botanical and textile happenings

I've been drawing. Without realising it I've been absorbing the garden and the summer weather resulting in the production of botanical sketches. Which then morphed into a set of three botanical cards printed on post consumer recycled card stock.

And this morning I was able to hear and meet Clara Vuletich speak at Harvest Workroom. Clara's the designer in residence this week at Harvest (visiting Melbourne from London) where she's focusing on the idea of 'local cloth'. She showed us the ideas that she's worked through over the week in both visual and verbal forms. We were also able to hear her talk about her interest in social innovation in textile design. Really fascinating and inspiring stuff! Clara's blog 'love & thrift' can be found here. Enjoy the rest of your stay Clara and thanks Harvest for a fab session!

GOMA & the drawing room

In my travels north I visited the Gallery of Modern Art (GOMA) in Brisbane to see the Matisse exhibition. The show is a large collection of his drawings and prints and while I'm impressed that such an extensive exhibition has made it all the way to Australia, I wasn't all that fussed with it. Maybe I'm not such a Matisse fan?

BUT the best thing by far about going to GOMA to see the Matisse show is the Drawing Room at the end of the exhibition. It's amazing and very beautiful. The clip above gives you an idea of what they've done at GOMA to encourage people to sit down and draw after seeing Matisse's work. Both pen and paper and digital formats were on offer for people to draw with. And there was even a model lounging on a gorgeous sofa for life drawing. Everyone was loving it! It was incredibly inspiring to see so many people in the Drawing Room sitting down and, well, drawing. Kudos to GOMA for organising this.

And if you want to interact with the technology from the Drawing Room at home just click here. You can email it to a friend afterwards if you like.

So maybe just skip through the show if you're not much a Matisse fan like me and hop on into the Drawing Room for some drawing and inspiration and a few moments of real beauty.

risk taking + creativity

How often do you take risks in your creative work? By this I mean do you find yourself mostly working in a way you're comfortable with, same method, same materials, same approach? What does it take for you to step outside your comfort zone? Are you prepared to take big or small risks in your creative work?

When I think about the way I work it's usually in quite a tight, fairly small scale way. I draw and print with quite a bit of control. But I love looking at loose, 'messy' drawings and love prints that are layered and built up in a seemingly uncontrolled (or loosely controlled) way. I try to push myself to work against the way I'm used to, not to try to consciously change my 'style', but more as a way of stepping outside my comfort zone, take a few small risks, experiment, play, see where accidents take me.

It's not easy! It can even feel a bit crazy. But it can be a lot of fun.

When I lived in Kyoto I knew a printmaker who worked in a very tight, controlled way basing his prints on intricate, finely detailed drawings. His prints were incredibly detailed and accurate. He told me he was in awe of another printmaker we both knew who worked in a very loose, organic, experimental way. She would sometimes do wild things like blow torch the surface of her woodblock to get a certain texture, or add chemical substances to the wood and then sandpaper them (or then blow torch them) all in the name of texture. She rarely worked by drawing first. She usually just approached the block and started. Her prints was quite abstract but very, very interesting. I was also in awe of this kind of risk taking. To her it was very natural to work in such a way. She probably didn't even see it as taking risks.

My point is, sometimes it's good to step away from the safe, the known, the familiar patterns of working. Sometimes happy accidents can often follow and new ways of working can open up.

What do you think? How open to risk taking are you?

2011 sketchbook project

Do you know about the wonderful 2011 sketchbook project? When you sign up you're sent a simple moleskin sketchbook which you are to fill (according to your chosen theme) by the deadline [15th January, 2011]. Then, the thousands of sketchbooks submitted will be exhibited at galleries and museums on a tour across the United States. But note: anyone in the world can enter! How cool is that?

This is the part I like: after the tour, all sketchbooks will enter into the permanent collection of The Brooklyn Art Library, where they will be barcoded and available for the public to view. Also, you can opt to digitise your sketchbook so people who can't go to see them on the tour in person can flip through them on the web.

I've just signed up! I love drawing, I love sketchbooks, I love the concept behind this project, and I love Brooklyn.

whiskers

trees with whiskers, edinburgh gardens, fitzroy north, melbourne

Last Sunday I had a drawing date with a friend in the lovely Edinburgh Gardens. We had so much fun sitting there drawing in that gorgeous winter afternoon light. We worked until our hands grew frozen and then wandered up the road to a cafe for hot chocolate and other sweet treats. It was a lovely way to spend the afternoon. We've decided it might be a semi-regular thing and we'll invite anyone we know who would like to come along and draw.

I've been totally drawn into Design for Life. Is anybody else watching this amazing series? French product designer Philippe Starck takes a group of young UK design folk and puts them through a series of exercises in the hope of finding someone who will get to work with him in Paris for 6 months. Thankfully it's not as painful or cheesy as most reality shows of this kind. From a teaching point of view it's absolutely fascinating and everyone at work is talking about it. You can see episode one here. If you're quick eps two and three are here on iview. And there's a good description of the series here.

thunderstorms and camping

We have a long weekend ahead and the weather is playing crazy with us so we can't decide (a group of 4 of us) whether to risk it and go camping or not. I love going up to the Murray River (about 3 and half hours drive) to camp in Barmah State Park. The huge red river gums and the completely awesome river are just wonderful to camp near. The park is full of koalas too so it's very cute to see their furry selves sitting in the trees chewing on gum leaves. Last time we were there one climbed down from a tree and tried to make its way to the river but couldn't work out how to get around our little dome tent (koalas have really bad eyesight). Eventually he made it though (sigh!) and then climbed another tree in front of us to chew leaves with a gorgeous orange sunset as back lighting. It was just incredible to watch.

So we'll make a decision about what to do based on the weather report this afternoon. They're predicting thunderstorms on and off which isn't much fun to camp in.

The image above is a new one of mine: tea stack - original drawing with digital colour.

magic cups and flying teapots

It's bit scary for me to put these images out there in the ether. They're such a departure from what I usually do in my prints (both woodblocks and mixed media prints) but in the name of personal and creative growth I'm throwing them out there, and will accept any constructive criticism. What I liked about doing this print was the colours (thanks darling M :) and the playful idea of magic flying cups and teapots. I loved the idea of them picking up their pretty wings and flying off into the night. He heeeeee!

So here it is with a close up too.

"from little things big things grow" (the waifs and kev carmody)

I'm doing a lot of growing at the moment or at least it feels like a lot of change is going on so I sure hope some kind of growth comes out of it all. We're in the middle of packing as we move in 2 weeks, so it's crazy in our house. Today I found letters I wrote more than 12 years ago! What a purge I've been having. As well as moving to a new house (with a studio * big sigh and smile*), I'm making some changes to my day job so I can work there part-time next year and spend the rest of my week printmaking (belly does flip flops with excitement) AND my birthday is at the end of this coming week and I turn one of those big numbers with a zero at the end of it (a little scared about that but mostly amazed: where have the years flown?). My good friend N, an astrologist, would say it's all about my pluto-square-pluto. I don't know what that really means but I do know this time in my life is all about making changes and decisions that will set me up for the next part. I'm mostly very excited about all of that.

The little tree growing above is a simple ink drawing with splashes of chiyogami paper. I'm still playing with it. This is its first iteration.