Willy's Mirror

Well my darling boy will be 1 on Saturday! How that year has flown by.

I made him a mirror for his birthday which i think he will love as he is always loving his brother Max's mirror. These mirrors i am hoping to make a bunch of to sell. Next week i plan on starting a few i have and making a stockpile of them to sell soon and get quite a few to have in the countdown to xmas.

Anway here is the mirror any comments or suggestions let me know i would love to hear feedback. Here is a link to some other ones i have done.

Posting this one has just given me an idea for a different theme - fish :)

oooh lovely tomatoes

5X7" (18X13cm) "ooooh lovely tomatoes" on grey colourfix with coloured pencil

This isnt the best pic but here are my tomatoes :) I struggled a bit with them actually i think i am changing my style or my seeing or something as i seem to be fighting with alot of my pieces. I decided when i got to just about done that they werent red enough so i erased (gotta love that electric eraser!!!) and started again ... but i had used solvent on some parts of the paper and while it all erased back to virtually nothing .. it just wouldnt take the same amount of abuse.
I think also it was the colourfix that did it. on the stonehenge i think it would have held....i am really hankering to try out the pastelboard that many other CP artists are using right now .. but i have a bit of a stock supply in the cupboard i am forcing myself to stick with this for a little bit now :)

Anywho .. note to self - when working with whites and bright colours on dark papers remember to underpaint the bright areas as well as the shadows!!!! this was my mistake.

YouTube is cool !

I have recently been looking in to doing some drawing some sketching classes as i need some furher techniques to expand myself.

Being able to get the time to go away and do them is one of the major hurdles i have but i have recently discovered a few various online class options which suit me grandly. In my looking around i found this series on YouTube - Drawing the Human Figure from your Mind - which is a series of videos that can be bought as dvd's on drawing the human figure. I have often started to read these types of books and i get confused and find it hard to work out what is going on. Having it shown to you in video is FANTASTIC if you are like me and always have trouble drawing faces and heads. Its based for people who would use this information for character development and turning them into 3D models. But he also goes into mastering the techniques and getting the basics in. I have just spent the whole morning having a look .. and i think oh i will just look at one more then i am done .. and cant stop.

Now all i gotta do is practice. Did i mention at the beginning of the year that i like to read and research things and my problem is doing?? HAHAHA well as you can see its a habit i find very hard to break !

Life and Goals and asking more of ourselves

Life has taken a bit of a turn of late .. sigh..which is good and bad.

I will start my explaining my pic, this is our dog UhOh he is a lovely dog but an absolute nutter. Last night we let him inside he isnt usually inside cause he goes completely nuts. But the kids love him so here is a pic in a rareity of sitting down.

It was my birthday last friday, i had a relatively good day, but i had two sick boys to look after so there was a limit on what you could say i did to celebrate.

I had no internet connection from the storms we had here last week and our modem etc but seems to be working ok now. (it was hard with no internet i was lost).

Birthdays for me are always about reflection, i wonder how my life was last year or the year before or 10years ago and what it will be in the future. In addition to this i received a happy birthday phone call from some old neighbours who lets just say for all intensive purposes are my grandparents (i didnt have any growing up as mine were overseas / already passed) the lady is really sick in hospital and close to passing herself which saddens me a great deal. They are now living quite a while away so in order for me to see her it involves a major production in trying to organise my two kids as i wont be able to take them. But obviously i wont get much more of a chance to see her again so its something i have to do but that is just one thing going on right now. SIGH....

I have my second bub's 1st birthday next week also, which will be having a family gathering for. (but if i am away visiting away earlier in the week this is going to be a challenge) but i really have to get on with organising something soon.

SIGH...

We also have recently had a MAJOR review of our budget / business of late. Or if you want to call it what it is a 3hour discussion/argument about money on Saturday morning ... LOL .... With the production of our kids i have had not much chance for "work" but i have come to realise that this is something now the kids are a little older i need to concentrate on. Just so we can afford those little extras like food and holidays and clothes and stuff !!!lol

So with that in mind i am determined to make myself think of my art as a business. and making a living from my art is going to become a priority rather than something i just hope will happen. I have been reading alot of various information and i feel like getting this mentality in my head and in those around me is the first step i have to overcome. I have also decided i am going to also add to my business the production of "handmade gifts" to sell. You may have seen my kids mirrors in some of my earlier posts. I have another one in production right now for bubs 1st birthday, these i have had some interest in so i figure why not try and sell some...i have a few other ideas as well but these will realistically be my starting point.

So in saying all of that i have decided to "try it" and see what happens. Part of this decision has been sealed by an inspiring post by Maggie Stiefvater last week where she talks about juggling life and art and business. The thing that does it for me is where she says

....I'm making my living from my art. I'm not the best artist in the world and
I've seen other artists far better making far less. The only thing that
makes me any different from anybody else is that I tried and believed I
could do it....

so i guess the thing for me is that i need to believe in myself and try it thats the only way i will know and get somewhere.
SIGH...

As well as all this going on i have picked up a bit of design work as well. Which comes at a great time and will help pay the bills and takes me back to my days BK (before kids). But i have to say is tough to find the time to fit all this in especially now when i now have developed this cold.

So in closing after this long (hopefully not too boring )post.... i feel much better and calmer after writing this btw.... Life is just funny how it all works.... in the scheme of things i have an absolutely fabulous life but there are times we need to push forward and ask more of ourselves this is one of them.

oooh lovely tomatoes WIP

Taking a break from my painting, my pencils were calling me and i had to answer.

You might recognise these, from a sketch from the other day. I felt with my painting my head feels a bit crowded and i needed to do some with a less complicated composition.

This one is a 5X7" on grey colourfix with a complementary underpainting. I haven't done one of those for a while and the shadows on these beauties just called for it.

I acutally really enjoy the technique for pieces like this where there is clear direction of where i am going. I have failed doing it on recent pictures as it doesnt seem to work for me with lighter colours. But these reds were just asking for it. (maybe its a confidence thing).

Anywho Here are the first two wip pics :)

Inspiration

Ok so this post isnt exactly about my art but it is about my inspiration. One good thing about having young children is that you get to see lots of inspirational art / illustrators through books and tv and dvds etc.

Disney's Lilo & Stitch movie is one that is often played here and one that often inspires me to get my watercolours out. They have such beautiful backgrounds in that movie.
Another inspiration of the computer band creative variety is the tv show Pocoyo. For those that dont know it .. this is Pocoyo and he is sooo cute i just love the show. So i was checking out the website and came accross the Blog of the production people its so inspiring how they come up with the characters etc.

I wish i could draw like some of these guys take a look
http://pocoyo.blogs.com/pocoyo/

Vase Update & Sketches

i have been back visiting my vase painting.. its been good to have a bit of a break. I have to admit i was having a bit of a creative block last week and it just felt like everything i was doing just wasnt working. So i have been doing just little sketches and studies gradually and things seem to be on the rise. To be honest i think i was putting pressure on myself to "get it right" and the sketches have just let me loosen up. I have also done some more of my kids mirrors but will show you that in another post.

So here is a little colour study of the vase i did .. i will be doing a few more of these over the next few days before i work on the vase. Still have a bit more on the background of the overall painting to do before i get too much into the vase.

Here are some other little sketches i have also done, i feel my sketching is improving a little my eyes are working a bit better :) My oldest son Max doesnt like me sketching anything other than himself, he wasnt too impressed with me sketching these tomatoes so i had to do a little one of him too... i am sure i could find worst subjects to sketch ;) The only problem with sketching Max is that he sits still less time than you would think a 3 yearold would sit for!!!

Kookaburra

This one is a commission that i did a couple of weeks ago but havent posted as it was a gift which has now been given :)

I haven't really done any birds before so this one was a first. I quite enjoyed doing it the front white feathers were a bit of challenge but i think it worked out ok.

Its 20X30cms on brown colourfix. I am thinking of getting some prints done of this one too. If anyone is interested let me know.