This week, I'm thinking about colour studies and quick captures and Talking Heads tributes and fashionable flowers and good times rolling and star capes and the pressed flowers of a summer just past.
I've been working on some big, detailed commercial projects over the past couple of weeks, so the sketchbook is a bit light on... But hopefully the bright colour buzz of Morning Glories and a fresh cut grapefruit can fill in some of the creative gaps.
Visual sugars.
Those of you who tune into this journal regularly will recognize that lately I’ve been on a bit of a trip about self-evaluation and self-evolution in the creative practice, about development and exploration. About checking out what you’re trying to say, and thinking about whether it really is resonating in the way you’d like. Anyway, like Bowie said: changes.
Inking drawings with a fineliner is the kind of precise process that sings sweetly to the more neurotic and controlling side of my personality. Especially if there are several pencil draft lines underneath to shore up the intention. But the whole precision thing also restricts, and creates a very literal output.
So I’ve stepped into messing around with brushes and ink and organic wild unpredictable bleeding colours… A welcome change into the uncomfortable. However, I’m still taking it in increments; there’s a lot of mapping and composition, and some of my ‘normal’ drawing practice in there for balance and comfort.
I’m also curious, what do you guys do to break out of routine or habit or comfort zones? Let me know your good avenues for challenging and exposing the creative process...
Top photo shot by Ming Nom Chong for Auguste.
Just a quick note to let you know that Pony Gold tees are 35% off (using the code SHIRTLOVE at the checkout) until midnight Tuesday, Feb 9 (Australian DST).
I've just released a new limited edition fine art print (Into the Mystic, here), and wanted to share a little snapshot of the process.
At the end of last year, I started mapping out the individual drawings in rough pencil scribbles, fitting them together and filling the page. But after laying down the initial black ink outlines, I felt a bit disheartened – the ideas were too disparate, ill-fitting, not cohesive enough.
I eventually added in the first layer of colour anyway. And once the blue was across the whole page, everything locked together. (An aside: that Mint Blue marker is my new favourite thing... I'll be a loyal Posca addict forever, but that blue has convinced me to expand my marker scope).
Anyway, that's a part of the process that I should be familiar with by now. That there's always a point in any work where you're sure the whole thing just sucks and isn't going to work. But it's actually just a lapse in vision, I think. A synapse failure between what the initial, imagined idea looked like, and how the physical, real output is going to manifest.
Because once the final black layer was down, it realigned exactly as I'd imagined. It was precisely what I'd been trying to pull together, the page I had thought about at first. So, there it was... Into the Mystic.
Things are always in a constant flux between lazy complacency and wired-excited-fiery sharp focus. And that focus needs to be adjusted and readjusted all the time; as motivation is lost, intention obscured, meaning waylaid... But I'm trying all the time to be honest and purposeful in what I create, instead of just running through the motions of what I know I can do.
And I think the results are starting to emerge...
Tomorrow is Australia Day/Invasion Day/Survival Day/nothing for some.
I don’t want to write about it, but I do want to share some people who have – because there are always powerful, heartfelt stories being told by Indigenous Australians, and they need to be reverberated.
First, read this from Amrita Hepi – I cry every time I read it, and I have read it a lot. It is true and right; our country is at once easy and painful to love.
The Fabric Social journal kinda nails it in suggesting that a good place to start for all non-Indigenous Australians is to make this this day a day of listening, and to continue listening to and supporting Indigenous voices. There’s a list of talented women you should be following, listening to, and learning from.
This insightful and intelligent piece from Katie West digs into colonisation and inter-generational trauma via her artistic practice. So important in helping non-Indigenous Australians to understand why the date matters, and why the past is still here, all the time.
Luke Pearson lays it out here, and there's a whole lot more to learn from, all the time, on Indigenous X and NITV.
For those of you in Aus looking for a way to show your support for changing the date, or to deviate from the head-in-the-sand get-drunk-and-swim approach, maybe go and check out these rallies and events.
And while we’re on adding more diverse voices to your daily media clamour, a few creatives from Instagram (please pipe up in the comments if you’ve got other artist recommends too) to check out are Otis Hope Carey, Zachary Bennett-Brook, aforementioned Katie West and Lauren Freestone. Also, the Martumili Artists account shares Indigenous art with the most incredible colour palettes. And finally, Thelma Plum is not only a talented singer and possibly the most beautiful lady I've ever seen, but she's also honest and funny and tough.
So: read, listen, learn, appreciate. Remember that when you stay silent on an issue, you condone the status quo. And keep these voices in your head.
Above model photographed by Ming Nomchong for Auguste.
We can always do with a little more magic and a lot more light.
Over the past couple of months, I've made a conscious decision to cut back on commercial commitments to focus on personal work.
For a while, I've felt like there's been a lack of growth or evolution in my work. Like the ability to channel what is important or significant to me has been waylaid. I've just felt bored, tired and trite.
So it's nice, now, to start chipping in to that channel again. To read books and listen to music and think about things that are clear, sophisticated and true. Things that are hard to comprehend, that educate my mind and stretch my awareness. And, y'know, to indulge in things that are just straight pure, like listening to AC/DC on a highway drive or holding Bird of Paradise flowers up to the sun.
Anyway, hopefully this is the start of something new; something growing and fresh and strange.
Solsana Shoes Peggy slides; Viva La Body perfume balm; Lovisa Celestial Crystal drop earrings; Tree of Life dress
In summer, on the farm, everything is dusty and dusky and warm. The crackling dry gumleaves and sun-bleached yellow grass underfoot, all much to my dad’s dismay after weeks without rain. The sky is faded; perfect Levis blue, empty, cloudless and bright. My Melbourne skin has gone warm and brown, bolts of platinum are appearing in my otherwise dirty-blonde hair.
Everything has the same echoing glow: my father’s woodwork, the yellowing pages of old books, the swirl of strong cups of tea. The damp fog that blankets the valley at dawn, heralding hot days and high noons; the solid, dusty horse-smell of the neighbour’s tall chestnut gelding, who glows warm and burnished at the fenceline, in the first yellow light of each day.
The glow passes through the cold beer being drunk by the banjo player on the pub verandah, and reappears in the colour of vintage silk dresses, brass buckles, leatherwork, the light in the antique store. It is in the sand, the rocks, the beach; caught in the spindly pandanus leaves. It is in the river, the gravel, the sparkling light reflections that run over the surface. It moves across cow hides, my dog’s eyes, to the whistling baby hawks. In the evening it is in scotch-and-sodas, Rodriguez on the stereo, mosquito coil smoke, muttered conversations.
For now, everything glows like summer, home, warmth.
For my last sketchbook post for 2016, the stills from my little flick-through video, just for a closer look... Hope you all have fun sparkly brilliant new year celebrations, and lots to look forward to in 2017.
A little flick through of my most recent almost-finished sketchbook, filled over the past couple of months... it's a weird, colourful collection of thoughts, and seems like a pretty happy way to wrap up a year of drawing!
Thank you for all your support and encouragement this year!
There's nothing quite like idly swirling paint around in a dish just to see what happens.
When you get to the scrappy burned-out cigarette-butt pizza-crust last-mouthful brain-dead end-part of the year, sometimes it's nice to make meaningless, self-indulgent, pretty things and just think about how nice it is that the sea urchins match the pressed flowers in my sketchbook.
I've just added a bunch of prints to the 'On sale' section of my online store... and there's only a few prints left in each edition.
Also, my online store is closing on December 12 for a holiday! Thanks for all your support this year, it's a huge, amazing, meaningful thing for me!
