13.05.12 | Horns of a Dilemma #3
Done and dusted...at last!
08.03.12 | Horns of a Dilemma #2
Just about caught up with where I need to be to have this sucker finished on time! Now for goat number two. Happy with this thus far.
18.12.11 | Horns of a Dilemma
Ok this is coming along quite nicely, despite the fact that I'm still a novice when it comes to colour. What started looking like a piece of burnt cheese is actually resembling what it is meant to be......this drawing is now giving me a good feel indeed. If I can this goat done by the end...
27.11.11 | Cogitation
Life can sometimes take unexpected turns - anyway I'm currently in a torpor. To relieve the boredom I have started a drawing, no idea how it will turn out, whether it'll be any good, whether it'll be crap - most likely be the latter.
06.03.11 | Humphead #4
Medium: Colour Pencil/Graphite
Size: 420 mm x 590 mm
Done and dusted....fish begone!!! A slow moving cumbersome fish....and a even more slow moving cumbersome drawer.
12.09.10 | Humphead #3
Medium: Colour Pencil/Graphite
Size: 420 mm x 590 mm
This is far and away the most infuriating drawing I've ever undertaken. It has taken an eternity and it's still not finished. Yep, it's hard for a drawing to finish itself, the pencils don't move by themselves - who would've thunk...
14.02.10 | Humphead #2 et al
Medium: Colour Pencil/Graphite
Size: 420 mm x 590 mm
Looks like full and uninterrupted transmission has resumed. There's been some progress on this drawing, hopefully it'll be complete....sometime. It's been very time consuming effort thus far for very little to show, but it is...
07.12.09 | Humphead
Medium: Colour Pencil/Graphite
Size: 420 mm x 590 mm
I'm back to drawing fish - for the time being I'm giving the birds a rest. It was hard deciding which fish to choose, and for whatever reason I have decided to draw a Maori Wrasse, aka Napoleon Fish, aka Humphead.
The males can...
21.11.09 | Odd Man Out #8
Medium: Colour Pencil/Graphite
Size: 360 mm x 530 mm
At long last this drawing is finished. It seems to have taken an eternity. The last few days have been sweltering, so after doing odd jobs this morning, not much left to do but to complete this drawing. All in all I'm quite happy...
07.11.09 | Odd Man Out #7
Medium: Colour Pencil/Graphite
Size: 360 mm x 530 mm
A waste skip was meant to arrive yesterday and today was meant to be spent getting rid of garden refuse and accumulated junk. Alas, it didn't arrive - so filled in the day by amongst other things doing some drawing. I think I made...
25.10.09 | Odd Man Out #6
Medium: Colour Pencil/Graphite
Size: 360 mm x 530 mm
I have eventually returned to this drawing after a lengthy hiatus. Bird #2 is now complete, and it's been quite a task layering the relevant amount of colour. I also started Bird #3 and have been making steady progress so that the...
27.09.09 | Odd Man Out #5
Medium: Colour Pencil/Graphite
Size: 360 mm x 530 mm
A very cold and windy day and really that was enough to deter me from cycling today. So I hit the drawing board instead. Layering down thin sheets of colour is a time consuming task, to get the richness of the red I put down 6...
19.09.09 | Odd Man Out #4
Medium: Colour Pencil/Graphite
Size: 360 mm x 530 mm
It was such a beautiful day today, felt I wasted it a bit by drawing and punting. At least the light was fantastic to utilise. Still the progress on bird #2 is quite admirable, with just the breast plumage to complete. I'll...
12.09.09 | Odd Man Out #3
Medium: Colour Pencil/Graphite
Size: 360 mm x 530 mm
It's been a while between updates, and drawing for that matter, but this bird is now done - aside from the constant minor revisions that will no doubt occur. I have also started on the second (or middle) bird which will be a golden...
15.08.09 | Odd Man Out #2
Medium: Colour Pencil/Graphite
Size: 360 mm x 530 mm
I managed to get some drawing done today, mainly to take my mind off things. There is a real difference between the use of graphite and coloured pencils as mediums - it just takes such a long time to layer coloured pencil. So...
02.08.09 | Odd Man Out
Medium: Colour Pencil/Graphite
[Eventual] Size: 360 mm x 530 mm
I started drawing again this weekend. I think I needed to for my own sanity. Even if it is just to take my mind off the forthcoming trip to New York, the excitement and anticipation is at fever pitch, and drawing at least...
27.06.09 | Red Crab #11
Medium: Colour Pencil/Graphite
Size: 360 mm x 530 mm
This drawing is now complete and I feel much relieved. I am happy with it and more importantly others are happy with it!
03.06.09 | W00T - Waterhouse Prize here I come
I'm blowing my own trumpet here but I'm extraordinarily pleased with myself as Wrestlemania is a finalist in the Waterhouse Art Prize. W00T, third attempt and at last third time lucky - one of 30 finalists in Category B Works on Paper. I am over the moon!!! And to all those who...
24.05.09 | Red Crab #10
Medium: Colour Pencil/Graphite
Size: 360 mm x 530 mm
Saturday: A busy day, in what caps off a busy week work wise - but enough time to squeeze in some drawing. Really just filling in the foliage underneath the airborne golden bosun bird. It's coming together I keep telling myself.
...
17.05.09 | Red Crab #9
Medium: Colour Pencil/Graphite
Size: 360 mm x 530 mm
I woke up this morning a bit dirty on myself, certainly woke up the wrong side of the bed - when I eventually woke up that is. I slept through the alarm and one hour's worth of ten minute reminders as well. I was already thinking...
10.05.09 | Red Crab #8
Medium: Colour Pencil/Graphite
Size: 360 mm x 530 mm
I thought I'd post this to let people know that I'm still working away - I was going to say strongly but that woul be an overstatement. At least today I completed all the golden plumage associated with the golden bosun bird, now...
26.04.09 | Red Crab #7
Medium: Colour Pencil/Graphite
Size: 360 mm x 530 mm
The weather around these parts remains atrocious - wet, windy, wild, and cold. The only good thing is its perfect staying indoors weather and the chance to keep plugging away on this drawing. I've started to work on the wings. I...
26.04.09 | Red Crab #6
I had an off line request to post a close-up of the bird's head. It appears there are still some teething problems with the new blog design, including the comments field (now rectified) - hopefully everything will be running smoothly soon, bear with me until then.
Anyway, back to this...
25.04.09 | Red Crab #5
Medium: Colour Pencil/Graphite
Size: 360 mm x 530 mm
It was a poor day weather wise, and my big plans for a long bike ride were thwarted. So I decided to attack this drawing again despite the sub-optimal light for drawing. Following a couple of cups of coffee I felt I was in the right...
12.04.09 | Red Crab #4
Medium: Colour Pencil/Graphite
Size: 360 mm x 530 mm
I put in a big effort on this drawing over Saturday and Sunday morning. If you have enough motivation and inspiration even the intricate bits don't seem that hard. I guess when you get in a particular zone it all falls into place....
24.03.09 | Did I Really Enter Something?
Yes, it's true I did really enter a drawing into a competition for landscapes. I'm very happy with the drawing (a lovely panorama if you must know), but not necessarily happy with the photo of it that accompanied the entry form - then again I couldn't be bothered spending a truckload of...
21.03.09 | Red Crab #3
Medium: Colour Pencil/Graphite
Size: 360 mm x 270 mm
I had great intentions of doing a lot of drawing today, but it didn't quite turn out that way. A few distractions - punting - got in the way, so it's a staccato attempt at drawing. Maybe I'll have more focus tomorrow. I'll need it...
15.03.09 | Red Crab #2
Medium: Colour Pencil/Graphite
Size: 360 mm x 160 mm
Much better day today, great natural light, woke up with a clear head instead of a mild hangover as well. Must write note to myself to the effect if intending to draw the next day, drink less the night before. Really made...
14.03.09 | Red Crab
Medium: Colour Pencil/Graphite
Size: 180 mm x 150 mm
At long last I've pulled the proverbial finger out of the backside and started drawing again. I've had hell of a job conceiving and conceptualising what this drawing will look like. I'm still not sure what the final product will look...
17.01.09 | Wrestlemania #3
Well, there's been some more progress although it does seem like a grind when I draw. Colour pencils are not usual medium, so I think I'm probably going slow - even by my standards - understanding the medium and the incessant layering down of colour. Before some smart arse...
15.01.09 | Wrestlemania #2
Hours of filling this in with colour pencils and this all I have to show for it. This represents about 10% of the total image I guess. I'm using another piece of paper as a cover to mask the lined up work as I move across the page filling in. Every time, I lift the cover sheet I...
13.01.09 | Wrestlemania
After a couple of failed attempts at entering the Waterhouse Prize I've decided to give the 2009 competition a go. The difficulty with this competition is not so much the theme, natural history - which in itself opens up many opportunities, but the somewhat narrow scope (in my opinion)...
06.10.08 | What will become of this
This started off as a doodle on the back of an electricity bill but ended up better than I anticipated. I'll use it as a preliminary drawing for future reference. I think this image has been lurking in mind for a while, well if not the image at least the theme/title of a drawing...
02.02.08 | Where to my friend VI
At the moment there are lots of things I like about this drawing - and a few things I dislike. This bit of the drawing I simplified. I just didn't want a lot of distraction down the left hand side, but still needed something there to provide some visual interest and notion of scale,...
25.01.08 | Where to my friend V
Slow and steady wins the race or so they say. At this rate it's going to be an ultra-marathon run in record slow time. The start line for this part of the drawing was down below - about two thirds through this section. At times I thought it was going swimmingly , at other times it was...
15.01.08 | Where to my friend IV
I'm about three weeks behind where I want to be with this - puppy sitting seriously cut into my drawing time. I have now "completed" the in-filling of the background building to the left of and below the hanging sign (upper left), at last. This was much trickier than I thought.
...
01.12.07 | Where to my friend III
Not a lot to update really, just the addition of a street sign and the curved corner brickwork of the building (that forms the background of the main drawing). Hopefully, I'll start to fill in the rest of the building's perspective below the street sign and it might provide a bit more...
17.11.07 | Where to my friend II
I spent most of today drawing. I thought it was about time I got back in touch with my so-called creative side. This is really a complex drawing and I'm at last getting to the stage where I think it might turn out OK. I think the complexity has tended to overawe me, that probably...
28.10.07 | Where to my friend
I've been struggling with this drawing for a while now and I'm not sure where it's headed. It is meant to be a large three panel drawing with each individual drawing being about A1 in size. This is the final panel and no I haven't even begun the first two panels. I'll only start those...
07.10.07 | Mug Punter #5
Medium: Coloured pencil/graphite
Size: 250mm x 200mm
Look I'm the first to admit that Mug Punter #4 was a bit of a let down, I don't think I captured the likeness as well as I would've liked. I'm much more pleased with this one of the latest generation of the Downer political dynasty....
15.01.07 | Doamna (Mrs) Tomescu #2
She is coming (along). Be afraid. More to be revealed at the appropriate time.
01.01.07 | Doamna (Mrs) Tomescu
I haven't been sitting here idly over the Xmas break, there has been some drawing and creativity happening. Straight out of something akin to Ripley's Believe It or Not comes the story of Doamna (Mrs) Tomescu. All will be revealed in due course......
23.12.06 | Onward and Upward
This post was going to be a wrap-up of the artistic year, but there wasn't really anything to report. In short I didn't produce enough good art, let's move on. Now what do with these? A few ideas that have been hibernating in my mind will shortly be awakened. Rip Van Jumpertz arise!
...
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30.10.06 | Mug Punter #3
At last another member has joined the Punters Club. It good to see that someone so esteemed and well respected within Catholic circles has found the time to be nominated. Then again we all can't be going around looking for the long-lost fruits of our loin, instead his strong religious...
25.10.06 | Mug Punter Revisited
With the greatest race in Australia this weekend it's an appropriate time to revisit the Mug Punter series. I had high hopes for this series, but after completing the first two some time back I got fatigued. I guess the fire is in the belly again and I've made a start on Mug Punter #3....
19.10.06 | The Experiment [Part #1]
After a flirtation with eel-shredding it's time to move on to other things piscatorial.....again, with a bit of a twist in the tale (or tail as the case maybe). In between doing a very serious garden clean-up all this week I've been able to spend at least two nights working on this...
02.10.06 | Draw it and they will come
It seems strange but today I rediscovered my appetite for drawing. It's not that I haven't been thinking about the physical act of drawing, just haven't got around to actually doing it - obviously those nike ads don't work on me. At least when I've been thinking about drawing I've been...
18.02.06 | The Mug Punter #2
#2 in the Mug Punter series has been completed. This portrait is of the Hon Peter Costello MP, Australia's treasurer. Many political commentators believe he will be the successor to Mug Punter #1. His critics say that he lacks the bollocks to mount a challenge, despite his bovver boy...
11.08.05 | Bye Bye Gloom - Hello Willoughby
After collecting Shock and Awe from the Art Gallery of NSW, and a day of driving through blustery conditions (nice to see snow at home this morning and along the way) I was buggered.
When I got home I did a quick search on the web to see whether I had fared any better in the Willoughby...
When I got home I did a quick search on the web to see whether I had fared any better in the Willoughby...
29.07.05 | D396 - Is this the year?
D396 is the official number given to me by the Art Gallery of New South Wales on 29 July 2005 for Shock and Awe in this year's Dobell Prize.
The "D" stands for Dobell Drawing Prize, a hark back to quite recent times when the Dobell was conducted at the same time as the Archibald Prize for...
The "D" stands for Dobell Drawing Prize, a hark back to quite recent times when the Dobell was conducted at the same time as the Archibald Prize for...
10.07.05 | Shock and Awe II
When I first flagged this project a couple of weeks ago I inferred that there would only be more entry on this drawing, so here it is.
LetÃs start with the conceptual part and composition of the drawing. Readers will know that I spend a lot of time thinking (perhaps overly so) about the...
LetÃs start with the conceptual part and composition of the drawing. Readers will know that I spend a lot of time thinking (perhaps overly so) about the...
17.05.05 | Shock and Awe
Now that my Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) have finally been revealed (unlike the "real" things) it's time to get off my big behind and start drawing.
I have to admit it's taken me a while to get back into the drawing groove. Yes, I've participated in Illustration Friday on an ad hoc...
I have to admit it's taken me a while to get back into the drawing groove. Yes, I've participated in Illustration Friday on an ad hoc...
06.12.04 | Not quite New York
Crikey, I really am a slacker!!!! How embarassing, 2+ months between entries (not counting Illustration Friday), even more embarassing knowing that the many people who participated in Sketchcrawl produced more individually in one day than my total output over the past 2 months....
20.09.04 | That was the month that was
Yep, time for another update - well it 's only a month between entries! Firstly, I went to Sydney a couple of times during the break between entries, predominantly to transport, then view and then collect Noir from the Willoughby City Art Prize. I took the time on my last journey to Sin...
13.08.04 | Will he? Willoughby!
Hot off the press (or the internet equivalent) it's official Noir has been selected as a finalist in the Willoughby City Art Prize (2D drawing and printmaking section).
After a few recent rejections, I'm thrilled to bits - I'm particularly pleased because from what I can make out from...
14.07.04 | Where art thou creativity?
At last I feel motivated to draw again. The past two weeks have been a real struggle, no motivation at all to pick up a pencil and put graphite on paper. Still I think I've worked my way through the creative block - looking at other people's websites has helped immensely (the world is...
28.06.04 | Moving on
Yep, I'm over it, "it" being the rejection of not making the cut for the Waterhouse. In some part it's pretty easy to move on, because I'm happy with drawing (the best drawing of a snail on the web...lol). I've even used it as one of three representative examples of my style for a last...
03.06.04 | Waiting for Godot
It is now about a week and a half since I mailed my entry to the Waterhouse Natural History Art Prize. With each passing day I get more and more nervous as to whether I will be in or out.
Like most art competitions these days initial judging is from photos (thanks to M. for producing a...
Like most art competitions these days initial judging is from photos (thanks to M. for producing a...
23.04.04 | Noir: Dark As Night - Thick As Thieves
I recently went through a phase where all I was interested in drawing were subjects with a noir-ish theme. I always enjoyed the film genre - no doubt aided by my undergraduate study that compelled us for a whole year to watch a stack of old B&W movies (mainly noir classics such as The Big...
23.04.04 | Pear
Another drawing added - yay. Currently on a big roll in getting more drawings up. This one was nice and simple - a pear, I have no idea why I ended up drawing it on a concrete shelf. Perhaps it was an experiment in abstract minimalism.
19.04.04 | Snail’s Pace
The weekend was spent playing with the kids, drawing, punting and packing boxes for an imminent move to our new house. Yep in 2 weeks time we'll be in our own home, 'though I wouldn't say we'll be settled beacuse after all the packing comes all the unpacking.
I did have the opportunity...
I did have the opportunity...
05.04.04 | Waterhouse Woes
What's in a name? In a strange twist of fate much of the weekend was taken up by trying to outwit the Waterhouse name.
Firstly, on the punt (Golden Slipper day) trying to back horses not trained by Gai Waterhouse was only partially successful. To be truthful an accidental bet on a...
Firstly, on the punt (Golden Slipper day) trying to back horses not trained by Gai Waterhouse was only partially successful. To be truthful an accidental bet on a...
18.03.04 | Wild Nights
The price for losing a bet was that the winner could choose a subject and the loser had to either respectively draw or photograph that subject. Here I was thinking I'd get something easy such as a landmark, famous person etc, instead I was given an Emily Dickinson poem Wild Nights to...
18.03.04 | Icons
This started off as a reaction to a bulletin board discussion at work re: the death of Don Bradman. The topics involved: whether he was the greatest cricketer that ever lived (no way!), the greatest batsman (no doubt!), what type of person he was (not a team player by many accounts), and...
17.03.04 | Two drawings added
Yes, it's taken some time but the gallery is now expanding with the addition of two drawings. Not before time I hear you say. I promise I'll be more regular with updates in the future (fingers crossed). Notes on the respective two drawings can be viewed under the separate entries Icons...