Hello, it’s me again. Two in one day. It’s as if I am exploding with the drawing. I can’t stop, I won’t stop. I want to draw so many things but there are many lines and too few hours. Got to prioritize. I did this drawing this evening because it was important. I am so close to finishing a large work but I am also little burnt out from an emotional week. Drawings of my daughter are always a joy and I don’t need to think about anything other than my loves when doing this. That’s the priority.
Well I’ve gotten past my little hissy fit and now back into the making of things. Being too much in my head and not just going with the hands isn’t good for The Practice.
So planning my days and things that need to get done and drawing for many. many hours is my life again. It’s good to be driven, have purpose and enjoy what the process.
Kidlet has been joining me for some drawing sessions too, there is nothing sweeter. So I did get a bit distracted from my Big Drawing to do a Small Drawing of her drawing. 😛
There’s a bunny in my studio, drawing a cookie-moon
And I’ll finish up with a self portrait – have a good weekend
Self portrait and house plant sketches
Reawaken
By Lily Mae Martin
56 x 76cm
Ink on paper
2018
I’m pretty pleased with this one, a merging of my two loves – the nude figure and the ( Tasmanian ) landscape.
I had these ideas a few months back, spoke to my model who ( bless her ) came over by my rather last minute request. I had frantically sketched out some poses and I am still learning how to direct people. I had been thinking about Poussin’s drawings and have always enjoyed how the figures seemed to drape.
My lecturer at VCA, Berhnard Sachs – had asked me what art I looked at during one of my tutes when I was an undergrad, I think I replied comic books. He then marched me down to the library and got me looking at the drawings of Poussin and others, he talked to me about chiaroscuro. I now look at everything; performance, the written word, the spoken word, photography, abstract, figurative, printmaking and yes, comics and zines. I think it’s importrant to observe as much as possible, outside of what you make, like to make, wish to make.
So here we are years later. I drape my model in a Poussin-type pose and have her balance on a plastic stool I had purchaed from a bargin shop some years back. I think it worked.
I have been working a lot around and during life happenings, I have quite the collection of small drawings growing that I am very proud of.
Here are a few ~
A Portrait
19 x 14cm
Ink on paper
Lily Mae Martin
2017
I’m in love with this one – the cropping of the image, the fluffiness of the hair and the texture and tones of the skin.
19 x 14cm
Ink on paper
Lily Mae Martin
2017
Fold
19 x 14cm
Ink on paper
Lily Mae Martin
2017
I’ll put together a post of all of the drawings in a couple of months. It has been very interesting cropping the images to make new images from them and working on a smaller, more intimate scale. I am really glad that someone had mentioned the idea of working smaller as I am not sure I would have come to on my own. It’s been really challenging to change things up a bit and it really didn’t work at first! But I kept going and changing things and I am pretty happy with this little series.
I would like to buy myself some more time please. And possibly a vowel.
Is something G said to me a few weeks back and it has been stuck in my mind. Especially over these last few weeks since being back, when so much life things have been happening and I have had to get very creative about getting myself time and space to draw. A lot of the time I worry that I can’t get and never get anything done.
I’ve been scratching away at this drawing for the last almost two weeks – in between looking after a very unwell child ( poor pickle ) and supervising the Kitty and The Chooks..
It’s about A5 in size, so it is very small for me. I’m not too happy about my last drawing – I mean it just feels like it is missing some magic. So I’m busy doing the ground work – the work before the work – right now.
Little one has been ill, and I drew this of her while she was napping.. Only half way through it her temperature spiked and I rushed her to see a doctor. What happened next was only stuff that I never even dreamed of – being a parent is so glamourous – but she came good and that is what really matters.
She drew and cut out mermaids – there are like twenty of them and I am meaning to work out a way to put them altogether to keep them safe. 
It can be maddening how much stuff gets everywhere with little people – but finding her drawings really, really is something special.
So, the chooks. We got these girls about a fortnight ago now, I can’t believe how lucky we are.. They are 4 and 5 years old and are not seen apart. I am home a lot so they get freerange of the yard. They even put themselves to bed – why can’t children be more like chickens!? I kid, I kid..
I’ve had a burst of new ideas for an artwork, but because of Life things I can’t get to it right away, so today I thought I’d draw the girls their portraits.
Meet Sooty & Maude
That’s all from me for now — it is time to shut down and get offline while I experiment and play with ideas.
Seated Nude
By Lily Mae Martin
105 x 75cm
Ink on paper
2016
It may seem a little haphazard, the way I work. My last finished piece that I posted here was a landscape..
…which took me several months to draw ) but I assure you there is a method to the madness!
Sort of.
Such a relief it was, going back to working on the body. I’m trying to work out ways of combining the two – but I am not quite there yet. Though I have heaps of ideas and I am super excited.
Though I love this drawing –
– my girl in a cave, it was an experiment – I don’t think it quite achieved It. ( Whatever It is, I’m still trying to work that out .. )
This worked –
Morning Song, ink on paper, 76 x 56cm , 2016
But I am not sure how to make that a series. That’s ok, I still got some nudes to draw in their negative space and some landscapes without figures to finish and then, hopefully, I have worked out a little bit more in my head and with my hands what it is that I am making.
Still, looking through this post alone with the drawings I have made this year I cannot express to you how excited I am about making the new works and how proud I am of what I have already created. Not meaning to sound up myself or nothing – but if there’s no joy in what you do then what’s the point.
My back aches and the nude is fresh off of the board. Time for a tea and some sleep.
Waterloo State Forest, view from the back
Lily Mae Martin
105 x 75cm
Ink on Paper
Waterloo State Forest, view from the back is an exploration of death and grief through the peripheral. Much of my work focuses on the intimate details of the human body, but watching a loved one die can complicate that work. Death is the process of the body shutting down, and documenting that isn’t always possible or right. Waterloo is the documentary of a life passing, and of the lives around it changing, as it is experienced through the landscape: a hushed forest, pitted with mineshafts; the perpetual shifting of light and shadow; the symbiosis of regrowth and decay.
Grandma’s salt and pepper kitties
Over the last week I have been back in my studio, I begun a drawing that I think will take me about three months to complete. It’s new and something I have wanted to explore for a while, yet wasn’t ready – until now. Also this week I pushed myself back into drawing from life. I have slacked off a bit with that. So I set myself one hour for each of these drawings, and pushed myself to get as much as I could on the page to a timer.
Tetris Kitchen
Elephant ears plant
Table Stuff
Phallic Banana
Seriously – how phallic is it!
Nose Dive
The last one is a drawing of a bird that I found this morning. I was walking past a hospital and saw something fall to the ground from my peripheral – it made a noise when it landed that made me turn. I thought it dead but when I looked closer I saw it’s tiny body breathing, little black eyes blinking at me. So I called wildlife rescue and while giving my location details, so a rescuer could come and collect the bird, it opened it’s beak up super wide and then it just stopped. Last breath. It blinked no more. So I told the lady on the other end and she asked that I could at least move it so people wouldn’t step on it, which I did. And then I drew it. What a strange thing to witness but at least I was there in it’s final moments so it didn’t get stepped on.