slow progress

Not much to report except that I'm in a blogging mood so I took a quick photo of what I'm currently working on.

Things are going slow at the moment. I'm working almost every day, but don't seem to be producing all that much which I'm finding a little frustrating. I'm about to start some small (9x12") works so that I can at least feel like I'm getting somewhere.

Hello Kitty

The Hello Kitty 35th Anniversary show opens at Royal/T in LA this weekend! Here is my painting:

Three Apples

Next month is the Three Apples exhibition to celebrate Hello Kitty's 35th Anniversary. The show will be held at Royal/T in LA and feature over 60 artists. I'm excited about this show - the opening sounds like it will be a great night, I'm just sad that it's all so far away and I can't join in the fun.

Wild flowers in WA

I just got back from a week in Western Australia. I had never been to WA before, it somehow seemed a lot more Australian than Victoria, the botanic gardens was almost exclusively native plants. I finally get why the national flower is wattle. The damn thing is everywhere.

I know looking at holiday photos can be a bit dull, so I've kept it to just a few (I took over 1000!). And this is kind of related to art in the form of inspiration and reference.

I found the wreath flower, it was somewhere in the middle of nowhere (as you can see from the photo). They (the friendly tourism office?) tie pink ribbons around trees and poles that have wreath flowers near them so you can find them more easily.


Wattle. Is it a flower or a plague? I'm really not sure.


wild flower field:


Lesueur National Park - kinda felt like there should be dinosaurs wandering around for some reason.


Black Kangaroo paw at Kings park. Might be good to draw:

Bipolar

I have a painting in the Bipolar show at Exhibit A Gallery in LA this weekend.

The idea of the show is to work in a style or medium different to your usual. For example, to adopt the style of an artist from history. I decided to do a homage to Aubrey Beardsley. He was an English illustrator in the late 19th century whose black and white ink drawings have been extremely influential, but unfortunately he died when only 25.


Beardsley's Garden, oil/acrylic on canvas, 20x20"

Show preview

The images for the Call of the Wild show are now online here (scroll to the end of the page to see mine).

Next week...

One week until the "Call of the Wild" show opens. I was pretty excited when I got a stack of show cards in the mail from the lovely people at Gallery1988 (above).

I packed and sent the works off earlier this week. I had to go to so many office supply and packaging places before I found a box big enough, and even then I had to cut it up and re-make it. Here's one of the works for the show - the Bunny-girl painting I was working on:



The flowers are based on the pink mulla mulla. I found some photos of mulla mulla fields on flickr when I was researching my trip to WA and thought they looked pretty amazing. Rabbits are pretty much pests here in Oz. From wikipedia "Rabbits are suspected of being the most significant known factor in species loss in Australia". I guess that explains why there are no other animals in the painting, she's already hunted them down.

Mulla Mullas in the NT (from Flickr) photographed by Doug Steley:


A destructive rabbit from the northern hemisphere, wreaking havoc in Australia whilst still looking fairly cute (from wikipedia):

Under the influence (part 2)

Part two. And before you ask, I have no idea how many parts there are to this series as I'm just making it up as I go.

I have been spending time looking into illustrators from what's referred to as the golden age of illustration. Think fairytales and forests with medieval and pre-raphaelite twists. What I like about this era of illustration is that the imagery is so decadent and lush, but it's tempered by subdued colours. The result gives a kind of darkness to the narratives which makes sense because fairytales often are dark and otherworldly. I want to try and use this technique in my own work, so we'll see how that goes.

Some of the biggest influences in the movement:

Arthur Rackham


Kay Nielsen


Edmund Dulac


And just for fun I've included an Aussie, Ida Rentoul Outhwaite


P.S. Part 1 is here.

Upcoming Show

Upcoming show in August:

Call of the Wild (4-person show)
Aug 21-Sep 12 2009
Gallery 1988 San Fransisco

I still have to finish off my works for this show - hopefully will be done in a week or two. I've been doing a lot of self-inflicted professional development lately. I'm focusing on some technical issues like colour mixing/accuracy and am looking into the munsell colour system. It turns out that all that basic colour theory we're taught in school (the colour wheel, warm colours advancing, primary colours for mixing etc) is all a bit archaic and inaccurate (go figure). It's ok to get you started but if you really want to have control and understanding of your colours (if you want to paint as well as Mark Ryden, which I do :) it's not much good. If anyone is interested there is an excellent article on colour theory and mixing here.

I'm also looking into skin tones, anatomy, composition and idea development. So much to research!

Works in Progress

It's after 2am - time for thinking/winding down with a cup of herbal tea and then sleeping.