Category Archives: Uncategorized

Pens down, feet on the ground

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I was fumbling about in the studio so I put things down and have been out and about. Autumn has been beautiful and I’ve been walking; looking at the birds and enjoying the colour of the leaves changing, watching the clouds and taking in the smoke from all of the burn offs – ’tis the season.


I’ve been reading about colour and thinking about the different was I could utilize them in artworks – all stuff I must have studied once upon a time however it has been a long time! So these thoughts have been informing the way I have been looking at the landscapes I have been trudging around in. It’s pretty amazing.


When I can’t adventure I’ve been weeding in my garden and making plans for what new friends we can grow/ get for our yard.

My Poppet is unwell this evening and I use these moments as a time to do a quick sketch!

Book in a box

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A sketch I did of a very large gum tree has been bought and framed within a sketchbook. It looks like a museum piece! I am very pleased with the result and that it has gone to a very good home.

I’m feeling stuck with work – I am not good at down/ in between time. Think I ought to lay off of myself and take in some life. Much like this kangaroo friend Kidlet and I saw today:

Heart is full, legs are sore

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This week has been full of hiking adventures, science magic, star moon gazing, sleepovers, animals! I hope for a super quite weekend but I love all of this stuff and am enjoying learning new things.

Cabbage water – pH indicator

So I’m too tired for words but the pictures are pretty good.
zzzzzzzz

Painting and wanderings

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A small study of hands. In oils on canvas paper, trying to let the paint speak rather than rendering the heck out of it. The only way I am going to get better at this is I just have to keep going, keep painting, keep challenging myself.

I am feeling inspired and happy. I think happy because kidlet and I cleaned the house and it is very nice to feel good inside a space when you know winter is on its way. Holidays are usually overwhelming, but I’ve said no to things I know will freak me out and we’ve got lots of exciting things planned. I love all sorts of adventures and wanderings – no matter how big or small. Just with my small family and I.

I am making sure that I leave the house each day and that I take my camera with me. That I breathe in the air, deeply, and that I observe the world. That I make time for things that make me happy, animals. Bird watching. Being frightened by a water rat and in turn, frightening it. There’s so much life, and I need that perspective to balance out my cares and worries. Because a lot of it is just .. well.. not important.

I also make sure that each day I do one little or big thing that serves my art. It doesn’t matter if it is a five minute blind contour line drawing, adding some highlights to a painting, drawing or painting for twelve hours straight or just looking over some of my work and thinking about it.

Kitty sleeping.

Just keep going, keep truckin’.

Two new drawings

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I am SO PLEASED with these two – I still don’t have titles yet, I’ll come up with something soon.
They are 56 x 76cm, ink on paper.

I was working on other drawings in the same style but different subjects, however I am not too sure about them, so will sit on them for a little while longer. Working on two images at once is ideal, I think three and four pushed it a little too far for me and I got a little stressed out on the way.
Always learning!

Paint sketches, pen sketches

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Hiiiiiiii there.
I have been excited to post here as it’s been quite the week AND THEN I got a nice big fat rejection. Well, I tried! After a week of a brief but powerful existential crisis, then a break through with my work which felt like it was teetering on the edge of madness, then onto a day of a depression that felt like it was consuming me from inside out and now well I feel deeply exhausted. But human. That’s good, yeah? No. Yes. Maybe. Who can tell.

Anyway I am trying to not get too far ahead of myself and overthink things and think that I understand anything because I don’t. I don’t get it, I don’t think anyone gets it and that’s cool. There’s crumpets and there’s pen and paper and some paint, it’s all good.

I feel motivated to draw and paint and I made some things this week that really felt exciting. I made some shit things too, but that’s par for the course. Though, I am not posting the shit things here 😉

I did some small studies in oil, I have more on the way. I want to keep my painting loose, I always assumed I’d be a photo realist painter – I do not know why. Something to do with the story that we tell ourselves? Anyway I am still deeply, deeply moved by the impressionist paintings. Which I never thought much of until they came to the National Gallery of Victoria when I was working there and the paint just took me to another place. Paintings are not the same in a book or on the screen. But as much as I love paint as a medium I am so so so very bad at being ‘looser’ with it. I always find I over work my paintings, and not in a good way at all. The one time I smashed it I had done many studies – in paint and in drawing so I am going to go back to that.

These are my favourite ones that I made this week, they are all one layer with added highlights on canvas paper.

I also made some blind contour line drawings as well – these are a few of my favs

Some of these ideas I haven been sitting on for a while, I knew I wanted to paint them but haven’t felt like I could paint in a while. Now I am like hey stop thinking thinking thinking and start doing and making and working it all out with your hands. Don’t know where it’ll all go which is absolutely and utterly terrifying but that’s got to be a good thing also, yes? If they don’t work out I can just go back to what I know works, yes? Or burn it all down. Ha.

I am pretty proud of them, hope you like them also and I am onto doing some other studies that I think are lovely too.

So for this week and then next – Keep the faith, take risks, eat crumpets, pat a cat, high five a kidlet and be kind to you.

How the f**k to get everything done in one lifetime

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There is no answer, but it’s something I find myself asking quite a lot of late. Between the meals and the life doing and the costume foraging I feel like I am doing heaps and nothing all at once.

I’m feeling a little – not bored, but that seems to be the closet word I can find to describe how I am feeling about my work of late. It needs more, or less.. I’m just trying to create that space for myself – mentally, physically, all the other ‘llys.. to experiment and research and gather reference. Silly me thinks I know how this all goes, but I have no idea. Just got to go with it.

It’s important to me to be productive, however I have to try and remember that being productive doesn’t always mean finished works. Though I have finished three and have several sketches and another on one the way but NOT THE POINT…. I just gotta keep building and thinking about the little things I can do each day to contribute towards the bigger stuff. Feel like I am at the bottom of a bloody biiiiig pile and it’s very intimidating – I have half the mind to sit down and weep, or maybe curl up for a solid sad nap. Though, I have been here so many times I know that if I don’t keep plodding away I’ll get to a few months down the track and be super cross at myself.

I feel like I could have been many things, but I am here and I am these things. Which I sometimes loose sight of, and more so in the past, by getting caught up in all of these other supposed passions and interests but we only have so much time in one life time… And we’re not even guaranteed any of that time. Man, how do we not scream into the void every day?
Off this is all big stuff that is melting my brain.. Here’s a funny thing I saw recently

Bird race

Time for a cup of tea, I reckon.