Paper Wasps, and Term 2 news

Hard to believe it is almost April, and Term 1 is winding down - only another week of classes. We have been doing some fun projects over the past 8 weeks, ranging from hand studies, to working on toned paper and imaginative insect drawings in color pencil. It has been quite varied and a lot of fun.

Term 2 will be returning to color pencil again. I have a few different projects in mind. Using subjects relating to creatures, still life (including botanicals) and imaginative creations students will learn and explore color pencil techniques through workshopped demonstrations and exercises. Some photographic references will be supplied or else still life materials required by the student, but other exercises will be purely imaginative. Although this class is based in realism, students are encouraged to develop and explore their own particular style and subjects through the medium of drawing.

The first project will be looking at combining water soluble color pencil washes with waxed pencil overdrawing in a nature study work. We will look at the ever-popular Blue Wren - I will supply images to work from.

If you are interested in coming to Term 1, please contact the Mentone Mordialloc Art Group MMAG - sessions run on Thursdays, 1.30 to 3.30, and 7.30 to 9.30pm. Or the Victorian Artist Society VAS, Monday evenings 4 to 6.30pm.

'Paper Wasps' by Linda Weil, 2023.
In class project, Term 1 - Imaginative Insects.
The Brief: Using reference material sourced by the student, create a drawing with related background using insects as the theme in an imaginative way.
My work, 'Paper Wasps' turns the insects into mechanical beasties, with a cut-paper background. The paper beneath the stencil cut out is Stonehenge, beige tone.
Lana Bristol paper 250gsm, Staedtler karat color pencils and Staedtler graphite pencils.

Further Exhibition Information

After a busy few days finalizing and prepping, I took the 4.5 hour drive up to Port Fairy, delivered the works, stayed the night and then drove home the next day. Jo from Blarney has hung all the works in a double hang format, and it looks good! The masks are in a glass case, but I don't have an image to show... you will have to go see them in person.

And what better time than the next few weeks - the Port Fairy Folk Festival happens this long weekend, then we have school hols and Easter and finally ANZAC weekend. So much to see and do along the Great Ocean Road, and in Port Fairy. 

Inspired by Alan Garner

I am delighted to announce that my exhibition 'Inspired by Garner' will be opening early, on March 10 and extending until late April. It is exciting to have this long show that will run during the International Folk Festival and over Easter, School Holidays and the ANZAC weekend. I hope some of you can come visit the works during the exhibition.

I was introduced late in life to the wonderfully imaginative works of Alan Garner OBE, FRSL. Although as a child I read every fantasy, fable, myth and folklore book to be found in my local library, Garner's works never made it to the shelves in Campbell, California. In 2022, Keith Lawrence from Tacit Gallery in Collingwood recommended the latest Garner work to me, Treacle Walker.

This book began a deep dive into the writings of Alan Garner and since then I have been immersed in these creative, quixotic and magical worlds. His beautiful prose brought to me visions that were begging to be drawn, and Blarney Books and Art in Port Fairy encouraged me to create an exhibition based on some of my best loved of these stories.

Each drawing in this exhibition is my reaction to a scene or a line from one of his books. Using primarily graphite pencil with touches of wash or color pencil, I have tried to put on paper something of the characters and scenes my mind's eye envisioned while reading these tales. Just for fun, I have also created a few 3D masks of some of the remarkable critters I discovered in these writings.

Please come and enjoy the exhibition - I hope it brings back some memories of reading these stories when you were young, or else introduces you to Alan Garner and encourages you to seek out his works Trust me, you will enjoy!

Tiny Dancer

Playing around with small sculptures is fun and rewarding! This last week I won Second Prize in the Sculpture section at the VAS Summer Exhibition with my little wire and pencil shaving work 'Dancer Écarté'. What a lovely surprise!

The exhibition continues over this week and finishes on the 27th of February. There are some really good pieces on show, so if you are in Melbourne over the next few days drop in and have a look at the show. It is well worth the visit.

'Dancer Écarté': Brass and Aluminum wire, pencil shavings on treated pine wood slab. 19cm high.
©Linda Weil 2023

'Dancer Écarté' side view

'Dancer Ecarte' rear view

NOTE: Don't miss the upcoming VAS George Hicks Foundation Contemporary show 3 - 20 March, 2023 where my latest work 'Mechi-Mice' will be on show. 

New Garner Mask

Well, today is the last day of our summer holidays. Tomorrow first term classes resume, and I am looking forward to seeing what my fellow artists have been up to over the break. I am hoping to see some sketchbooks from travels, drawings and ideas from what they have seen and maybe a few photos.

Those who follow this blog know I have been working on artworks based on the books of Alan Garner over the past few months. Last week I completed another mask based on his book The Weirdstone of Brisingamen, which was a great read and lots of fun with creepy monsters and noble heroes. 

The subject for this mask is the Svart Alfar of the Morthbrood - sort of goblin-like critters that chase the hero children and generally are pretty scary. He was fun to create! Again, I used the Paper Magiclay with acrylic overpainting and a gloss varnish - same process as used in the earlier Owl Mask a couple of posts ago. Here is the result:

Hope you enjoy! Send me a comment and let me know what you think! See ya'!

All About Soccer

 After the recent FIFA World Cup there is a lot of interest out there in the world's best football game. Looking for the perfect reading gift for a soccer mad child or grandchild? Here is a huge shout out for the newly published book 'All About Soccer' from Capstone Publishing. Perfect for the 5 - 8-year-old range, (but it is a great read for any age!), it is loaded with soccer fun and crazy facts in 32 stunning up-close photo filled pages, written by the children's author,
Colette Weil-Parrinello

'Read All About Soccer' by Colette Weil-Parrinello

Available from: Amazon or Barnes and Noble

Colette is the author of children's books and magazine articles. She is passionate about encouraging kids to read and loves to find subjects that will engage them. She writes adventure, mystery, environmental fiction, non-fiction and magazine articles that will take them on amazing journeys and explore activities around the world.

And she just so happens to be my special and best-loved sister!

Sample double page spread - full of color and action!

Classes 2023

Hope everyone is enjoying their summer break - and maybe doing a drawing or two to show me in a couple of weeks? Classes at Mentone Mordialloc Art Group (MMAG) and The Victorian Artists Society (VAS) resume at the end of this month/start of February. VAS is fully booked, wait list applies but there are still spots open at MMAG.

See you soon!

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©