Screen printing and sutch

Hello again,
Well the year has gone by in a chaos of house renovations, work and family upheaval. On the art front it was one of the least productive years I've had in ages and while I always feel frustrated when I cant work on my art projects and feel that my arts career is slipping away from me I have to remind myself of all the things we achieved this year. We got so many other things done that we have been putting off for ages. We renovated most of our house and did lots of it ourselves. And other big things have been happening too.

With that said I am soooooooooooo happy to be able to get stuck back into some studio work and finish projects started long ago. Currently I only have half my studio back, the other side is still full of boxes of stuff . I've eased back into it by experimenting with some new screen-printing designs and some found object jewellery. More to come soon.

The print on a hand bleached T-shirt

                                  The original drawing

On the road again

We have been on the road looking at bush blocks again. We covered 6000 km in 3 weeks and travelled from cost to the tablelands and back again all the way between Brisbane to Melbourne. We saw some very diverse landscape and I think narrowed down where we might want to move to somewhat.

It’s always a bit hard to adjust from doing so much and seeing so many thing in one day to being back at home with nowhere to go except the grocery store (slight exaggeration) but it was good not having to pack up and  check out in the morning.

The best thing about coming home after a trip away is always getting back to the studio. That and seeing my kitty again.

New design for screen printing. I find it hard to get my head around colouring in black what I want to print white. Lots of concentration needed.New design for screen printing. I find it hard to get my head around colouring in black what I want to print white. Lots of concentration needed.

Lino carveing and colour.

I have really bean enjoying doing some lino carving lately. The actual printing process is  a bit tricky and I struggled to get clean results on fabric. I ended up having to mask around the design in order to get a clean print. The first picture is the carving process, the second is a finished T shirt that I had previously bleached. The last picture is a work in progress shot of a big colourful painting I'm working on. I find I'm wanting to paint bigger these days.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Opening night

Opening night of our yearly group show. Fun night great people, I was so busy chatting I even forgot to drink my wine.

 

Some of my favorite artists.

I thought I'd  write a post about some of my favorite artists. There are many many artworks that have inspired and amazed me over the years paintings, photographs, sculptures, fashion even architecture has touched me at times. Sometimes I like only a few of the many works an artist creates and sometimes I like their overall vision rather than any one particular piece. Here I'm going to focus on painters that I not only love but that have inspired my work over and over again. I have pictures by these artists on my studio walls and always return to them for artistic nourishment

camille rose garcia
I love her layers of colour and contrast and her sad apocalyptic fairy tales.
I found her work in a book in Melbourne and was instantly in love.

 takashi murakami
And the super flat movement. I love flat shapes and their contrast with textures. Takashi uses a lot of pop culture and is sometimes quite crass but he paints so well and his composition is so good he is just really clever and amazing. 

Amy Sol

Amys pictures are like walking through a cozy dream wear animals are all friends, size and gravity dont matter and everything is bathed in a soft etherial light. 

Edward Gorey 

Humorous and darkly poetic. Edward draws simple black and white illustrations to text that are beautiful funny and touching. I had the entire alphabet of  the "gashlycrumb tinies" on my wall through out University.

Arthur rackham

A brilliant illustrator his people are alive somehow physical, his composition is unusual but always perfect, the mood is always a touch melancholic or threatening and his trees are just wow. 

Moki

Moki paints nature merging with humans and real ghosts and spirits in my opinion. The work is often European and Asian at the same time.

She is a brilliantly talented realist painter and also creates cartoons.

herakut

Strange but vulnerable and beautiful, Herakut is an artistic duo that creates arresting street art featuring children with expressive sad eyes and animals accompanied by poignant text.

I can see I'm going to have to do a part two, well it was always going to be dangerous.  Maybe I should have divided it into contemporary and older art. I noticed I didn't exactly stick to painters either. oh well.

Phthalo blue, I love you

Well since hear are the new paintings from the last few month. As you can see I am currently in love with Phthalo blues and greens. Hard to believe but I only started using Phthalo blue last year, now I don't know how i ever lived without it. The new works are all located on the borderlands of reality maybe a bit hallucinatory.

"Butterfly daze", watercolor, pencil and ink on Arches paper.

"Birth" acrylic on canvas.

 "Swamp" watercolor and pencil on Arches paper.

Screen printing

I am working on a small collection of screen printed t- shirts and bags  for my etsy store and maybe a local shop as well. I already have some listed and more are in the works. These are from last weeks efforts. I love the misty blues that come out of the dye wash, looks almost like watercolor to me.

 https://www.etsy.com/au/shop/styx2stars

   

 

I am also doing some hand painted one of a kind pieces (also up on etsy). They are very time consuming but I really enjoy doing them so will continue making them whenever I have the time.

I generally use up-cycled tops for the hand painted tops.