Artifice

Set 'em Up, Knock 'em Down
(mixed media using tin cans, found paper, Indian ink and watercolour pencils)

Owlish
(mixed media using Indian ink, watercolour pencils and found paper)

Fish Face
(mixed media on canvas using acrylic pain, Indian ink, and dressmaking pattern tissue)

SOLD A Stitch in Time
(mixed media on canvas using acrylic paint, marker, Indian ink, stitching)

SOLD It's the End of the World
(mixed media on canvas using acrylic paint, marker, Indian ink, stitching)

Above are the works I included in a recent group exhibition called Artifice, with some ex-classmates from my Visual Arts course and two other artists (through a mutual friend). Opening night was SO hot, a 39 degree Celsius day, but we still got a good turnout. It was great to catch up with people I've not seen much of over the past year, and meet some new art lovers, too. I sold the two bottom works at opening night, and I was thrilled. They're a bit of a departure for me, but I enjoyed making them and may make more in a similar vein.

Colour seems to be creeping into my work. I tend to work in a limited palette, odd since I'm attracted to colour - the brighter the better - in other things (such as clothes). Perhaps that box of paint will come in handy after all...

Eek! Actually using paint!

Yeah, yeah, I always say I don't paint. I colour in. I like colouring. This is from one of my drawings, transferred to a re-purposed book cover (The Northumbrian Gentleman), 30cm x 21.5cm (11.5in x 8.5in). Next time I use a book cover I'll try using ink, perhaps white ink on a dark cover. The dark background makes a good contrast.

I'm still not fond of paint, but our relationship is improving.

Painting - perhaps

Drawing 346

Drawing 347

Drawing 348

More scales. I think I may work a couple of these up into - gulp! - paintings. I always say "I don't paint", but these seem to want to be painted. In colour. One of my teachers told me last year that a painting is not simply a drawing coloured in, but hey, not at school now!

Foiled

Drawing day sixty-nine

I was foiled in my baking impulse - I forgot I used the last egg on Sunday, so will have to make a supply run before attempting banana cake. Of course, I also cannot find the recipe of which I was thinking in any of my cookbooks or collection of cuttings, so I'm about to trawl Google for one.

Had another productive day: made three skirts to sell on Ebay, made my drawing-a-day, then worked on a set of drawings for school Drawing class. We had to do a series of six (at least) pieces using an object we chose. My object was text, specifically book pages (can we see a pattern here? I'm obsessed). I had completed the requisite number but wasn't happy with most so I'm adding more, to be winnowed on return to class. They're going in a better direction now that I've reverted to my Indian ink pens rather than the dip pens and bottled ink (too scratchy and imprecise, the wonky lines distress me), though I did like the way the ink looked when I used a brush (in broad areas rather than detail) so I may employ that technique in these extra drawings, too.

I also finished up the triptych of paintings, darkening the one I was dithering about. Now I'm wondering if it's not too dark, and needs a wash of white to knock it back a bit again (not as much as it was, but more than it is now). Just can't make up my mind over the damned things!
Too light, too dark, perhaps I should just get over it and let the poor things be.

I also put some more drawings and garments up on Etsy. Sometime over the next ten days I plan to go through the box of clothing that didn't sell on Ebay and put it up on Etsy, too. I have so many plans for this break, I need a list. A prioritised list. Yeah, that ain't gonna happen...

Alphabet series

Drawing day sixty-four

Drawing day sixty-five

Took inspiration from the other day's "y" like drawing and I've decided to do my own "illuminated" alphabet. So there's ideas for the next twenty or so day's drawings!

I had quite a productive day, today, for the first day of term break. Made my drawing-a-day early, made two skirts to sell on ebay, sorted out the weeks newspapers (I go through them quickly before recycling to cut out any inspiring bits for my visual diaries), finished a small patchwork piece to print on next term (and dragged out fabric for the next couple - the brown one is finished, then I think perhaps a yellow one and a green one), heat set the screenprint design I put on five tank tops (also to sell online, I hope), and spent some time scrutinizing my current painting project trying to decide if one of the three panels needs its image darkened a tad. It does, so that's on the list for tomorrow - the light was failing by the time I reached a decision and it will be easier in daylight than artificial.

School, drawing, hothotHOT!

Drawing day fifty-six

Drawing day fifty-seven

Still drawing, still busy at school, and now March has decided to revert from autumn to simmering summer - 38 degrees C today, a predicted 40 degrees C tommorrow, and high
30s over the weekend. Urgh :)

I'm loving printmaking at the moment (painting, not so much!). I've been working on a silkscreen print from one of my drawings (I suspect I doodled the sketch it's based on during a meeting at my ex-employment), playing with the medium and seeing how far I can stretch it before I get tired of it. After several incarnations, I washed out the screen yesterday, so bye-bye Green Man. I did an edition of ten over an existing print/poster a friend gifted me, several in fabric paint on tank tops (which I'll list on Ebay/Etsy over the upcoming term break), three in fabric paint over embroidered doilies sourced from the op shop (still working on mounting them - I'm going to try starch and iron-on interfacing, then depending how firm they are use velcro dots to hang them, or if that fails put them on some foam core), several more on various fabrics (red, white, black/white stripe - the optical illusion that creates really does the eyes in!, and a black/white print) which I'll incorporate into either clothing or other prints, then five on black and five on white paper for which I have a cunning plan (if it comes off, I'll show it to you). I'm burning along in printmaking, with several editions of work already and so many more I'll never fit them all into the year.

Painting, hmm. We're working on "Diaries and Collections". I had an "AHA!" moment last week and I'm "collecting my thoughts". I've painted three canvases a kind of parchment colour, and on the first I wrote a list (in Indian ink) of things that shit me (not a complete list, mind, that would take a LOT more than one smallish canvas!) and then knocked it back a bit with a wash of watered down white acrylic paint (the ink was a little too black for my liking). Over the words, I've transferred a photocopied line drawing of a brain (using eucalyptus oil, a really cool technique) with branches erupting out of it to represent my thoughts, in graphite first then went over it with grey Indian ink. At least that was the initial plan, but now I prefer it upside down to the way I originally planned it, so that the writing is upside down and now the brain has a network of roots representing all the incoming knowledge feeding my rabid thoughts. On the second canvas, I've eucalyptus transferred photocopies of random pages from the travel journals I keep while on holiday, so the writing is backwards. I'll put an image over the top of that, too, but haven't quite decided what yet. The third canvas is still in the ideas stage.

Too pooped to post

Drawing day thirty-two

Drawing day thirty-three

Drawing day thirty-four

I've been drawing but time has been at a premium since school started up again - I suspected the frequency of posting would decline as classes occupied me :)

Woo, tiring going back! I hate the alarm clock, I hate getting out of bed, but once I'm up I'm rarin' to go. We haven't done very much practical hands on work this week, mostly talking about expectations for this first semester, and setting up administrative stuff. Except for painting today, when we actually got the paint brushes out and applied paint to paper.

On portraits, ugh. Of each other. I loathed painting self portraits last year (I think I'll burn mine and mix the ashes into paint to use on something else!) and portraits of the class aren't much better. Have I mentioned I suck at painting? Oh, and have I also mentioned how much I dislike painting? We did some preliminary drawings then worked up a portrait including aspects of the drawings we liked. I liked the chunkiness of my pastel drawing using tone but no line, so tried to replicate that in paint.

Ew. I swear, I whined and bitched and wandered disconsolately about the studio for an hour, trying to get inspiration from what everone else was doing, in between bouts of daubing half-heartedly at my own painting. The brush wouldn't do what I wanted (as I moaned and groaned endlessly), so Tony (the teacher) slapped a palette knife in my hand and forced me back to work. Yuck, didn't like that either, the paint just sat there in big boring slabs no matter how much I poked at it.

Finally I lost my temper with it. I dragged out my ginormous housepainting brush, stabbed it into the paint and went a bit Rolf Harris on the portrait. Slash. Slash, slash, stab, slice. Swoop, slash, slosh the brush brutally around in the water jar and dash in some washy shadows. Stab and slash at it a bit more. Ten minutes and I was done.

I stood back and looked at it. Hmmm, I think I like it. Yes. It works. I do like it!

Apparently all I needed to do was get angry with the paint and treat it mean :)

Hot, hot, hot

Detail of a project from last semester's painting class - Self-Identity

It feels like the ninth circle of hell here, today: 37 degrees C after a horrible steamy night in which my dreams were populated by ginormous black ants with huge menacing pincers, and emus (I loathe emus) imitating the shark from Jaws. Shudder. There is supposed to be a cool change on the way, but not until around 6am, so I'm in for another night of enduring whatever my heat addled subconscious has been fermenting today. I blame the emu scenario on The Bloke, who is responsible for putting the image in my head into the first place. Perhaps I should work it into a drawing or a painting. My Nightmares, Series I.