Backlog 2, Melbourne

Exhibition Notes from 2010-11

Unfortunately I haven't been to as many exhibitions as I'd like this year.  Even when I am out looking at shows I don't have the time to make detailed notes or any drawings at the moment.  But here are a few 'exhibition notes' from earlier on in the year and the end of last year.  Mostly of when I went down to Melbourne to visit some friends.

Backlog

Doodles

Here's a little shot of my notebook journal a loose collections of scribblings, notes, ideas and rough sketches of people I see on the train. I usually am too afraid to mar my precious moleskin with unplanned or long dedicated images so I like to carry this little A6 journal around for scrap notation. Very handy and I find that I enjoy doing and having these little doodles as well as making little proofs of visual ideas I would otherwise forget.

doodles

Singapore Tyler Print Institute

STPI is a famous printing studio/gallery/awesome place. This image wasn't in the main exhibition but I found it off to the side and was quite taken with it. For the techies out there it had shaped intaglio/etching plates, possibly printed twice, once with a colour roll and others with just etching or others with etching and aquatint. So there was a particular emboss on some image while others were on this massive bleedprint plate that were inked in different colours.

Amazing.

If you are ever in Singapore and printing inclined you should take a looksee, but be warned they sometimes close for days when taking down and putting up shows.

cafe sketches from max b's

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.

I Walk the Line: New Australian Drawing

A favourite past-time of mine is to draw (copy) for memory.  Actually my on-site sketches started off more as diary entrees than finished works.  But apart from those I often copy inspiring images, especially at gallery's (which do not allow photographs).  

By copying you focus much more intently on the image, more so than just taking a photo or looking.  It's more of a searching.  I always feel like learning how to draw is similar to learning how to see.  

The same way an engineer or a photographer will be aware of different things: underlying structures, the amount and type of light etc, so too will you become more aware of how an image works and was made.  I guess everyone picks up on the different reasons and qualities inherent in things.  Even within the arts, someone might be more disposed to colour while another to structure.

For me drawing helps me understand both physical space as well as 2D composition.  By copying you can see the reasons behind the visual choices, you also start to see the image as a set of processes.  

For you photoshoppers out there its similar to considering how many layers an image has and what order they needed to be placed in.   

Anyway thats enough of me rambling, above are just some copies from the Drawing show at the MCA.

The show is on till the 24th of May, and is worth the visit.

I am in love with Laith McGregor.  Everyone needs to watch his video 'Maturing'.

Michael Esson's Mixed Metaphors

Michael Esson's work is mind blowing, 

Nothing can really be said except that he holds a class at my university where you draw dead people.

Unfortunately his show at Manly Art Gallery is over.

Above is but a sketch I made of one of his massive drawings, to see the real work is something completely different.

Most of his work is over a meter or two meters large, and there is a wonderful, unapologetic focus of drawn images. Of describing objects through purely dry mediums with various styles.

There are too many painters around, 

Hurray for people who draw!

birds

A lot of people have issues with pigeons, 

I personally find them very beautiful.  They are also very abundant and will usually hang around in one spot when not disturbed.  Perfect drawing subject.

I have also included a seagull, 

I hate seagulls

they are very aggressive unhappy birds.

But my friends at art school call me the seagull due to my devouring skills at gallery openings.

I can't help it,

I love cheese and dip.

So I'll just pretend that I have an affinity to the bird 

due to my namesake.   

Process Work for A Float of Crocodiles

Earlier this year I was part of a group exhibition called 'A Murder of Crows'.  It was a show based on collective animal nouns and, as promised, this is the process work for my image.  

The first image isn't much, but usually it never is.  

I researched into various animal nouns and the one that struck me the most was 'a float of crocodiles'.  I had a wonderful image of crocodiles that had camouflaged themselves as pool toys.  So I did a small sketch and moved on from there to get images of crocodiles and children that would fit into my rough composition.

After finding a few resource images I made a rough composition and continued to refine it until I was happy.  Since it was a very complex image I did the first few sketches by hand but then surrendered to photoshop.  I am very particular about composition so this was probably the longest-or at least the hardest-part of the process.

    
   
Usually I know what 'style' or 'look' I am going for, and the composition follows this knowledge.  But this time I didn't know if I wanted to go for a fairly realistic image or follow a style more derivative of children's illustrations.  I did want a particularly happy perky image to off-set the horrible fact that children were obliviously swimming with crocodiles.

 So I looked up various advertisements and played around with watercolours till I was happy.  

(the kid below on the right looks like the cover boy of Mad Magazine!)

I decided on the kid on the bottom right hand corner, watercolours with a pencil outline.  I had originally wanted to screen print the image, but as the composition got more complicated and the costs started to count off in my head I decided to go with a more familiar medium.  But with the strong pencil outline and the big washes of colour I felt like this style was close to my earlier idea.   

I tested a few images with this style and felt the water was looking crap.  So in the end to get the right 'flatness' similiar to screen printing I used acrylics; and when that didn't work I used the computer.  I showed the above image to the rest of the 'murderous crow' crowd and got some lovely feedback.  Everyone felt it would work better if the crocodiles were less visible on first glance.  (To get more of a 'Where's Wally' sort of effect)  And I agreed with them completely.  So after making my crocodiles much more green I did the final image.     

and Ta Dah! the final image!

Don't you want to buy yourself a Crocodile float? 

Attempts at colour pencil

I have never gotten along very well with colour pencil. Even now I am not able to beat a 5 yr old on terms of shading and blending colours.

I'm not even comfortable changing B/W into colour. It always ends in tears. Mine.

But I've had a year of my Uni teachers telling me: Have you thought about adding colour? ...just a bit, how about a wash? a pale yellow? You could just try one colour...anything.

So I decided to give colour a try. Especially since my friends bought me expensive colour pencils for my birthday.

Illustration Friday...almost

Above is a 'final' drawing I made for Illustration Friday, the concept was "climbing". Sadly my computer imploded and I wasn't able to add on time. But I'm still glad I got off my ass and did some Illustrating.

This is my final sketch for the concept, I kept pretty tight with this image. I particularly liked the pencilling and just tried to replicate the marks I made in this in the final.
Tracing paper helped.

This is just an earlier sketch where I was trying to figure what I wanted to do. I knew I wanted to include snakes and ladders for the climbing concept, as well as monkeys. So I just tried various little compostitions till I was happy.

new faces on the block

I have various conversations about art and whatnot with my friends who are in the similar field. Nicky O'Byrne in particular. We have both decided that majority of our people end up looking the same. Caucasian, young and fairly good looking. For me I can trace this back to my first attempts at drawing: which was copying from comic books. (Pre-Jim Lee, Essential X-men sort of stuff.)

Now I'm not blaming comic books, I love them too much. But I do get used to a particular way of drawing and/or making art. And I get lazy and repeat stuff I already know and am familiar with rather than trying new and possibly bad things.

So these are some attempts for the new and unfamiliar.

Tea for me.

I've become interested in Chinese decorative arts again. My short visits to Singapore do that. And I find it rather depressing that there isn't some larger influence of Chinese art in my work, especially since Chinese art is so big right now-although people say that bubble is bursting...

So to try remedy my Asian-less-ness art I've been trying to sketch out Chinese porcelain lying around the house. This one being the spare coin dish, of which I couldn't be bothered to draw in the coins.