Year 3 of the 52-Week Illustration Challenge, Week 33

Week 33: Father.

One of the first frogs I ever caught, as a kid, had an extra frog attached firmly to the larger frog. A few minutes later: frog spawn! And lo, I learned about froggy fatherhood. Design created on black "scratch paper", which comes in a pack of five sheets (plus tool) for $4.00 from a toy shop. Based on an image found in a Google search.

Update:

Week 33: Father II.

"Dreadlock Daddy". Freecut silhouette collage with various coloured cards and crushed papers, blue pencil and white Puffy paint. Based on a photograph of my nephew and his baby son acting out "The Lion King" at the beach.

Year 3 of the 52-Week Illustration Challenge, Week 6

Week 6: Printing

Collage of newsprint cuttings and assorted cards, plus actual fingerprints. Image adjusted with the "Noir" filter in Photo.

Update:

Week 6: Printing II

Quick thumbprint cartoons with stamp pad ink onto Ingres paper. The bee was pressed over strands of rubbery string. Details in various markers.

Return of the 52-Week Illustration Challenge, Week 11

Week 11: Green

"It's not easy being green!" A green frog desperately attempts to be environmentally green. Cartoon in black Sharpie ink and watercolour on watercolour paper.

Update:

Week 11: Green II

Here's a green gremlin. I caught him sneaking into my hotel room looking for lollies. Luckily for me, I'd eaten all the evidence. Assemblage art with a green supermarket "green bag" as background. Hey, I'm working with limited materials here, you know!

Week 11: Green III

My paternal grandmother was born on St Patrick's Day. She always wore green on that day, and carried a small leprechaun charm on a green ribbon. This watercolour of a leprechaun, with black Sharpie details, is based on that charm's pose.

52-Week Illustration Challenge, Week 35

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 II

My 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 III

I 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.)

52-Week Illustration Challenge, Week 20

Week 20: Colour

A huge challenge for a red/green colour blind man, but I thought I might take you into my secret world of 1958-1975. When the rest of Australia was watching b/w transmissions, I was able to see black, white, grey and *green*, especially in cartoons! (I added some red, too, because I've come to realise that red and green are the same wavelength to my eyes.) It was a family discussion during an episode of "Happy Days" (1974, just before Australian colour test transmissions started here ) that led to this amazing revelation... that I was colour blind! Bok the Frog was drawn on cartridge paper, photocopied on various red, green and grey sheets of paper, elements cut and pasted as a collage, and the plastic overlay of grey ripples was printed by b/w photocopying the green ripples on the backing sheet onto an overhead projector plastic cel.

Bok the Frog (and his garden of croakuses) as only I would have seen him:

Week 20: Colour II

Bok the Frog (and his garden of croakuses) as *most people* would have seen him, had he been on b/w TV:

Udates:
I had a new colourful idea: Here's a miniature gesso canvas painted in acrylics by me, on behalf of a bendy, smiley man, with detail in black Unipin fine marker, and silver and gold Signo pigment ink.

Week 20: Colour III.

Dyed chicks at the Royal Easter Show, before the RSPCA complained. Fingerprint art with acrylics and a black Sharpie:

Week 20: Colour IV.

What's cookin'?

Any idea what's bubbling away on my cooktop? I'm dyeing two customised puppets!


And this becomes...


... this!

Yes, they are a pair of customized puppets, now dried in the washing machine spin-drier. The completed bat has wings cut from brown felt and the new eyes are flat beads in a pink plastic, Supaglued over the original black giraffe eyes. 50 cents for a packet containing lots (of future replacement eyes?) I love bargain shops!

The panther's eyes are some teardrop-shaped yellow plastic "jewels", originally bought for a different project. The only reason for turning a tiger into a panther was to give the bat a dunking buddy, and use up the leftover dye.


These two new additions (above) look rather sedate after the cooking pot episode!

Entering the literary garden of delights!

Student comment: "I saw the Frog Prince and his golden ball in a bowl,
but I think that is the same bowl Chook used last year when
he was being an astronaut!"

Today, the students at my school had their first experiences in our newly built school library. I've spent three weeks unpacking the book stock (from long-term storage) and decorating with new and nostalgic elements. The students were full of questions, but I used Circle Time to maximise and equalise all the the talking and listening. It was a great day. The looks on their faces, as they explored (hands free) all the new nooks and crannies made all the planning and hard work worth while.


Our historic school milk bottles are now enshrined in a shadow box.

The quote from a framing store, to have the bottles placed into a customised shadow box was $200 but I did it for about $40, thanks to parts bought from Spotlight. The inside text reads: Penrith Public School’s library stands on the site of a portable library building, and before that a previous portable building. In 2010, workmen excavating the foundations found these "school milk" bottles buried deep in the rubble. One is embossed "1/3 PINT PASTEURISED MILK". See the original blog entry of our archeological find HERE.

48 more photos of display elements ready for today's opening are HERE!

Botanical beauty, with bats

Yesterday, a friend from Wollongong was visiting Sydney and we had lots of time to kill, so I suggested a stroll in Sydney's beautiful Royal Botanical Gardens in the CBD.

With the threat of rain constantly looming overhead, we nevertheless had a great day: wandering aimlessly, for the most part, but also choosing to seek out the site of the old Garden Palace, the prehistoric Wollemi pine display, the cafe and souvenir shop, and the great Succulent Garden.

The entire day was chorused by the often-deafening background chittering and squabbling of hundreds of flying foxes, who've taken over many of the Gardens' trees by day, and are destroying their foliage by night. I really had no idea the creatures had become such a problem, of plague proportions.

To top off the day, there's been a similarly noisy chorus of screaming frogs, right here in my backyard, every night. Australian frogs don't say, "Ribit!" or "Croak!", you see. Some say, "Bok, bok!" - and the rest just scream like they've just met Roddy McDowall's withered old mother, armed with cutlery, in the shower!

Raindrops are falling on my head

It's very hard to feel too disgruntled by Sydney's heavy rain showers, when our country is so far into a major drought, the dam levels are dwindling, and government ministers are arguing the pros and cons of expensive desalination plants vs the recycling of sewage into drinking water. But try explaining to the dog why he's going to get damp on a toilet break.

The grass in the backyard is loving the relentless downpour, as do the flowers, the potted plants, and the frogs. I guess the translation of their mournful, communal cries is, "Quick, there's a puddle! We must procreate!"

I discovered tonight that the garage has flooded. Ick. That's the third time in six years. Not too bad, I guess, especially since I put everything up onto packing-foam blocks after the first time it happened. Two days of constant heavy rain is about the limit. By the third day, the ground and drains can't hold any more and the water just flows under the bricks, or through the mortar, or comes from somewhere - and across the concrete floor. The previous owners were here about 15 years and reckoned it never flooded in all that time.

It was a bit daunting once when the local newspaper showed a map of the Penrith Valley flood plain a few years ago - and there was a huge lake that theoretically forms, every 100 years or so, between my house and what is now Westfield's Penrith Plaza.

Ah, the dog needs to wee again. He has that look in his eyes. Let me just get the umbrella...

On the third day of Christmas

If you're looking for a fun cinema experience these holidays, and wish to avoid the huge queues for all the latest movies that opened on Boxing Day, you can't go wrong with Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan. Sacha Baron Cohen, creator of British television's "Ali G", has discovered within himself an embarrassing new persona, whom I can only describe as a Middle Eastern version of Norman Gunston. I had a great time giggling away to myself. Even the subtitles - and the modesty patches over some of the unexpected nudity - are hilarious. Highly recommended!

Jack's favourite Christmas present has turned out to be his new "squeakie", a gift from my friend Zena. She bought him a "Divin' Dude", a cute pink and green dog made of wetsuit material, which means it might be a little tougher than the average dog toy -we'll soon see - and can even be used in the pool. But I had to laugh at the tag, which has a short essay on "The Importance of Play". It says, in part: "Depriving your dog of play may result in boredom which may lead to behavioural problems such as excessive barking or destructive chewing or digging." Well, I can guarantee some "destructive chewing"... as Jack diligently attempts to remove the squeaker from inside of "Divin' Dude"!

Today's ornaments:



Above left: For 2002, a unique metal mesh Christmas stocking from Grace Bros. in Penrith; and Woody the cowboy of "Toy Story" riding a Christmas bauble while using a rope lasso, purchased from the Disney Store, probably the one in the Sydney CBD.

Above right: For 2001, A reindeer-antlered Snoopy the beagle with little Woodstock from the "Peanuts" cartoon strip. It originally came with chocolates, from Target; I think this might have been a leftover gift I'd bought, and I decided it would make a fun inclusion to my tree. (I also got to eat the chocolate, of course.) The frog with the luscious lips and sparkly crown actually opens on a hinge to reveal a secret hiding place for - whatever! It came from a very cool magic and giftware store, Fantasy Road, which used to be at Fox Studios, Moore Park.