Thursday, May 31, 2007

Rainbow wrappping-paper in the making


I've been meaning to make this for a while - just haven't found the time. The image is done in Cinema 4D, then tiled in Photoshop. Because the clouds look like paper cutouts, I thought it would make cute wrapping paper. Tomorrow I will make a similar one with crescent moons and stars and also play around with the size of the above pattern so the detail of the rain shows up. Till then. xxxx

Wednesday, May 30, 2007

More Television Doodles


Thanks again to the lack of great television I did this messy, digital version of marbling. Firstly I did a bunch of lines in Illustrator, then brought them over to Photoshop where I changed the colour and stretched them with the Liquify tool. There's some beautiful paper marbling at marbledpaper.blogspot.com, and info about marbling at marbling.org.


Sunday, May 27, 2007

Jared Steffensen


As I've been posting on a couple of artists lately, I had to include Jared Steffensen, who I found on this groovy Dutch blog Bezembinder Illustrated Links. He does really cute small sculptures, which, on his website, he refers to as 'portable objects'. He also makes 'home installations' where a living space has been transformed into an autumn wonderland called 'I used to live in Utah', or a tropical island setting called 'Erin is from Hawaii'.

In the other work
'Fantasy Hansland' pictured above, he placed window boxes outside a suburban house and painted them with beach and palm tree paintings in order 'to seperate the house from it's neighborhood.' More of his work can be seen on his website.
I got the images from both
Bezembinder Illustrated Links, and Jared Steffennsen's website www.jaredsteffensen.com (links above)
xxxx


Wednesday, May 23, 2007

Sadie Chandler


Speaking of local artists, I have to post an image of this wallpaper installation by Sadie Chandler. She's been back in Melbourne for a couple of years, so I haven't seen her recent shows, but was really happy to see these on her website. You can see more of her work on her gallery's website: Charles Nodrum.
xxxx

Gemma Smith


Mum came over yesterday and was asking my opinion about who I thought would be an interesting young artist to invest in. Her and 5 friends are planning on buying an artwork, or artworks each for the value of $5000 with a view to selling in 5 years time, at which point they'd all split the profits and costs.

It's often hit and miss with young artists, so splitting the profits, or more to the point, losses, would take the stress out of the project. It's quite a big ask to make a profit from an artist in 5 years and a bigger ask to re-sell an artwork you'd learned to live with and love.


I read somewhere that if you're going to invest in something, it has to be something you really like. My choice would be Gemma Smith's collapsible sculptures. She's already got a strong art career, but she's young enough to make lots more great artwork too. I got the images from Sarah Cottier Gallery website.

Monday, May 21, 2007

Op Shopping and Indesign


I'm planning on going back to work part-time in a month or so (I work as a graphic artist at a newspaper). Before I go back I want to get really up to speed in Indesign. We've mainly just used Illustrator and Photoshop in the past - but now everyone is switching over. So I'll be practicing, which is why there may be lots of collages turning up on this blog.

Anyway - I've had a great week of Op shopping. Above is a couple of my favourite purchases. I'll give the Hello Kitty toy to my little friend Riki, and before I wear it the knitted vest needs to be taken in a bit. The t-shirt with the illustrations seems to be handmade. It's decorated with drawings of girls, as well as some cute text about the makers' favourite perfume, which is Oscar de la Renta.
xxxx

Friday, May 18, 2007

Henry Darger


I watched the most amazing DVD the other night on Henry Darger. He's an Outsider Artist who spent his childhood in a mental asylum and his adult life working as a reclusive janitor. When he died his landlord discovered an apartment full of artwork, including 10ft long paintings and a 15000 page illustrated book called 'In the Realms of the Unreal' (also the name of the film). He did the most amazingly detailed, colourful work, my favourite being his mythical creatures. I got the above image from one of my favourite art blogs neverhappened.org, and the bottom image is from www.gseart.com.

Saturday, May 12, 2007

Baby Shower Invite



Happy Mothers Day


Tomorrow is my first Mother's Day, which is quite a milestone. For the sake of memories I decided to post the invite I did for my baby shower (next post), when I was full of anticipation and had no idea of how life with a new baby would be. I must admit I was terrified. I thought I'd be struggling with sleep deprivation and post-natal depression.

Now it's almost six months later and I couldn't have hoped for a better summer. I managed to skip the baby blues which I've really gotta thank Johnny for. He takes Lukas for 3 hours each morning so I get to sleep in - and was lucky enough to have a happy, cheerful, easy baby.
Thanks Lukas!!

I've made some bright, 3D flowers, and you can tell from the colours and squiggles that this whole motherhood thing has been really fun so far. I couldn't decide which picci to use so I posted both.

Happy Mother's Day to my mum and all the other great mum's out there.
xxxx

Tuesday, May 8, 2007

Hmmmmm

Johnny got home late so I've been listening to the Election Budget on television just doodling on the computer. Better drag myself away from the screen for something to eat. xxxx

Monday, May 7, 2007

Possibly the most horrific dress of the week?

It seems that Glynis Trail-Nash, fashion editor from Sydney's Sun-Herald and I have very different tastes. I love the dress she hates (above, right). She refers to it as 'That Dress' - but not in a good way. She said it was 'possibly the most horrific dress of the week - something that looked like it had been cobbled together by collecting bits and pieces from mother's sewing and knitting bags.' Isn't that a good thing Glynis?

It's blue silk, with a gold, metallic insert and bright green crocheting. It wouldn't suit my body type (it's too short), but if it did, it'd be on my wish list for sure!

Wednesday, May 2, 2007

Fashion Quiz


Television was particularly boring tonight so I decided to do some drawing with my Wacom tablet that I just dragged out of the cupboard. To keep it Fashion Week specific I drew some outfits from well known Australian designers. If you're familiar to Australian fashion, see if you can match the correct designer to the correct outfit: Alice McCall, Zimmerman or Romance Was Born. All three designers are part of 2007 Sydney Fashion Week. If you need to see more details, click the drawing to enlarge.