Works displayed for the Jenny Birt

Thank you to everyone who came and supported me at the Jenny Birt, it was a lovely show with music, food, wine and little boxes of chocolate! (will photograph the chocolate if there's any left)  Also a special thanks to Chris Ross, who was in the show with me and who took some great photos of my work.  

These are some of the first drawings I've completed for my Honours Year.  Though it should be safe to say I finished them for the Jenny Birt Show (I was up at 4am in the morning still working on them to meet the 10am installation deadline).  I'll be putting up a couple process shots, get a better photograph of the tiny work on metal, describe the problems of drawing on zinc sheets and try keep up to date with my work in the studio in the following weeks.  

Voiceworks Magazine

Voiceworks is a national quarterly magazine that features young Australian writers and artists. Full of poetry, fiction, illustration and comics it is one of the very few literary magazine that pays its contributers! I'm part of issue 81, themed Birthmark and I'm paired with the literary styles of Lauren Lovett's Hidden Tiger.

Evolution of an image

Long time no post, but I have a lot of news and images so this week will be chock full of entries! I wanted to break pace a little bit with my sketches so here are some process shots of the charcoal portrait I had in the show at Monstrosity Gallery! (It also made its way into a magazine! but I will write more about that later)

Hopefully you can still pick out details and follow the evolution of this image despite the bad quality of the photos. Dodgy as they may be they still show crucial moments in the rendering of the face as well as some of the drastic changes I made between stages.

I had been working on this image for a while and had some interesting marks happening, but it wasn't moving anywhere and at the end of the day it was just a slushy indistinct collection of facial features. So I clarified where I wanted the head and the shoulders to be with some strong lines. After solidifying my guideline I was able to push the image because I was confident on the placement of the face.

Most of the fun happens in the beginning when I am just throwing water and smearing charcoal around trying to find patterns I like from the resulting mess. I draw a face and then water it, let it dissolve for a while and then re draw and then let it partially melt again. Then I slowly piece the image together from these leftovers like a fortune teller with tea leaves.

Towards the end I make smaller and smaller adjustments, slowly becoming more afraid of my image and a little too precious with it. Some images die this way. I get too hesitant to change certain areas and I get into a stalemate, where I can't move the picture forward without somehow damaging my favourite part.

Thankfully this one went quietly, though before when I had been pushing it to be a young female with four eyes it had rightly argued. You can still see traces of this in the earliest image's luscious lips and the thinness in the face.

This work is titled The Swimmer and as I said before was on display at Monstrosity Gallery's Portrait exhibition. During the show there was an artist talk and small get together over some munchies. A video was made of some of the artists (me included). Hopefully this video will eventually see the light of day and you'll be able to hear me describe some of the thoughts that go into my drawings.

Group Show on Friday!

Hello all,

I've been included into a group show! The Opening (incase you can't read the small print on the post)

Is on:

Friday the 28th of May at 6-9pm

at Monstrosity Gallery

93 Bourke Street Woollomooloo

(You can access it from the stairs near the AGNSW

or just by going down Bourke street)

You can find more information about the gallery here

I'll be showing a new never been seen charcoal work in this exhibition!

and after the opening I'll put up some process images!

I look forward to seeing you this friday!

Cheers

Jess

Experimental portrait

I've finally worked out some sort of routine/area for my art making at home! Losing my studio space at University was sad sad time for me, and to help me get over it I snuck back into University and decided to use some unmarked territory as my own. Alas all good things must come to an end, and I am now resigned to working at home.

After a few trial and errors I have finally found a way to fit my messy practice into my small apartment. I will post hilarious images of my canvas' sitting on my bath tub later. At the moment I am jumping between my bedroom, living room table (aka easel and stool in one) and my couch side table depending on the medium I am using. And at the moment I am using a few. After countless arguments about the benefits of working charcoal on paper VS canvas I have conceded to see how the other side lives. (The other side lives in a sucky part of town. Canvas all the way.)

I will admit that a deliciously smooth surface does await the paper user, but so will large framing costs.

Paper has been very friendly towards inks however (though I've used those with canvas as well) and I have been playing around with mixed media especially after being inspired by Matt Huynh work and solo show (happening on the 1rst of June!) I've posted my favourite piece above, it's a mixture of inks and acrylics on paper.

More floating heads

More displaced heads for the 2009 journal. Not too many of them because I managed to move twice and still find myself under the intense flow of the 24hr Starbucks aircon. After a frappacino (a bad one! ...have no idea how they can do that they measure it all out in a cup) well, ice, air con, nighttime, I ended up being too cold to draw. A strange feeling to have in Singapore.

Still managed to get a few down this time combining my ink pen and biro to have nice strong lines and subtle shading. My favourite is the girl at the top, where I think the double combo of pens comes out the best. In a couple of the others however its like a bad DC and Marvel crossover. But some crazy people enjoy the Universe crash so I hope there's a floating head here for everyone.

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.

It's been a while...

Just a small update from my moleskin, I'm sorry for the lack of posts but I am visiting family back in Singapore and despite wireless being everywhere I have issues accessing it.

This is just a small look into my journal, one of my friends told me they felt their moleskin was inferior to everyone else's, since it was filled with to-do-lists. I reassured him that mine was full of maps, lists and phone numbers, as you can see to the right.

Blanket blog

I've swapped the address for blanket blog, the previous one hadn't been updated in over 3 months.  It had apparently been added on the side to the original site, which is now sitting comfortably in my navigation. 

The original site is chocked full of delicious images, information and opportunities.  Which is displayed a la blog/website style but also in a PDF magazine.  The most recent issue is No. 50 The portrait Issue, and I'm included!

As I mentioned earlier I entered one of my charcoal portrait into the Blanket portrait re-action challenge.  It is now sitting with the other 100 entries for this issue!  Come take a look at all the talented people in this and in older issues at Blanket.      

Archibald 2009

The Archibald is now finished, I managed to sneak in on the second last day and it was surprisingly empty. Not exactly empty but deserted compared to the last time I tried to get in: where the line stretched from the foyer, past the gift shop and into the permanent collection.

These are my favourites of the show. Some didn't come out well enough, like Abbey McCulloh's painting which was all about colour.

A couple others were from the Wynne Prize, I usually don't like landscape painting but that exhibition really took with me. Especially Paul Ryan's work, titled 'My home is the sea'. Loved the framing of the coastline, it was almost like a little boat, or a floating island, very insular and gorgeous. It actually reminds me of some of Nicky O'Byrne's art. Paul's portrait 'Moutain of Tom' was also kick ass.

Sam Cranstoun's portrait was amazing, though I must admit I have a thing for hair now. I also feel I liked his work because all the facial hair reminded me of wolverine; my 2D childhood sweetheart.

And while I was drawing 'Gyton' I met Cathy Larsen, one of the design heads at Penguin books! It is great just randomly running into creative heavy weights. She was sweet and really friendly and gave me some advice on my illustrating dream.

(Cathy if you are reading this Thank You! also I think the paper person we were talking about was Nicholas Jones, shows at Pablo Fanque)

I seem to be having trouble opening the AGNSW website so here is a different link if you want to check out the Arcibald Finalists.

Process pictures

More process images!

I am trying to simultaneously experiment and build a new body of work with my charcoal portraits.  This is the most recent and I have to say my easy favourite.  He's gotten straight onto my website and I also entered him into Blanket Magazine's Portrait challenge.  (They are amazing go take a look) I heard of the challenge before making him and I wanted to do more charcoal works so I decided to do some double duty.  Hopefully he'll get accepted.  

He is also working for me in my attempt in gaining a student grant, and will probably be pushed into the Mosman or the Waverly Art Prize in the near-distant future. 

A very busy picture.   

Quite a few people ask me: how do you get it to look like water is dripping down it?

Answer: I drip water on it.

I hope that didn't spoil the image for anyone, some people like to not know how something is made, ruins the magic.

I feel the same about most technological and scientific events, inventions or general know-how.  If you ask me how the internet works I can safely tell you: by magic.  And that is all I have to know.  Frankly I feel like knowing too much background info sometimes kills of the mystique of life.  Apart from quantum physics, evolution and the big bang. That shit is awesome.

But I love knowing how people make images, hence the process pictures.  And I get all miffed when artists try to hide how they made something so someone can't copy them.  I swear I just want to know how they make it!  I'm not going to copy! (maybe a little bit...stingy artists...)  

But Folks get ready to try this at home,

if you draw on canvas you can use the special charcoal eraser,

but you can also you water!  

I use water and a sponge.

If I need to clean up a lot of charcoal I use a scouring sponge.

That's just cleaning up though, 

you can also use water as a mark making device.

Throwing water, swirling it around, etc.

The water picks up the charcoal, 

and dry pigment + water = "paint"

so there are marks of the water's path, kind of like weak gritty ink. 

I've used water in some my other charcoal drawings,

so try take a look and spot them.

Alright,

hope that was useful to some of you, 

or will encourage someone to be more adventurous with their charcoal or drawing.

Cheers,

jess b

Process

Final

First of all, I am sorry for such a long post, but I think it is so much easier to see a progression in an art work when you can just scroll up and down. Rather than having to add all these different images together in your head.  Second of all I am sorry for some of the quality, focusing (or lack of), and the position of the image.  I took them with my camera phone.  

Nevertheless I wanted to share.  I get a bit annoyed when I see beautiful polished work on blogs, its nice.  But I also want to see the crap and hard work and how it looked before it turned out great.  I think its important to see stages of a work, and also learn how different people solve different visual issues.   

This is a personal piece that I started and finished recently.  I was really inspired by Melanie's work, you can't see the crazy things she thinks up and creates so much on her blog, which is a shame.  But in real life she is crazy about hair.  Human hair.  She makes giant skipping ropes out of it and braids balloons together with it.  She has a scary work place at COFA filled with hair sculptures and hair objects which happen to be horrible and beautiful at the same time. 

Very strange.

From her I got a strong image of a guy with this giant beard simply extending down off his face and consuming his neck and chest, as you can see that never manifested itself.  I tried: and it looked shit.  Also a while after I started I went to the MCA drawing show and saw Laith McGregor.  My internal image wasn't exactly the same as his bearded men, but they were very similar so I was a bit disheartened to follow through with my hairy man.

In the end however he turned out being devoid of hair, which I found quite amusing. 

This was done in charcoal on canvas.  And if the last one looks a bit funny it's because I didn't grayscale it and I was trying to be quite delicate with the levels tool, it is amazingly hard to get the tonal values right.

Hope you enjoy, I will be putting up more phone camera process images later.