Tin Roof ..... Rusty

Last night I went out for a great meal with Jodie from Meringue and Kristy from Betty Mim in Newcastle. It was a fun night although at midnight I was feeling rather tired due to my flu/cold I think everyone is getting due to the weather going hot then cold. Walking around in tights in the middle of February wishing I had my Green Olive scarf wasn't what I was expecting.

It was also great to chat about Gordon Ramsay. I could chat about Gordon all day long with anyone and I actually get a desire to write to the people who say he is an idiot on the show and tell them off. However they usually come around and hug him in the end. They learn the error of their ways.

Tomorrow I'm at Rose Street and it is going to be a little cooler so I might actually enjoy the tin roof for a change. Two weeks ago it was so hot and the super doopers were my BFF all afternoon. I'm hoping tomorrow I get a stall next to Bridget if she is there. I'm going to cross my fingers tonight.

The bag above is the first thing I sold on Etsy, I thought I would post one of the first items in my flickr account as a little walk down memory lane.

Blanch and Orlando Bloom

This is little Blanch. I'm not sure why, but whenever I make a badge with yellow hair the eyes and eyelashes always seem thicker and longer, like the thread is thicker. I'm not sure why but I'm wondering if Bridget Bardot has anything to do with it.

I was walking out of the supermarket today trying to find my mobile phone. I had just loaded up my bag (a large green Country Road bag from the early 90s) with groceries and it was stuck. I wondered if it was possible to ask a random stranger to call it so I could feel/hear which part of the bag it was in, as I couldn't be bothered burrowing.

I saw a guy who looked like Orlando Bloom and wondered what he would think if a strange lady asked him to do this. I thought maybe it was him and he was in Australia preparing for a film, I'm not sure which film, but this guy was drinking VB and wearing a pale blue version of a wife beater. The cheap ones with the really big arm holes that let you see more than you really want to. I didn't bother him and found my phone quite quickly which was lucky because my Mum had sent me this photo twice*.

* She has a new phone.

Printing Printing

I printed up a lot of fabric today and created two new designs. They are both really simple floral circle designs.


I have some really lovely purple fabric I got a while back but I've been a little afraid to use it as it is quite dark. Today I thought about mixing some purple ink and printing a light purple on it. As soon as I started mixing it I got worried it would not make a nice purple because I'm used to mixing school paint and the red and blue always made a horrid purple. I think it is due to yellow ink in the red paint making it a yuck brown mess rather than a perfect purple. The inks did okay though and I ended up with a purple I was happy with.

The printing process with this ink wasn't so great. I designed the print so it would be perfect for my wallets, but some bled a little. I can still use other areas of the prints, but it is a shame as I wont get as many of the wallets. But I liked the idea of the design and how it will work on the wallets so I will use the concept again. They look a little 70s I think.

Due to the white ink in the mix and the amount of prints I did with it, the stencil stuck to the screen and was ruined. This sometimes happens when I do a lot of printing and it is not fun peeling it off because it gets stuck under my nails and the sink clogs up with paper. I hate taking anything out of a sink when it is wet, even if it is just paper.

So now I am really tired and need to go to bed. I have a lot of sewing tomorrow because of all the printing I did!

Liger/Barbie

It is a little strange and creepy, but that is a good thing sometimes and if you look at the guy in the previous post you would just think it is him in drag. I think the lippy must have come from Hot Potatoes or another $2 shop in your local area. The type of lip gloss that traps your hair and when you pull it away you wonder if you really put hot glue on your lips. Hot pink hot glue.

Little Journeys

Last night out internet with down so I sat and worked in photoshop with an image I had created using inks and monoprint. After I had finished working on it I decided it would be fun to trace over the image and see what would happen. I used a pen on a low opacity and just scribbed in the image, then added an outline to it using a black pen, this time not tracing. I ended up going really crazy with the image and it ended up looking like some blonde tiger barbie creature.

Below is the original drawing, a cut out filter in photoshop, then my traced image. You can click on them to see the larger version in Flickr.

I find working with artworks and then using the idea from that to create another artwork the best way to work as I often come up with the idea I like the most 7 or 8 steps into the process.

Sodaplay

Someone told me about this website called sodaplay when I was doing my Dip Ed. It is an application where you can make these creatures and it's quite mathmatical and technical. I can't explain that well, have a look at the website and try it out for yourself.

Everytime I went to do it with a class at school it would never work due to the Java Script. Lucky I always had a back up lesson planned, but it was a shame because I think teenagers, particular boys who were into maths and science, would have enjoyed it. And when you're an art teacher you are always trying to find a way to interest the maths and science kids.

I managed to log into the site with my trusty username and password I always use and I had some creatures I made a few years back. It takes a while to get used to the workings of it, and I get jealous when I see the really technical creatures other people have created, as I tend to go for the crazy arty ones that don't really work. Here is an image of something I made which I named "Beezle". Not sure why, but it was fun to look at it again.

10 Years/10 Days

A lot can happen in 10 days. I just re read my post from the 11th of Feb and it said this:

At the moment Gareth is watching Star Trek and I don't like that show much*.

Tonight, after we finished watching a film I said this:

Can we watch Star Trek now?

God help me.





Oh and in 10 years, a lot can change also. This is me 10 years ago in Belgium

*at all. I can't stand it.

Morning Tea

Yesterday I went along to the morning tea at Meet Me At Mikes. It was nice to get out of the house and meet up with other arty/crafty people in an environment full of pretty things and lots of tea and pretty biscuits. When I was there I got some Kirsten Doran notepaper wrapped up in a cute little pattern paper bag by Brooke.

Since I've started working from home I've found it harder to get motivated. I have little rules set in place, which seem to be working, but I think my expectation that I will make hundreds of things in the day gets me down even though it is not going to happen. I feel busy, but I worry I'm not getting enough done.

One of my rules is get dressed in the morning because in my ideal world I would wear my PJ's all day long. The one day I didn't do that the Real Estate agent came around. I thought of making an excuse like I'm not feeling well, but I realised my best bet was to make no mention of it and act like everything was normal, including the fact that I was not correctly dressed and it was well into the PM. I was only in PJ bottoms, if I was in the whole PJ ensemble, I would have probably just said, oh I'm sick today and coughed a few times. I like to think he didn't notice.

Okay, here is a little blast from the past photo. It is from around 2000/2001 and is my bedroom when I was at art school. The large artwork in the middle is mine, and was a drawing I did from a study of an old library in Ballarat.

The artworks on the right are prints using a Riso printer in high school. We had to develop an image though a little machine by putting this blue plastic mesh and a photocopied image through at the same time, then it was "stretched" onto a plastic frame and we printed with it like a screen print.

The posters on the left are from Victoria Theatre in Gent. If you ever get a chance to see anything they do, run, don't walk to whatever it is. I saw some of their shows 10 years ago when I lived in Gent and I think today it would still be cutting edge theatre, but the stuff that makes you excited, not the stuff that makes you cringe.

The Numbers Just Don't Add Up

I've started working on the paper from the books I scored at RMIT. When I was cutting it out last night I was impressed with the different textures and keen to try them out because they were all so different. A lot of the pages have numbers, diagrams and formulas on them as well, which should be interesting to work with.

I did some drawings of men, from some drawings I did at Rooftop Market. They are a little like my Valentine's Day card geezers, and I like to think they are men who work in the engineering industry and probably read the books when they did their degree.

This one below is called The Numbers Just Don't Add Up and was the second one I finished and is available in my MadeIt shop. The first was used in Illustration Friday and I called it I'm Just Looking Over These Numbers. You can see a larger version on my Flickr.

Twelve

The weekend is over and it is back to work again. I had a recovery day yesterday after a night on the fizz with Eliza, Nick and Cat. Today I finished off a group of badges, going somewhere special tomorrow. They are pictured down below and I used a special colour scheme for them so they look nice and matchy.

I got Big Business in the mail today from webflicks and just finished watching it. It was even better than I remember and the hijinks was a plenty. I tried to find the clip of when they discover each other because the reaction of Roone, the boyfriend of Hick-Rose was very funny.

I'm disapointed they didn't have Outrageous Fortune but I'm going to go check now to see if they have 9 to 5. As I said to Gareth, all films to come out of the 80s are good, although that has now forced me into watching Glengarry Glenross and I'm not sure I will like it, however it has Alec Baldwin in it so it might not be too bad.

Rooftop Views

I had my last Rooftop Market today. The weather wasn't as hot as other ones and I managed to get some drawing done while looking at all the buildings. I love artworks with beautiful linework and when I look at all the lines of the buildings it becomes a bit overwhelming because there is so many amazing things to look at, particularly when you're looking down on them. This was one of the drawings I did. I plan to use them and then alter them using photoshop and create digital artworks from them.

I took some photographs from the roof and posted them on Flickr as well. They are all cropped from two larger images.

Oh and just quickly, to the lady who mentioned the RMIT library giving away free engineerings books, I went and got myself some booty. My bag was even heavier on the way home but it was worth it. Although the people around me must have thought I was strange because rather than look at the books I was just feeling the textures of the paper. Looks like heavy reading with lots of diagrams and formulas. I also have a feeling Basic Reinforced Concrete Design may not be that basic but the paper inside looks perfect for ink and the text has a lovely raised surface.


Tomorrow if you're in Fitzroy I will be at Rose Street Artist Market from 11-5. I'm debuting my abstract/bauhaus shopping bags. I made a new lot the other day using the same design but different fabrics. I will need to make sure I photograph them because the ones I took earlier were not that good.

Grosbeak

I decided to try using my screenprinting to create some artwork. I had some paper I used for my Valentines Cards left over and thought it would be nice to use for some small prints. I spent some time drawing in my sketchbook trying to come up with a design I liked. I decided on two designs and cut them both out.

The first one didn't work out as well as I had hoped. It was a print of a man, but the actual stencil was really thin and it bled a little. When I drew it I thought the lines would be the ink part, but when I started to cut it, I was cutting everything but the lines. The screen I am using is designed for fabric printing, so often when I do print on paper it doesn't print as clean as more ink is coming out. This isn't always a bad thing though and I find little errors give you more to work with.

The second print was of a bird and some of the prints had extra ink on them. I used these in the design and added fineliner detail to the wings and branch. I also added a red breast, as the Grosbeak has a lovely red patch. There are four prints in total, plus some on fabric, which I will turn into pouches. The stencil was ruined once I took it off the screen because I took a while to get all the printing complete and it dried a bit. The first one is available on Etsy and I will be listing the other three in the next few days.

Choose

This weeks topic for Illustration Friday was choose. I spent some time thinking about what I could or should draw and ended up choosing the K-Mart catalogue. The drawing started in pencil and I wanted to keep the line work really smooth. However as I got to the end it was taking on a much more sketchy look. So I went over it all with fineliner and erased the pencil lines.

By this time I had already decided to scan the image and colour it in with photoshop. I ended up spending quite a while on this as the image needed some cleaning up, plus there were a lot of colours to consider. Selecting the colours is my favourite part and I love the bright red and blue ankle boots the best. I went with a grey background to start with but suddenly realised it didn't work at all.

Daily Obsessions

A few weeks back I met up with a lovely German lady called Undine. She runs an online shop called Daily Obsessions and my badges and some pouches and bags are now available on the site.

The Cuter Ones

I've just finished off a new batch of ladies last night and today I photographed them to put online. I was looking at each one and as always some stand out as the cutest ones of the bunch. These two were my favourites, particularly the bottom one. The expression on some of their faces is quite funny.

In this group I have one that looks like her seduction level is set to 11, one that look like she is thinking of a bitchy come back line, one that looks high, one that looks a little angry and one that looks stunned. My favourites are always the ones that look a little bit venerable, like they are thinking about what would happen if their puppy ran away.

High Waste

I'm going to go and sew some badges and watch a film in a moment. I've been watching films that I have seen before while I sew the badges. Last week I saw Romancing the Stone and The Truman Show. At the moment Gareth is watching Star Trek and I don't like that show much. Our television aerial isn't working and although it has been three weeks without "normal" television, I have not missed it too much. I don't even know what the new shows are at the moment.

I did catch up with Project Runway and Lost the other night so I am not totally without and I'm feeling the need for a dose of Gordon Ramsey very soon. I need to hear some mindless swearing as I'm no longer around teenagers thus not getting my daily quota.

The image here is a crop of a larger artwork. I liked this area of the drawing and the line work so cropped it pretty much as soon as I had scanned it.

T to the A to the G

I've had a quite weekend after great night out on Friday. The Mix Tape Launch was lots of fun and I read my copy waiting to meet up with Gareth. We went to Rabbie Burns for dinner in Collingwood and had a lovely meal. We only ever eat in the bar because we never book, and you need to book to get into the other bit, but the food is it always so good and such a bargain.


So Aunty Shabby has tagged me, and I don't think I have done a tagging in a while, so I thought I would give it a whirl. This one is seven things which might be hard.


1. I have one of those Shane Warne VB things. The ones that are meant to talk when the cricket is on. I am sure at 1am on a Tuesday there is cricket match on somewhere in the world but it just makes me want to chuck it because it's really quite scary to hear a loud male voice when you think you're alone. Plus Shanie doesn't drink VB, or so someone told me.

2. I wore shoes the other night which hurt so much I ended up buying another pair to wear. Friday Night shopping saved me.

3. 10 Years ago I had just arrived in Gent, Belgium as an AFS exchange student.

4. I got my drivers licence when I was 21.

5. I measured one of my hairs the other day and it was 69cm long. Because of this I keep pulling it because it gets caught in things all the time.

6. I have a massive pile of VHS tapes that I didn't want to get rid of before the move. They are mainly episodes of Rage I taped in the mid to late 90s. I have not watched any of them in ages, but I can't get rid of them. Now that the internet is stronger faster better I can watch The Violent Femmes Gone Daddy Gone whenever I want, but they still remind me of a time when it was such a find and I can't let go. (watch it to see how little and babylike Gordon Gano is)

7. This is one of the funniest things I have ever seen. St. Kilda Festival 2004 will be remembered for the megadog. I removed the heads of the people because I don't know who they are and because it looked funny. I'm not sure what he was standing on, I tried to take a piture over the fence but it was too high. I think there was two of them as well.

Okay, I don't think I will find 7 people to tag so I am going to tag Bridbird, Pocket Carnival and art4friends.


And the rules:

1. Link to your tagger and post these rules on your blog.

2. Share 7 facts about yourself on your blog, some random, some weird.

3. Tag 7 people at the end of your post by leaving their names as well as links to their blogs.

4. Let them know they are tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.

Now go forth and tag!

Why is your top dirty?

Tonight I'm going to the Mixtape zine launch for the Festival of the Photocopier. I'm looking forward to seeing some arty/crafty people and talking shop. I have however realised I need to get a riggle on and actually get out of the house. I always leave things to the last minute which is annoying, but sometimes it can be fun to create a challenge. Can I get ready in 20 minutes and still arrive on time?

I found this photo while looking through some old folders. This is me 6 years ago. I had just finished art school and was living with my parents on the family farm. I was working 6 days a week, 7.30 - 5 packing vegetables. That is why the top is dirty, from all the carrots I had to shift. I worked at the factory from Feb till April. It was a really horrid job, so mundane and boring. I had my sister working with me for the first three weeks but she left to go to uni, so it was just me and the vegie folk.

Fall In Love With Art - It's Fun!

You know when you get that giddy feeling, with the sickly funny thing in your throat, the song "someone's got a crush on you" going through your head and everything makes you happy. I'm getting that with a lot of the art I'm seeing at the moment. I just joined Talent Database and found some artists on there that are making me go a little gaga. Like in highschool when I was obsessed with Brett Whiteley and had his blue book out on loan for all of Year 11 and 12. My Mum finally got it for me because she was probably embarrassed when she walked passed the librarians at work.

Here are a few things making me a little gaga at the moment.

Here is a little sketchbook work I did last night. I called it "My fringe shows the results of my lie detector test" and it is pencil on paper. Pacer style pencil. You can see it bigger at Flickr. If you're in the city tomorrow, come visit me at the Rooftop Market. 11-3.30, Curtin House, Swanston Street, CBD.

Two Blankets

This weeks theme for Illustration Friday is blanket. This is a little section of the artwork I created, a mixed media work with stitching collage and fineliner drawing. To view the whole thing you can go here.

In other blanket news, an interview I did with Caitlin Gahan in this issue of Blanket Magazine. If you have not read Blanket, I suggest you go and download all 8 issues because it is a really inspiring online magazine. When I first had a look inside I was amazing and impressed by the artwork. Some very beautiful images and interviews with people. They did a feature on Inaluxe last issue and this issue there is a healthy dose of Australian artists and designers to read about including Sew Your Own and Limedrop.

A Collage A Day

I joined Magic Jelly's "A Collage A Day" group last month with the aim of doing exactly what it states. However due to the move I only ended up doing it every 2nd, 4th or even 8th day. I like how I can blame the move for things I might not have done. I think that will last for about 4 more days.

Have a look at the group pool as you can really see the different styles coming through. I'm getting good at spotting people and their style and I'm really liking this this this this and this.

Here are three of mine which have a similar theme. I thought it looked a little cubist, but Martine suggested Bauhaus and I think she may be right. If you're looking at doing some kind of art each day, even if collage isn't your thing, I suggest joining. Hopefully I will start doing it on a daily basis.

Market

I had a busy weekend starting with Rose Street on Saturday. I spend a good part of Friday afternoon looking for something to hang the bags from and some picture frames. I didn't have too much success but did come away with some fancy Pierre Cardin shoes that look like they have never been worn. When I got home I realised the white partition my Dad made would work and maybe I didn't really need anything after all.

I was worried that it would be much harder at the market because I was on my own. The last five I did before Christmas were with Jodie and having someone with you all day much such a difference. However as soon as I arrived Bridget from Bridbird came up and said hello and was quite close by with her friend Hayley just next door. I also got one of Bridget's bird pins which are so beautiful. I didn't know which one to get because they were all so beautiful. In the end I selected the willy wagtail and I'm very happy with my choice. I also suggest having a look at Bridget's new blog, I found it on Saturday night and was excited because the drawings are so beautiful.