Pet Update September 2012

My darling (annoying little monster) little chihuahua Georgie went on a short holiday with my parents last weekend to our holiday house on the coast south of Sydney. He was treated to a 3 hour walk along some beaches:

 

Highlights of the walk included:

- running free on an empty beach (after 2 hours of walking he still had tons of energy left). He went no where near the water (surprise surprise).

- dipping his paws in the rock pools (sometimes of his own choosing, and sometimes with encouragement from my dad - what's that mean man done to my baby?):

 

Georgie also got to try his new basket on my parents' tandem bicycle. Doesn't he look cute? He wasn't afraid at all - and did his usual Tasmanian-devil-impersonation upon seeing other dogs (good thing he was tied in).

And finally last night Georgie got to visit my nanna (who he adores!) and he was allowed to choose a new teddy bear (my nanna adopts them from second hand stores and knits them little jumpsuits). The smells at nanna's house were far too interesting to waste much time on bears though, so I chose for him - one with very short fur so maybe this time he won't chew the fur out. Once we got home, he was very excited about his new bear. He seems to share traits with kookaburras - he has to wack that bear till it's dead!

Artwork Update September

I'm so sorry it's been so long since I last updated! But there's a lot of artwork for the last month and a bit to show you now...

First, my sculptures. They are inspired by leaves I find at campus, and they're all made of plywood. On this first one I used a router to carve the vein patterns in, then stained the whole thing and painted the veins. I'm very pleased with it, and it inspired my whole self-directed project for sculpture this year.

So I am continuing on the theme of the leaves with this sculpture below. I also used the router on this to carve veins, but it's a lot more disjointed than the first one, and I don't plan to stain or paint it. I've actually started to glue some black lace into the carved veins (in the second photo) - a very tedious process that looks better in person.

My next sculpture (which I'm working on simultaneously as the above one) is going to be a bit different. First, I can show you the cardboard model I made - I make cardboard models for all the leaf sculptures, then trace the different pieces onto plywood to cut.

This is it all cut out and put together. I am right now adding some black lace (which I am in love with - it's simply gorgeous!), so it will turn out looking quite different.

I have to make another leaf sculpture before the end of the year too, but I'm not sure what shape it will be just yet.


Next, I've been working on some new drawings for my class called Conceptual Drawing. I introduced these here, and they are are inspired by the charcoal drapery drawings I blogged about a few months ago (here).
I have been experimenting with cutting up and arranged the photos into geometric-like images. The first drawing I tried to do with a stencil above to keep the white parts clean. As you can see from the smudges, this did not work so well:

Next I tried using masking tape to cover the areas of paper I wanted to stay clean. As you can see below, the masking tape gets very dirty, and is actually kind of interesting in itself. I tried having 4 different sections. I would draw one section, fix it (spray fixative on it), then cover it with masking tape (that I had rubbed on my jeans to get some of the sticky off) and remove the tape over the next section.

Here's the finished product. I love the clean lines! What you can't see is that some of the tape ripped a little into the white paper - but it's hard to see unless you look closely.


And here's my next one (using the same method):

 Next in that class I'm trying coloured pastels...


Then we come to my elective drawing class, where I have been continuing my hot-glue artworks. As I described last time (here), I wasn't happy with using the wire to make the text, even though I got it to look pretty refined in the end (sorry no pictures of that). So I've ditched the wire idea and gone back to just glue (my teacher was apparently "waiting" for my to come to that decision - lol). So I am pretty happy with how the glue text is turning out:

It hangs quite well.

 How it looks on the mirror before I peel it off.

 I then tried the abstract-like pattern I wanted to do, but I am not at all happy with how it looks:

So for now I'm sticking to the text. I got some coloured card to start thinking about a background colour:

 I like the white best because it looks subtle and mysterious (sorry for the bad photo!). I'll get a big sheet of white next time and play with different arrangements of my columns of glue text.

Finally, I can show you my latest paintings. Here's the one I was doing of me (I showed the first stages of this here). Here's how it progressed:

 Finished! I really struggled with the hands and the face, but I'm quite happy with the dress (nightie really), and legs (which were causing me so much trouble at first, and I really can't explain how they turned out so well).

I then moved on to a second painting of me, and here's how it's going so far:

 This time I measured it all out to make it easier to paint the outline accurately.

Then I blocked in the basic shapes (plus some bad scribbling on the purple bit).

I then worked on the body first. I am very happy with how the foot and hand turned out, but I've done an awful job on the face (not sure how I did that really).



Then in my 2nd painting class I've been working on some abstract pieces that are explorations of colour. I took tiny snippets from some old nature photos I found on our own computer, blew them up (photocopier) and really expanded the colours. Here's the first little one I did (the blown up snippet is there on the left):

I then went on to repeat those colours in a bigger work. Here's how it progressed:

 

 Finished! That took a lot of work, and it's still not my favourite painting, but at least it's done, and I think I learned alot.


I'm going to continue on this pattern, so I've done a 2nd little mini, with a different inspiration snippet this time:

 (I actually tweaked it a tiny bit after this photo, but most of it is the same).

I decide to blow this one up too, and it turned out to be quite a quick job! First, I did the black:

Then before I knew it, I'd done the whole thing:

I'm going to keep doing these kind of pieces!

That's it for today. Thanks for reading to the bottom, and I'd love some comments! :)

Artwork Update July

Hi everyone! I'm here to update you on how my first 2 weeks back at TAFE have gone.

I'm starting lots of self-directed projects this term, which is both worrying and exciting because I have to come up with my own ideas for what to make (within subject guidelines).

For my conceptual drawing class I am continuing the drawings I did of draped sheets (around me) in bed that I showed you a month ago (here). I have new photos and I'm starting by experimenting with different materials. My first little tests are these two:

The drawing on the left was done with compressed charcoal (and was drawn with a little less care, I must admit), and the right drawing is willow charcoal (like my previous drawings). Upon careful consideration my teacher and I decided that the right one is better. What do you think?

Then for my multi-disciplinary drawing class my big idea is to do a lot of text and drawings using wire and hot glue. So far it's not turning out anywhere near as elegant as I imagined:

 I bet you can't read what it says!

 I have two painting classes, and in one of them I am painting myself. It took a lot of courage to decide to do that, because the positions I'm in are related to when I was ill with OCD and struggling to get into bed. But I wanted to paint the figure, and I can't get a live model in class every week, so I came up with this. I started the first painting today. Here's a look at my work area at TAFE:

And here's what I'd done after my first class today:

It is just the bare shapes at the moment. I really struggled getting the proportions right, and even now I am not happy with it. My teacher assures me it can all be fixed though so I'm not despairing (yet).

And lastly here is a quick look at the three paintings I did for our project week at Luna Park. They are now on display at my TAFE. What do you think?

Guest Artist Feature July 2012

It's time for the first guest artist feature here on Hannah Goanna. I chose an artist who's latest work really amazed me: Deb Affleck - a fellow art student at Kogarah TAFE.

The story behind these works is that our drawing teacher guided us in making ink drawings by putting a bit of paint on one side of a piece of paper ripped from an old book, then folding the paper and opening to reveal the pattern. I showed some of my own works from these here and here.

Deb wasn't able to make it to that class, and so didn't realise that we were doing them so large! But I'm glad, because she ended up with these beautiful works:

They're not very big - unfortunately I did not measure them but maybe about  40-50cm tall? Deb has used string to bind the little ink drawings in the frames in a way that recall pinned insects! I am in love with them! Unfortunately these photos do not do them justice.

Here's what Deb has to say about these works titled "Life in Motion":

"This artwork evolved due to a number of associations I saw.
The Rorschach exercise got me thinking of my interpretation of how as a tool in psychiatry and psychology, Rorschach is used to attempt to 'pin down' a person's thoughts, shadows, patterns, processes, strengths, etc. This brought to mind images of butterflies being preserved & displayed in cases; colour and life pinned, no longer able to move.
In searching for the book to use [to rip paper out of], I was so fortunate to find the perfect one amongst the discard pile. Perfect because it told the mythological, archetypal story known as "The Hero's Journey"-a concept used in various healthcare modalities to encourage people along their healing and life journey. "The Jason Voyage" by Tim Severin told the tale of how a man with a passionate vision convinced others to join him in proving that the Greek myth of Jason and The Golden Fleece was probable, and not a fable. They did it in 1984.
They lived and breathed The Hero's Journey, and combining this with the Rorschach concept and the butterfly concept fueled a passion in me to create this artwork.
I hope you enjoy, and are uplifted by it."
Deb Affleck 2012

Please leave comments if you like these as much as I do!

You can contact Deb at either of these emails:
debaffle_ck@hotmail.com
debaffleckartist@gmail.com

Knitting Update July 2012

Hello everyone!

I have just finished putting up all the new dolls my nanna has knitted lately. I have also rearranged the knitting gallery (link above) so that it shows dolls already sold - dolls that are still for sale can be seen at my shop.

I'm really amazed by how pretty all the dolls are. Nanna loves to experiment with colours, and she really does a great job.

I would really appreciate it if you pass the shop link to anyone who might like a doll. Here's some of the new dolls: