pumps and worming and pippying on the beach. As you can see in the photo below we started fishing young!

Going fishing often began with the 4am rise time – just so that we could make sure that we got ‘our spot’. I still have visions of my short, quite round grandma, demanding of anyone who happened to have the audacity to get to her best fishing spot before her, ‘get off my rock’. She was not keen on going out much but she loved fishing and would set out with grim determination and a basket of sandwiches and freshly baked ‘grandma’s cake’ for everyone, to make sure she got ‘her spot’. We caught lots of fish and had lots of fun but there were some parts that were less than impressive – the 4 am starts and lets not forget to mention the large buzzing and ravenous scotch grey mosquitoes that also seemed to inhabit in huge numbers ‘the best spots’ – obviously just knowing the humans with the warm blood would be here in ‘their spot’!

Oyster Channel and Romiaka were one of the best winter ‘blackfish spots’ with memories of fishing with green weed on the ends of bobbing floats waiting for the fish to grab the line and take the float under water.

Both my grandparents are no longer here but the memory of this roadway into town with its low lying roads that in flood times cut the town off (and still does) and the final bridge into town still evokes memories of happy family times. Their house was in River Street opposite the old Public School which has now been moved out of town to make way for the Bowling Club extensions. Their house is still standing – well over 100yrs old but like the old tree still hanging on – just. Yamba is not the same as in my childhood. It is no longer the quiet backwater of my childhood and I suspect the next owner of my grandparents old house will be the last before this prime position is ‘redeveloped’.

We probably won’t go fishing there again but there are the memories and this tree – battered and worn but still there hanging on – just.

Ringtail Possum Nest

We have been busy trying to get our trees under control in our suburban block. It has been a very long time since we tackled this and the trees have got to the stage where we needed to bring them down to a level where we can get some sunlight into the house/yard. There are 4 lilly pillies on the fenceline and two of these are quite large about 6-7metres high. My birdwing butterfly vine had also wound itself up on of these trees so we decided to take it down to a reasonable level and take the vine off this tree just leaving it on the fence. The first smaller branch covered in the vine came down to a flurry of frantic activity from above. Out from the high enclosed space flew three ringtail possums. They had apparently made their nest in the vine which was way up to the top of the tree.this is the best view I could get of the ‘nest’.

We had no idea they were living there! Although I did photograph a ringtail possum a while back. Consequently the tree is still there but not sure about the possums – think we might need to make a possum nesting boxes to keep these ones safe – especially from a very large and nasty neighbourhood cat!

Here is the largest of the three ringtail possums – the other two disappeared back into the nest – I must say he/she was not looking impressed!

Tawny Expressions Linocuts – first hand coloured drafts

It is wet windy and cold here at the moment with a ‘weather event’ looming – according to the weather forecasters. Nice weather for being inside drinking coffee, making winter comfort food and well procrastinating which seems to loom large for me in recent times.

I have however managed to complete one set of colour drafts of the set of 12 tawny expressions linocuts. I wasn’t sure how much to hand colour at this point so have gone in this set for the full colour with glowing yellow eyes look.

Below are the template images with just yellow eyes…

Tawny Expressions Linocut Templates

I was planning to have them framed using black core black mountboard with a black frame so the second image here is to give some idea of that.

I will probably sit on these images for a while (yes more procrastinating!) so I am going back to carving some more work and also further working on the Barn Owl image. I did the original drawing of this barn owl about 5 years ago and it has waffled around for all that time. I have come up with a whole new way of looking at it and may even drop the orginal idea in favour of developing the new images. I will post the process at some stage as it can be valuable for an artist to look at their own processes in a more ordered fashion required for blogging and may provide some small insights for others. Well hopefully anway!

Emu Linocut – what a difference a background colour can make

Having finally carved, printed and now coloured this linocut (after working on the original drawing over a year ago and the pre-sketch ideas are over 2 years old!) I finally have finished!

I had hand painted the emu first as you can see but it felt a bit empty so added a graded wash of ‘Australian Red Gold’ which I am quite pleased with. I must say this one of my favourite watercolour pigments as it just seems to have a glow about it.  I think the background colour can make a huge difference to any work and often it may take several tries to create the effect you want. So now it is a matter of completing the edition of this design.

Oh and still deciding on a final name for this work? Any ideas?

The Big Ride for the Big Issue – Updated Information

For those with a sense of having seen this before – you have! Unfortunately the link wasn’t working to Jo and Anne’s website/blog about their fund raising efforts and events so I am re-posting the information – here is the working link now! The Big Ride for the Big Issue

They have two events coming up – one a fund raising ride from Melbourne to Yea on the 23rd May – there is additional information on how people may support this event and the fund raising on the bottom of the poster (click posters to enlarge). The second event is a jazz fund raising gig on 31st May in Fitzroy.

New linocuts printed! Unusual birds – Tawny Frogmouths and an Emu

As I indicated in yesterdays post I have finally printed some of the numerous unfinished designs that have been sitting around on the ‘to do list’ for in some cases years!

So here are the black and white versions- can’t wait for the ink to dry and starting playing with some colour ideas on these 2 works – I already have the framing ideas.

Firstly is the set of 12 tawny expressions. These started as drawing studies of Tawny Frogmouths which I couldn’t resist taking into linocut designs.

The second is a madcap emu that was originally what I considered a less than successful drawing. In the end I went for the slightly unhinged quality of the drawing – especially as emus seem to have this quality about them. As for the design I decided to extend the lines created by the feathering into the background to add to this whole mad type impression.

Any suggestions for the title of this work? “C’mon, make my day” for some reason springs to mind!!