Portrait of Dad

This is a small portrait of my Dad painted in oils on a canvas board. Its going to be a gift for him as he has just started drawing again at the grand age of 76 which just goes to prove its never too late! I remember him drawing people and faces when I was just a kid so it makes me so happy to see him finally pick up the pencil again!

Despite its small size, it has been a real struggle, taking me 3 days at my painting class to complete. I have threatened to paint over it (or throw it out the window) so many times! However, thanks to the encouragement of my incredible tutor, I finally finished it today (sigh of relief...). This time I have tried not to get so bogged down with detail (like I normally do...) and focus more on capturing the character and essence of the subject. Thought it would be easy to paint my Dad but it was actually quite difficult!? Still, I think (hope?) I have captured him here...

Portrait of Dad - painted with oils on canvas board (size: 25 x 30cm). The colourful background was created by using all of the leftover paint on my palette. 'Waste not, want not' as my Father used to say!

Illustration Friday: Heights

Step by step she climbed, until finally she reached the top. The height of heights. Top of the world. Dizzy heights? Phoebe had made it! From there she could look down over the top of everything (luckily she wasn't too scared of heights...). Now what? Fly? There was really only one thing left to do...  a perfect swan dive back down to reality. It was way too lonely at the top.

Heights - hand drawn using pencil then digitally painted. Background is a hand painted watercolour that has been tweaked with Photoshop magic. Decided to delete the outline on the hair this time to give it more focus.
Its all about the hair with Phoebe...

Just started work on a series of Phoebe paintings using my IF Phoebe illos as designs. Really like the extreme vertical format which is why my illos have grown a bit taller lately. Hope to post a Phoebe painting soon. x

"23 April 2012" by The RedBubble Homepage | RedBubble

"23 April 2012" by The RedBubble Homepage | RedBubble:

Wow! Excitement! YAY!! Phoebe has made it to the Redbubble homepage!

Shame she's asleep and will miss it though... WAKE UP PHOEBE!! For crying out loud, she picks the worse times to take a nap.

Seriously, check out the link above or go to my RedBubble shop. This has absolutely made my day. x

Phoebe hits Etsy!

Very exciting! You can now finally buy Phoebe prints at my Kazart Gallery Etsy shop - yay!

Kazart Phoebe "Good Book" - super, revised updated swirly version.

There are heaps of different Phoebe 10 x 8" prints available. Each print is on quality archival paper with a white border for easy framing. OR for something different, go to my Redbubble shop where you can buy Phoebe cards and framed prints as well! The Phoebe Good Book design (minus swirl background) is also the only one available on a T-shirt so go check out Redbubble.

Mulch, mulch, leech!

True story... yesterday I decided to attack the huge pile of mulch and finish spreading it in onto the humungous garden. Humungous as in we live on acreage so everything is on a much larger scale than an average suburban garden. Gardens take days to weed - its a big job - and I never seem to have enough time to get it done. Anyway, yesterday I planned to get it finished no matter what, so dressed in my thick denim straight leg (hopefully snake bite proof) jeans, long socks, big leather work gloves, sun hat and thick leather snake bite proof work boots, I set out with a pitch fork, wheel barrow and our dogs. The dogs are my protectors and can suss out any danger lurking about (and deal with it!). Now that its autumn, its much cooler to work in the garden and hopefully there are not as many snakes lurking about. It also hasn't rained for a while so hopefully there are not too many leeches either (they lurk around the wet leaf mulch and rocks in the garden). Yuk! I HATE leeches! Last time I weeded the garden I ended up with two on my legs, so this time I checked regularly. They sneek up over my boots and under the tight ankle of my jeans and move quite quickly... argh! I still love working outside though...

Ready to start work - calm, collected and prepared for anything...

Anyway, all went well, checked for leeches a few times (hundred?) and none (phew...). No other wriggly things were lurking around and I actually finished the whole garden - mulched. I was absolutely drenched with sweat and hurting in places I didn't know I had muscles - shoveling, wheelbarrowing and spreading wet mulch is heavy work. After stopping for a rest, I decided to do a bit of weeding in the vegie garden and happily spent the rest of the afternoon potting around. Away from the mulch and the rocks, I had completely forgotton about checking for leeches...

Yep! This is no exaggeration. By the way, a stick is completely useless in getting a leech off...

Finally I called it a day and went inside to have a shower. Ripped off my socks and my jeans, and then I noticed a big black blob on my ankle... AAHHHHHH!! Girly screams echoed through the house as I ran down stairs and out the back door. "GET THE SALT!" I yelled to my startled husband. I jumped around outside, stick in one hand, salt shaker in the other, yelling at the leech "GET OFF!!" in between little girly screams and dogs jumping about with excitement. Anyway the disgusting little sucker finally dropped off. I then tried to bash it with my boot to kill it. Blood everywhere - it was a massacre. Far out they are hard to kill! There was so much blood I had to wash it away with a bucket of water (seriously...)! Did I mention how much I hate leeches?

illustration Friday: Return

A single tear ran down Phoebe's face as she watched her love disappear into the distance (don't go...). All she could do now was wait (and wait) in hope that her true love would return...

Return - I wanted to go quite vertical with this one. The background is a recycled watercolour that has been manipulated and colourised in photoshop. The actual sketch was hand drawn using 2B pencil. I usually do numerous sketches, refining as I go, until I'm happy with it - then I scan it to be used as an outline in Photoshop, removing the white background and creating layers for each colour, etc.

I had to dig deep for this week's IF topic and as I delved, this quote came floating to the top and then continued to circle around and around in my head:

If you love something set it free,
If it comes back to you, it's yours,
If it doesn't, it never was.

Not sure who wrote it, but it was something my father used to say every time I had a broken heart (which seemed to be quite often...). Back then I was usually too impatient to wait around for too long so Dad would then throw another gem at me:  "Good things come to those who wait."

He must have been so relieved when I finally got married... x

Portrait Workshop

Today I attended my first ever portrait in oils workshop with local artist, Frank Hodgert, as our tutor. It was very exciting to be spending a whole day painting in such an inspiring artist's studio, surrounded by his amazing paintings of landscapes, country buildings and people. I say inspiring but to be honest, his paintings are so amazing that they are almost intimidating to an amateur artist. 12 eager artists (including myself) attended the workshop - it was great to get hands on hints and tips for painting a portrait in oils from such an experienced proficient painter. The best part was there were no interuptions or phonecalls or distractions - just a whole day of painting with other artists doing exactly the same - bliss...

Portrait Workshop - this photo was taken half way through the day - that's my portrait in the foreground, half finished. We used burnt sienna to sketch the face and block in the shaded areas which is why it is looking very reddy brown at this stage. I like red hair so it was tempting to leave as is... 

Amazingly, everyone painted a portrait of the same person using the same techniques which resulted in 13 (including Frank) uniquely different interpretations of both the technique and the subject. Incredible! They all looked fantastic! Not sure if you guessed who the Australian celebrity is but he's very cute (which made painting that much more fun...).

Finished portrait - by the end of the day this is how my portrait looked. Its not perfect, still on a huge learning curve re oil painting but its not too bad(?). Whether it actually looks like him is another question! Funny thing but the mistakes aren't that obvious until you take a photo - now I can see a whole lot of things wrong...

Portrait workshop (end of day) - you can see Frank Hodgert (far left) helping someone with their painting. In the far corner you can just make out his portrait on an easel. He works very quickly and makes everything appear so easy. In the foreground is my finished portrait and a very very messy pallette - amazingly I didn't get any on me although I did drop my brush a few times! 

Hmmm... one day. One day I'm going to have a BIG airy light filled studio with big faces hung all over the walls. Well I do have a studio, but its definitely not big and seems to be slowly shrinking the more artwork I do. Maybe I should knock down a wall...