Photos

Pictures of my brother's treehouse.

The walkway to my Dad's office - I love the repetition of the boards

A closeup of the bottom of a hedge.
There is a sense of motion and mystery that i didn't exactly intend!

These are some ideas and experiments with photography I've tried recently. For my BOW.

Yes, BOW!! Body Of Work, or major artwork I have to develop and hand in by the end of next year!

Drawings Backlog!

These three from my sketchbook were done some time in November. I thought I should put them up, however!
My point? God's children don't all wear floral dresses and floppy hats! I'm trying to go outside the stereotypical little white girls with halos and gowns and songbooks and all that stuff (not saying it's bad!); to rethink the angel theme.

These are both on paper, with watercolours and fine line pen.Lastly, I couldn't resist posting this one! I call her.... FeatherHead!
I got the idea from a postcard of feathers for hair. This particular drawing isn't finished yet (and i couldn't guarantee that it ever will be!) and is pencil, fine liner, and watercolour pencils.

Phoenix

Finally get to put something I've done on! This is exciting.

The other day my brother was using wood paint on paper (yeah...) but he made some paint with a nice shade of orange, and because I liked the consistency, he gave it to me. I had no brilliant ideas for using it, so I just brushed it on to canvas.

This is something I love happening - when I think of something I haven't done before in art and can reasonably do it.

After a day or so when it had dried, I got an idea relating to the mythical Phoenix. (More about this later!) So I did it and it lead onto a few other ideas.


The ideas behind this are:

• A rebirth of ideas and concepts - such as cyclical movements in Art, or of Art movements or concepts coming 'back into fashion'.
  
• The changes that art as a practice and as a form of communication goes through.
• That relics of long-past ages can still be meaningful for us today.
• The sacrifices and pain that sometimes must be endured for art to 'speak'.
  

Before long I'm sure I'll have some properly written, artistic-sounding concepts thought of, but these here are just the basic ones that I thought of as I worked.



Some small experiments on canvas with ink. Another happy accident - finding out that the normal fineliner-ink I used bled beautifully!


Canvas, with ink, and eyeshadow for colour. I think the eyeshadow covered up too much of the detail, but that's how you learn!

I decided the Phoenix should have two pairs of wings, to make it a bit different. I'm really pleased with the way the wings don't seem to hold any weight, how they seem to float viciously along behind the Phoenix.



That first experimental drawing led me on to do another one in a slightly different technique. Just ink this time, and i bled it sooner rather than later, and took a less structured approach.


Fine liner on paper. Originally I'd planned to do this in pencil, and be very realistic and careful with it, but I think a more spontaneous look is better. The ink is much better for this than pencil would have been, I think. The idea is that... no, I won't give away all my secrets yet - I've heard it's far better to let people to make their own interpretations of art, rather than just tell them!

I like the imagery of the Phoenix - its power and the story behind it.

This blog needs a bit more of an introduction!

If you want to find out about me, look in my profile, or try to figure it out for yourself through all my brilliant future posts.

One basic thing that hasn't been mentioned yet is that I live in the jungle. Yes, I'm an Aussie student. Yes, I live in the Philippines, yes, in the jungle. And yes, it is cool.

The purpose of this blog is to act as an online art diary, combination jungle diary. It may turn out that I'll make art about the jungle... in that case we could all go home quicker, and read less of my disjointed writing.

Some of the art i do this and next year will be working towards my major Body-of-Work (argghh! deadline only 1 year away!! oh no...), but some of it will be non-study works.

• My favourite media is, well, mixed media.
• My preferred technique/tool is pencil drawing
• I love surrealist and fantasy-influenced work, as well as realism, design-influenced work and abstract work.

What I most love to see artists do is to think 'outside the box' and create an artwork that is both meaningful and beautiful. I love seeing artists (of all ages, nationalities, religions, preferred hat styles) explore their world and express themselves through art.

All right. That's more than enough about me... the rest is classified. I'd have to shoot you.

Some thoughts about Art

For Australian Art students, year 12 is an important one. We go from exploring our art skills to interpreting ourselves and our worlds through a major artwork. We go from learning about art to learning about our world through art. Our teachers step over to the side-lines a bit and let us take our ideas forward. We start to reach a stage of artistic independence.
It's a stage.
Thinking that at the end of the year, examiners are going to be able to look deep into our work and our development of that work is unsettling and inspiring at the same time!
One of the best things about Year 12 is that you start to realise the power of art.
And I believe it's a power worth taking notice of.