Holiday Project completed

 The Owl Mask is done!

I used Liquidtex Professional Acrylics to color the mask then let dry for 3 days and coated with liquid gloss varnish. Pretty pleased with how it turned out.

Holiday project in Paper Magiclay

 Happy Holidays to you all! Hope you have a wonderful and creative season.
What are you up to during the holiday break? Don't let all that food, drink, family and festivities distract you from your art - but don't stress either. Maybe have a play with something fun and new... like this...

Tina gave me a packet of Paper Magiclay to fool around with and I decided to create a mask as part of a series of works based on the books by Alan Garner I am working on for an exhibition at Blarney Books later in the new year. For my first attempt with this Magiclay I decided to create a mask of an owl, referencing the fourth book he wrote: 'The Owl Service'.

The Magiclay is rather different to work with than air dry clay or traditional clay. It has an interesting texture - sort of like nougat without being sticky.  It is a very soft, lightweight molding compound. It is quite elastic to use and not at all tacky, but it adheres well to surfaces that are either wet or dry. Once dry the clay is very lightweight and feels like paper. It is very clean to work with and dries quickly. Because I had a thick blob of it to create the beak of my owl, I let it dry overnight, although the bulk of it felt dry after an hour or so.

Here is the current state of the mask - Starting with a plain white mask (thank you Tina for this as well!), I trimmed the mask of the high forehead and mouth and jaw sections to create a reduced size mask. I began with the beak first using a large blob of the stuff and molding it into shape and sticking it into position. Next, I made some thick 'worms' that I rolled flat to create layers of clay that were progressively placed into position on the mask to start forming the feather structure. Each layer was scored with the clay pin tool. I found that the Magiclay did not quite create finer details as well as air dry or traditional clay and I wasn't totally happy with the effect as it didn't quite look so feathery. But seeing that the Magiclay was so elastic I started to snip the edges with nail scissors which worked a treat! You can't do that with air dry clay! Continuing to build up form and layers of feathers I molded and snipped and layered until I ended up with a reasonable facsimile of an owl face. 

Here is the current state of the mask. I have sealed it with a layer of Golden acrylic gesso and once that is dry, I will start to paint it with acrylics. It is very light and seems quite strong.

So that is my holiday project! Once I have it painted up and sealed with gloss media, I will show you the final result. In the meantime, wishing you all the very best with this vintage card I found by my favorite Australian artist, Lionel Lindsay:

Fragmentation

 The Mosaic Association of Australia and New Zealand is holding a group exhibition at the No Vacancy Gallery here in Melbourne from the 13th - 24th of December.

Mosaic artist and friend, Gayle Whyte, attends my Thursday drawing class and has a work showing titled 'In the Frame'. She has used an interesting mix of materials including bark, beads, glass tiles, smalti and stained glass; this is a clever composition featuring koalas that are being observed. A lovely piece that explores the different textures of the materials to create the mosaic images.

There are many other interesting, clever and innovative artworks in this exhibition. Mosaic is an underrepresented art form, and this show has some very original and imaginative uses of the medium. It would be an exhibition well worth seeing in person, but you can view a catalogue of the works here: Fragmentation

I was lucky enough to receive a tile mosaic from Gayle this Christmas - that of a wonderful blue wren on a red background. These tiles tie onto a trellis or climbing frame and make a real highlight in the garden. 

'Blue Wren' by Gayle Whyte. Smalti glass on tile base. 2022

You can see some other works by Gayle HERE

A Highly Commended!

 Here is a bit of fun - my somewhat silly and whimsical sculpture, 'The Drunken Mermaid' won a Highly Commended award at the VAS Maritime Exhibition this afternoon.

It is to laugh - such a silly little sculpture. It was fun to sculpt, and I enjoyed making it as kitsch as possible using pearlescence paint and touches of gold leaf. I just entered it into the show for a bit of a giggle... and I am still grinning over the recognition. 

The judge was very sweet, and he told me he really wanted to also give me a HC for one of my steampunk maritime drawings, but he only had so many awards to give out, so the Mermaid made the cut in the sculpture section instead. His name is Claude Ciccone, and he does some fabulous boat sculptures from found objects and wonderful tonalist paintings. 

You can see some of his works on Instagram or Blue Thumb

'The Drunken Mermaid' by Linda Weil©