A little late but better than never

Some images get lost along the way, they get buried under a pile of other things like deadlines or little doodles and simply never see the light of internet. I have a small collection of these...most of them half finished. If I have a new years resolution it is to get all my stuff out there and not leave it sitting on my desktop for months. Thankfully this one only got delayed by a day due to scanning lag.

I had great fun with the middle girl's shoes but she was a constant fidget! Which resulted in the plethora of hands. Her friend was slightly more subdued but I still managed to get three variations from her. But by the time I got to my third person I thankfully found a very calm and stationary uncle. Thank you to all the people who study, read and use the 'free internet' at coffee shops. You are the best drawing subjects.

Sketching at Ion

More sketching, keeping the fingers limber. This one was penned out in a new location but in the same chain. Coffee Bean at Ion is fairly easy to find, considering everything else in Ion isn't. It's just one floor down on the escalators near the giant ... seed pod/avocado statue.

I decided to focus on people for this image. I was too tired to draw out coffee merchandise/furniture at the time and I've also been having the best time drawing hair with my muji pen. It's a sexy little biro encased in a 'silver' hexagonal casing. Thinner than your average biro (and able to leap tall buildings in a single bound!) I'm sold several times over! So was the person who stole my first muji pen. Damn stationery thieves with taste.

Experimental sketches

I decided to try something a little different with my last cafe sketch and added a dash of painting to the mix. Recently some other friends/artists I know have been working on mixed media, like Matt Huynh. Although I must say he combines his wet and dry mediums in a slightly more interesting manner. But nonetheless I felt inspired to try as well.

Part of me likes this image,

and another part isn't too sure.

I overworked the left hand section near the front man's head. But there are still parts I really love. Like the woman in the sari, the lead up of the stools to the girl typing and the various lamps. Hopefully next time there will be a more significant ratio.

Location: Singapore, Vivo, Pacific Coffee Company (not so great coffee...)

Sketching at Starbucks

First sketch of the 'holiday', a tad rusty but it was fun to start drawing from life again. Hardest part was definitely mixing and matching people and merging spaces, forgot how fast people drank coffee in Singapore compared to the leisurely pace kept in Sydney. Most enjoyable part of the picture was definitely trying to get the girl's hair right.

Hopefully this will be one of many to come,

before the Christmas crowds get too intense

Things I've been up to

I've been fairly quiet about what's been happening to me so far so I'm just giving a quick update. I've been discovered! by Blanket, an amazing online magazine. I entered some of my black and white work for the appropriately titled black and white issue. I've also been in a curated group exhibition at the Kudos Gallery again imaginatively titled 'Kudos'. No prizes but a little birdie told me that the judges did like my work. :)

And a few weeks ago, in time for the Spring Fair at Cofa (college of fine arts) I made a small free zine with a few friends helped out by Cofa's amazing double page + stapling printer.

More Prints

Yes, he is fishing with paper boats. No, do not ask me why. But sleep deprivation and surfing on google images has you coming up with some strange things.

Printed portraits

I've been doing a few etchings recently to make use of the printing studios at my University before they close down for the holidays. As you can see it's mostly experimental stuff, not the usual tightly and neatly drawn etchings I'm used to doing. These portraits are sort of overflow inspiration from some of my charcoal work which I hope will be finished sometime early next year if I get a studio space. Otherwise will update you with a few close ups and process works as I go along.

Found

Old photographs have a certain quality about them, colours don't go pixel crazy in a horrible fluro of grey noise the same way they do in digital photographs. It might have been that before I moved to digital my photograph taking abilities were much higher. But what's more likely is = Film just turned out better.

So what if digital was much cheaper and more distribution friendly? I miss the old days of tearing open my packet of developed film in rabid excitement and sorting through my ill-lit and unfocussed crap to find a few good photographs. Those good photographs were amazing.

But really the whole process was much too expensive.

So now I opt for digging through other people's photographs. I found this set in an Antique and second hand store. These are just a few of my favourites. I'll add more when I finish scanning them in.

i draw naked people

This is a small collection of the naked people I have drawn and or painted. They come from different projects based on fluidity or tone or abstraction but one magical thing ties them all together. Nakedness. Sadly enough it isn't as the posters say. Nude models do not need to be attractive. All that is required of them is the willingness to shed clothes and be directed into various awkward and revealing positions.

You might say that this is easy, hell you might be the god-blessed sort of person who likes to shimmy down to the buff every friday night after a few stubbies at the local bar. You're probably thinking 'Hey, being paid to be naked and stand still sounds good to me!' But I hope you've been taking your advanced yoga lessons, your mind-over-matter courses, and have a lot of self esteem.

Showing up to work to be butt naked (while sober) in winter (with no heating) while a bunch of people stare at your member (do not think sexy thoughts) and draw horribly ugly pictures of you (for hours...yes you need to be able to stand still for 15-30 minutes) is much harder than you think.

But if you do finally come to the conclusion that being a life model is the job for you,
I'll be seeing you.

Screenprinting

These are a few screen prints I completed recently for a University project. The brief was to make eight individual prints from the same screens. Hopefully forcing you into a more organic less rigid intuitive way of screen printing. Well I hated it for most part. Give me rigid frigid planning ahead any day. Nevertheless I liked a few of the prints that came out in the end and it was an interesting experience with interesting results.

Cafe sketch

The signature down the bottom left belongs to the well-muscled man in the back of the cafe. Despite him looking intensely at his laptop he also managed to spy me.

I used to have a habit of getting waiters & waitresses to sign my cafe sketches. I think they enjoyed being part of the image and seeing what I had done to the place they clock in their 9 to 5's. I guess it also made the image more real as a place for me.

Others who'd spotted me were gladly included or on the rare occasion I'd approach some of the random people who were in the image for their John Hancock. But I fell out of habit. Mostly because some people had no idea what in the world I wanted from them or what my sketch was of. Also some others were a bit suspicious of giving out their signature, as we all should be.

Well-muscled man didn't have any qualms however, and was quite pleased to get a glimpse at what he looked like, as well as adding to the piece himself.

doodles

mX gives some love

I got a spot in mX a couple weeks ago, it's a giant picture with a little caption promoting my solo exhibition. A big thank you to the mX team and also everyone who came down after this peaked their interest!

I was actually surprised at the amount of feedback I got from this. I don't travel by train. And there never seems to be any newspapers near my bus stops. For me the mX is a rare and temporary paper specimen. So it was great to hear friend's tell me that they flipped out on the train and leaned over to whoever was reading the mX to announce that they knew me:

"Yes, yes, her!...no not the picture of the two men spitting out wine on the opposite page...yes! that one! You do know that makes me famous by one degree of separation?"

And once again, I'd just like send some love and a big thank you to mX and everyone who came, called, emailed or sent some astral telepathic love my way and to the exhibition.

Solo Show!

I'm having an exhibition from the 9th to the 21rst of October at galleryeight!
This is my first solo and I am very excited and nervous
so please join me for drinks on Opening night:

the 9th of October,
from 6-9pm
at galleryeight
8 Argyle Place

galleryeight is open Thursdays to Sundays 12-6pm
but you might get lucky on some of the other days.

This show will be a collection of my charcoal works,
for more hints head over to my website,
but come meet them and me in person,
we're much more interesting in the 3D world.

Guess which one mis-registered?

For all you out there that missed my glorious prints at the Spring Fair: shame on you!

But I forgive, to show my forgiveness here's a sample of some of my work that was on sale.

There is just a single elephant per print, but I really ended up loving my dodge print and wanted to show it off. My little elephant on the right is out by several centimeters but he has become my favourite out of the bunch.

The original image was penned in at the Singapore zoo, where a lovely elephant repeated this pose several times to snack on some artificially elevated bananas.

Spring Fair! This Saturday!

The time has come again for Spring Fair!

Student and graduates of cofa bring out their wares for sale in a crazy, colourful market carnival set in cofa. There are also exhibitions, live dj's, tours, festival food and demonstrations. Even if you are broke and can't buy any art come for the free demonstrations!

I recommend the printing demonstrations. Michael Kempson will be doing a print run of professional artists' work throughout the day, working with the etching press. It's wonderful to see the before and after of prints, and if you run into the images again in some gallery you can boast that you were there when they were being made.

I will also be around and about in the printing studio, talking about printing and selling some of my own work, so come find me!

For anyone wondering where and what cofa is, it's an Art University residing in Sydney, Paddington, at the Corner of Oxford St and Greens Rd.

Spring Fair starts at 10am until 4pm
this saturday, 19th of September

Ariel from across the street

I was actually sitting across the street in Berkelouw when I drew this and it really killed my eyes. I think I need to get my glasses checked. There was so much colour in that store that I would have to pause and try distinguish what was what every few minutes. It didn't help that there were about three panes of glass distorting things slightly (two of them in Berkelouw) Nonetheless pretty happy with how it all came out. Rough scale on image size: 12 x 7 cm.

Aboutlife: The organic cafe/grocery store that ate Macro

My favourite thing about this place is that they have little shopping trolleys for kids, also they have cute red plastic flags attached to them. So if you loose sight of your child as you are forcing them to move your groceries around you can find them easily again. Unfortunately I saw no child labour while having my fair trade coffee.

Gloria Jeans

Two people behind me were having the most painful impromptu speed dating session ever. It began with the guy pulling out the 'dating for dummies' book and asking the girl if she had read it. It went downhill from there. I would have liked to do a little bit more of the cafe, but I couldn't draw and block my ears at the same time so I left.

Max Brener again

Again haven't been keeping up the blog, which means there will be a large clump of images and then a dry spell. Kind of like those healthy but tasty breakfast cereals-there are these amazing crunchy nutty honey filled berry bits of sweet things that make the rest of cereal taste good. But you get them all melded together into this little ball of goodness, or just search for them when you first open the packet and then feel angry and disappointed when finishing off the rest of the box.

Well I will try not let that happen, and keep up with images and info so that there is an even nutritious diet of visuals. After all 4 out of 5 doctors recommend consuming several small pictorial meals a day rather than one large binge. With your health in mind I will try harder to go to coffee shops and chocolate shops to eat and draw.

Bubble girl +fish

This image is part of a larger composition I was going to do for a Threadless T-shirt competition. Originally there were meant to be tons of kids running around and making giant bubble and balloon creatures.  It never got out of the sketching phase unfortunately.  The main obstacle in my image's path was an 8 colour restriction for a t-shirt print.  In the end I decided to forgo the competition and just make the image the way I wanted to. 

(I also ran out of time after mucking about with other projects and making the same sketch over and over trying to visualize it with only 8 colours.) 

This little girl is a bit of a colour test, so I'd love to hear any feedback.

After spending an hour circling through the five different blue's in the bubble fish

changing the opacity ever so slightly,

erasing something and then undoing 

and then re-doing and then deciding to try dodge it instead

I decided that she had to get off my desktop 

otherwise I would never get to any of the work I am meant to be doing today.

I found Santa!

I assume he was making a list and checking it twice
And I have to say, this beard + hair combo is real!
no exaggerations at all

Conversations

If anyone has been paying attention they will know of my love affair with the biro.
My favourite sketching medium. However recently I've been having colour pangs, especially after looking at the sketchbooks and prints of joseph Lambert. But now I can have my cake and eat it too, I have discovered and purchased coloured biro's!

In the super friendly colours of green, pink and purple they are wonderfully cheap and still act like biro's should.
I unfortunately bought a crappy purple pen so purple won't be showing up anytime soon.
But pink has been acting on its best behaviour!
And has been everywhere from my uni notes to my sketchbook.

Im pretty happy with this image, I've always had a thing for speech bubbles.
I find it great when utterly non-tangible things, like speech, gets solidified in comics.
And I love comics.
Ahhh comics and biro's ... never leave me!