Opening at Tacit tonight - The Mechanical Pencil

'Hatchlings'

One of my new series of works from the exhibition 'The Mechanical Pencil'. Opening tonight, October 10 at  6.30pm. Tacit Gallery, 123a Gipps Street, Collingwood, Victoria. All welcome!

Inktober 8 & 9

Channeling Franklin Booth

Inktober 8 - cloud study. I really love Franklin Booth's pen work. This drawing is heavily influnced/copied from some of his works, especially his 'Hills of Holland' piece. I wanted to experiment with his use of line and hatching so created this drawing while looking at 'Hills' and several other of his works. If you do not know his work have a search, it is truely stunning.

Inktober 9 - cloud study. Using what I had learned from the study of Booth's works for Inktober 8, I did my own version using a sepia toned pen. I took this photo of thunderclouds building up over Oakleigh while we were waiting for the lights to change (I was the passenger, so no laws broken!) I am enjoying these cloud studies and I think I will do some more.

The Mechanical Pencil

Exhibition opening this Wednesday, October 10 at Tacit Gallery

Please join me this Wednesday night at Tacit to view my latest body of works. All welcome and would love to see you there!

'Humming Steam'

Inktober 7

Practice page

Experimenting with different ways of making a mark using felt tip art pens.

Inktober 6

A quick sketch of my garden magpie

Copic pen and ink wash

Inktober 5

California Poppies 

It's spring in my garden! California Poppy sketch - 10/15 minutes using Inktense pencil and Copic pen.

Inktober 3 and 4

Inktober 3

Black Bean Tree - seed pod case found on nature strip of neighbours house.

Inktober 4

Pandas sketched from life over the weekend at Adelaid zoo.

Inktober 2

White capped sparrow

From a photo taken on Lincoln City Beach in July. 

Inktober 1

Inktober begins today!

Two posts in one day! But today is the first day of Inktober. What is Inktober? Every October, artists all over the world take on the Inktober drawing challenge by doing one ink drawing a day the entire month.  Started by Jake Parker you can read more about it here: https://inktober.com/   This is my ink work of a Bald Eagle as my first inktober drawing. Not sure if I can keep up to one drawing a day, but will make the attempt!
(even though the dateline above says September, it really IS October 1st today down here in Oz. We come from the future...)

Nature Journals with the Adelaide Botanical Art Group

A weekend in the beautiful Adelaide Botanic Gardens

A page of Australian native flowers from the Gardens

Study of the Bunya tree - zoom in, zoom out. There are several magnificent specimens in the Gardens.

The Adelaide Botanical Art Group invited me back this year to run a 2-day workshop in 'Nature Journaling'  with them in the gardens. The weather was beautiful, two sunny spring days. The garden looked green and lush with many native plants just starting to bloom. The wisteria arch was stunning (did not draw that). All of the group seemed to enjoy the experience and they did some excellent journal pages. Here are two of mine from the the weekend.