Freecut silhouettes collaged onto metallic card. Halogen light, indoors.
Update:
Week 42: Dog II.
"Bonnie." Watercolours on damp watercolour paper, black finepoint, white opaque Signo and brown Paint FX. Based on a 1962 photograph from my own collection.
"Koala". Freehand cut collage using a remnant of watercolour canvas, a scrap of Quill "marbletone" cream paper, and watercolour on grey card. Based on my own photo. I guess it's a reverse silhouette. The koala only exists as a negative space. The grey card is simply the back of a depleted watercolour paper pad and reminded me of the colour and texture of a koala's fur, so I searched my own albums looking for a suitable pic (actually Perth Zoo during the exhibition last year).
Update:
Week 10: Animal II
"Orange harmony". Sketch in black finepoint Sharpie on watercolour card, coloured with watercolours. Based on my own 1977 b/w photograph of pets Mac and Meggsie "frying their eyeballs" in front of a bar radiator.
"Surprise!" Sketch in finepoint and metallic Sharpies on watercolour paper, with highlights in watercolour and dayglo yellow marker.
Update:
Week 50: Party II
Party balloons in coloured cartridge papers, collaged onto Quill glitter-finish Galaxy card.
Week 20: Melancholy
"Why the long face, Melan-collie?" Sketch using red Sharpie, white UniPaint and black fineline markers and coloured pencils on goldenrod paper. Based on a Google Images photo and childhood memories.
Update:
Week 20: Melancholy II
Morticia's perpetually sad Cousin Melancholia, "The Addams Family". Black and blue Sharpie and Signo white inks, and watercolours on corrugated cardboard. Based on a publicity photo of actress Hazel Shermet. (The hat looks great on my iPhone. Looks like I collaged it from straw, but just tan watercolour over black and white ink lines! I was a little disappointed, when researching Cousin Melancholia's likeness, that she was the least bizarre of all the Addams and Frumps! But I'd never forgotten her name. I really love how the purple wash worked out. The moon had been too-stark white until I added the purple.)
"What does the fox say?" (Inspired by the quirky Youtube song by Ylvis.) Freehand-cut white paper collage, glued over song lyrics in Word on red card. Highlights and shadows in yellow, orange and black watercolour pencils and silver Sharpie.
Week 48: Fox
Update:
Nobody here but us chickens! Black fine point ink and watercolour cartoon. Drawn without pencil lines!
Week 48: Fox IISomeone else beat me to this phrase but I decided to go ahead with my concept anyway. Extending an idea from Week 39 "Words", here is "A quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog", created in Pages with a little black Stained and finepoint Sharpie, brown pencilling and a touch of yellow acrylic.
Week 48: Fox IIII had no intention of doing another fox this week, but I encountered an old newspaper ad about two hours ago, and initially had thoughts of a traditional drawing based upon the photo. Suddenly, it demanded to be an assemblage artwork, and I found myself fashioning a fox fur stole from a red chenille stick, cutting an outline of a woman, to give her a 3D effect, from an A3 sheet of yellow quill board, and painting her and the background with instant coffee. Details in red Sharpie and black Stained Sharpie, and the wording is cut from a print-out of the ad. Fox stole's eyes are some polished blue glass beads from a pot in the garden. Face of the model is probably inspired by all those "Redhead Matches" ladies of the 70s. She's propped out from the card by the width of the chenille stick.
Week 48: Fox IV3D papier mache squirrel, decoupaged with orange paper printed with the words "squirrel", "paw", "ear", "tail" and "acorn", plus eyes made with "i"s - and an "n" for a nose.
Week 39: Words
Update:
Black Stained by Sharpie ink (a brushlike tip, supposedly for drawing on fabric, but nice to use on paper, too) on La Carta Weave textured paper.
Week 39: Words II
Week 39: Words III
Words and Pictures: Watercolour over cardboard templates, painted onto the page of movie reviews from Mx newspaper. (Ha! I was cleaning up the work area the next morning. The "audience" template, which I cut like a set of paper dollies from some card and used to mask off sections, looks too pretty to throw away. Into the Odds 'n' Ends box it goes. We may see it again some day.)
The beautiful art nouveau Métro entrance to Abbesses Station in the Montmartre district, Paris, France. In winter. Green and black Sharpies, opaque white Signo and watercolours on Mont Marte watercolour paper.
Week 35: Paris
Update:
In the style of Théophile-Alexandre Steinlen's iconic poster for Rodolphe Salis' Le Chat Noir, here is my interpretation of le Chien Blanc, created in collage, black Sharpie, opaque white Signo and watercolours. Model: Jack Russell McLean.
Week 35: Paris IIMy muse struck at about 10pm and I finally posted the pic after finishing at 2.30am and was too pumped to sleep. I hate it when my brain wants to keep being creative! In 1974, when studying French at high school, I used to wear a T-shirt with "le Chat Noir" printed on it, having originally bought it because it had French language on it, and having no idea how famous it was, nor its relevance to Montmartre! Last year, visiting Paris for the first time, the image was everywhere: in every Parisian gift store and souvenir shop and almost every cafe. Plus little white dogs (and dog poo) just as ubiquitous! Made me miss my Jack Russell so much seeing copies of him everywhere!
Is the tennis ball supposed to remind us of the "The French Open", aka in Paris as "Roland Garros"? Mais oui, but it is also there to hide a blemish in the background paper that was exaggerated by the scan. I came back from Paris last year all fired up with ideas for a story about a little white dog in Paris but, a few weeks later, my writer friend, Natalie Jane Prior, bought out her new picture book: of a little white dog in Paris (Pom Pom, where are you?).
L'escargot et la grenouille. Collage of painted watercolour paper, black Sharpie, coloured card and a downloadable, online, 3D menu:
Week 35: Paris IIII was trying to get the frog to look more shocked. But frogs are already so wide-eyed! The tiny print on the crumpled hors d'oeuvres menu actually lists both snails and frogs' legs. I found a free customizable menu template on the web! The sample already had a snails dish listed and I quickly altered the title of a different dish to include la cuisses de grenouille. (Just in case it's not "Paris" enough, it has an address card for the site of my cousin-in-law's first taste of snails. Much happier with it now. The shadows from the menu were all wrong last night, and I realised that the snail was seemingly falling off the table in the first version, but I'd stuck him down too firmly.)
"Don't blame me, it was Tiger. (Who only looks like a platypus. Made of sheepskin.)"
Okay, a new spooky story for you:
My Jack Russell terrier is on medication for meningitis at the moment, and needs to visit the backyard more often than normal. In the past he's had quite an affinity with a ghost in the house (who was here before he was, and has done numerous freaky things both before and after the dog arrived). This morning, I started dreaming about dog poo and awoke to realise the smell was still there. I fumbled around for my glasses and the bed lamp to get the dog outside. I noticed that the desk clock was flashing - there had been a power outage during the night. The clock was flashing 3.18am.
I found the dog poo way down the end of the hall, neatly stepping over it to put the dog out to complete his task, then returned to check the time on my watch and clean up the mess. It was now exactly 3.20am.
So.... did my dog doing Number Twos at 3.18 cause the power outage, or did the power outage cause him to need to poo?
Or was it the ghost - but she smells like fish, not dog poo, but the dog often barks at the exact spot in the family room where we used to encounter her fishy smell, months before the dog arrived as a pup?
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