A Few Months

I know it's been a while between posts, but I've been busily working away on my craft and paintings.

Art school has been great! I finished my first painting of 'The Tuscan Garden' and started 'The Living Room'... and Aaron has begun getting us into doing lessons on the first Monday of each month so we can learn more than ever. This means we'll be working on this kind of thing next year as well.

And then, I've also been working hard on my pin cushions and tiny paintings as well for the markets coming up in October. I can't wait for that! It's going to be so much fun to be back into the Boutique Market arena again! I know I may not make much money from it, but I have so much fun just going there.

I'm also enjoying knitting my throw. I found the perfect colour for the centre square and I'm getting in and knitting it too! It's going to be a large square of 80 cast on, then garter stitch it from there into a square... it'll look great! This throw is taking shape so well!

I've found a book on how to draw nudes too... just the thing to help me with all kinds of things that I have problems with in drawing and painting. I can't wait to get into it. Well, until my next post, keep creating!

Newish Books

Over the past week, I've acquired two second-hand books from my craft group. The community centre I went to were cleaning out their books and they dumped a whole lot of them on the table... so I pounced!

The first one is 'The New Needlework Book' and what a book it is! I perused the book and it's got a whole lot of things inside it which I'd have a go at just for presents, decorations for Christmas and just to see if I can do them.

Then, the second one I scored for next to nothing is 'Celtic Cross-Stitch' which I've always wanted to try out. A great book with simple instructions on how to do brilliant and colourful designs. I can't wait to try this style of cross-stitch out.

Well, they were the two craft books I scored in the past month. I don't buy craft books often, but when I do, I really make sure they're worthwhile. What craft books and things have you come across have made your craft days brighter and better? Feel free to leave a comment about your great finds below! Until my next post, keep creating! 

Plaster Torso Workshop At the Logan Art Gallery

Over the last two weeks, I've been working hard on some workshop things... well, just one thing really.  It's a plaster cast torso - no, not of my own body, it's of a mannequin base with 3 layers of plaster on the inside of it, then we all cleaned it up, painted on a hardening resin and started our work on it... of a 3D piece of more plaster.

Well, it's day 3, and I'm up to my finishing touches.  I just need to get in and find some quotes and opening lines from famous writers to write onto the torso in paint after I finish up the flowers and make them look better, then glue on the bling and then?  Well, I gotta sign the thing!  

On 24th, April, there's an art opening at the gallery and my piece will be in it.  It's about my passion for books and how much it takes up my life, my mind and how far back it goes into my soul... and how much I find reading and writing like oxygen; and if I stop either one, it would destroy me, so to me it's like living in my own self-designed dreamworld where I hope I never wake from.

Well, that's kind of what I'm hoping to put across in my piece.  It's been fun doing it... and my 3D piece of a book is going to be hung in my office... well, somewhere here anyway... if I can find a place for it.  So, what have you been up to lately?  Until my next post, keep creating! 

Extreme Painting

Since I hurt my right arm, I've been taking it easy; but I haven't been lazy.  I've been working on my garden out the front; and built a wall, but it took a week.  And believe me, I'd rather slow down and take a week to build something than stop work all together.
I also potted a lovely Draceana plant in a large pot too.  This has made my front garden look just lovely - so far - as it's just the first quarter of my garden being fixed up.

Then, I've been working on that painting you've read about below.  Now, it's been going really well!  I can't wait to finish it, but I can't rush the writing part of it.  So, I have to make sure I don't hurry it along too much or I'll end up smudging the pencil or the paint.  But it's looking good.  I still have to fix up the face so it looks good; and edges will stay rough so the hair looks like it's moving and isn't fixed in place.  I love where it's going too... I've added even more books and authors to the hair tonight (which I'll take a photo of it tomorrow and update it here to show you all, so you see what I mean).  So, what have you been doing lately which has kept your creativity going?  Love to know about your projects.  Until my next post, keep creating!

Updated Photo1 

Updated Photo2

Updated Photo3 

As promised, I've taken some photos this morning and above are the updates of the painting from a couple of days ago. Enjoy!

What Do You Collect?

Last week, I was at the Logan Art Gallery doing my volunteering shift on my own.  My partner in crime at the desk had come down with a stomach bug; how unfortunate.  I hope she's feeling better.  

Well, on my rounds around the place I noticed a pamphlet on the counter about collections.  The GoMA in correlation with the Logan Art Gallery are doing a few workshops where people with strange and wonderful collections can show them off at Kangaroo Point; and I thought to take part, seeing I collect a few different things.

The collection I'm going to show off - as I have about 4 completely different collections that are growing and I'm perfecting right now, and I'm only allowed to pick one - is my collection of rare and out-of-print books.  I began my collections of these by pure accident at the age of 23.  When I found my first out-of-print/rare book, it didn't cross my mind that a young person was allowed to have something as fine or as collectable as this in their possession.  It just wasn't something that I didn't think about at that time in my life.

Now, I'm almost 40 and I have been hunting down these particular types of books for 15 years now; and I'm not about to stop.  This collection of books I'm going to display is going to be something I've never let out of my house, let alone shown any of my friends.  So, this will be an absolute first for me to do with my collection:  letting the public see something of mine that has been hidden from everyone in my life except me.

So, do you collect something specific?  What is it?  Do you show off your collection or hide it to preserve it - like I do?  Until my next post, keep creating.

Out of Action

I've been out of action this week... not in any horrible way, just a broken toe has slowed me down.  So, instead of working on my portrait (which is still sitting by the back door under an old tablecloth awaiting completion; and new detailing brushes), I've been knitting up a storm in front of the television.  

I was hoping to get a few good feet going on the scarf, but I haven't.  I have got a few inches... hehe... funny how it all goes to waste when you think you're going to get something done.  But my foot is healing well.  I have been watching some shows and movies on dvd that I have forgotten about and I've been reading as well.  So I'm glad I'm catching up with a few other things that have been neglected.  I'll soon be back working on my paintings and other arty things too. So, until my next post, keep creating!

Art Books

Besides working on art, attending workshops and walking through galleries full of the work of arts from all over the world (or just around my area), I have a nice little collection of books about art.  One of the first books I remember picking up is a little, thick book on Vincent Van Gogh.  This artist is one of the reasons why I took up painting and also why I keep going with it.  He had the worse medical problems around; and to make things worse, he didn't just have one problem, he had a few.  There was Manic Depression, Epilepsy and Bi-Polar; all of which really screwed with how he lived.  But could he paint!  His brother had a similar condition, but he had it under control; unlike poor Vincent.

The only other book I have on one other artist is 'Michael Whelan's Works of Wonders'.  It's a collection of his cover art; of what it looked like as a book cover and what it looked like before it became a book cover with his description of how he came up with it to start with.  This is a book I stumbled upon in a Life Line where it was hiding from the world on the top of a bookcase and it only cost me $4.00.  When I got it home, I looked it up on the net and found out that it's out of print and worth so very much more!  Now, it's one of my most prized possessions in more ways than one.

Other books I have collected are about how to get my brain to work the right way to be an artist.  I know this sounds strange, but 'The Artist's Way' by Julia Cameron and 'Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain' by Betty Edwards are two such books that have helped me in the past.  Even though I rarely use them now, it's always good to know they are here in my bookcase just in case I need them - or somebody in my family does.  

The most interesting books about art I receive are always from my Mum.  She bought me 'Essential Impressionists' by Antonia Cunningham.  This book covers a wide range of Impressionists from all over the artistic arena who changed the art world.  Some of them I like; some I don't.  But they are all there in this wonderfully large, heavy book to see; in full colour!  Another book Mum bought me - and I love delving into just to exercise my brain a little - is 'Incredible Visual Illusions' by Al Seckal.  This is a book full of the most brilliant visual illusions that by the end you'll have a headache, but it's always fun to look at some of them; especially if you wish to put something like them in your paintings or sculptures.  This kind of book can give you great ideas.

The last set of books are something I bought on a whim; and didn't think much of until recently.  They are 3-volume set of home decorators books from the 1940's.  The first book shows you how to paint a house... from peeling the paint, choosing your colours, brush size, primer to the the final coat.  The other two volumes work on the inside of the house; showing you how to wallpaper, choose wood panelling, shades, curtains and how to get your house looking very modern.  These kinds of books don't exist in these sets anymore; so I picked this set up very cheaply at a charity store and kept them as I find this is another type of art form in itself of interior design.

So, what kinds of art books do you own in your bookcases?  Are they up-to-date and modern, of your favourite artists lives or do they date back centuries?  Or are they all to do with the other side of the arts - the learning side of it all - where you delve into the studies of the arts?  Love to know which books you guys own.  Until my next post, keep creating!