Please click the images for a better view
Soft pastel portrait of an old man 11" x 16" with the main intention to be trying to capture the character in his weathered face and eyes. Older people provide the artist with so much potential a fascination.
A couple of wombat scratchboards, the cute baby and the still relatively cute adult
Borneo Orangutan. These guys are in serious trouble in the wild with loss of habitat. Not long left for them unless we do something drastic. So I thought I'd have a go at one (well another, since orangutans are a particular favourite of mine) but this time in mixed media. I've used white scratchboard with coloured pencils, watercolours, fibretipped pens and of course scratches 5" x 7". The male Borneos are the ones with the wide cheek flaps.
In Egypt, we went on the obligatory camel ride. This guy was the leader and his helpers were all kids, except for the bloke with the big gun. We kept clear of him - he didn't look friendly. Our leader was fine though and sure was interesting looking.
This was inspired by a guy who made it into the 'Darwin Awards', awarded to people who find strange, unique and usually stupid ways to die. The following quote shows that this guys was a bit unlucky but he was also certainly a bit too conscientious.
PADERBORN, GERMANY - Overzealous zookeeper Friedrich Riesfeldt fed his constipated elephant Stefan 22 doses of animal laxative and more than a bushel of berries, figs and prunes before the plugged-up pachyderm finally let fly - and suffocated the keeper under 200 pounds of elephant dung ! Investigators say the ill-fated Friedrich, 46, was attempting to give the ailing elephant an olive oil enema when the relieved beast unloaded on him like a dump truck full of mud. "The sheer force of the elephant's unexpected defecation knocked Mr. Riesfeldt to the ground, where he struck his head on a rock and lay unconscious as the elephant continued to evacuate his bowels on top of him," said flabbergasted Paderborn police detective Erik Dern. "With no one there to help him, he lay under all that dung for at least an hour before a watchman came along, and during that time he suffocated. It seems to be just one of those freak accidents that happen every now and then," said Dern.
Bearing this in mind, I assume what you see in my picture is the last view he saw and given the angle he would have seen it from, I've titled it "The end of the world is High"
During a trip to Malawi, we went to a village in the middle of nowhere. It was called Chilicoti, close to the Mozambique border. You could have walked across the border because it was so remote that there weren't any fences or border guards, only fields of maize and wild animals. The chief takes the name of the village so he became Chief Chilicoti. His wife was therefore Mrs Chilicoti to us. On the day we were there, she was sick, but she mustered enough strength to stand and pose for a photograph. Years later, she's still going strong and is still the chief's wife. Great people!
We met this guy in Egypt, at the temple complex of Karnak. He's one of those guards who, when no one is looking, will show you all the places no one else will show you (yeah yeah) and then ask you for money, and that's when you realise you've been had. He was better than the others though. He showed us around, posed for photos with the kids and then happily slunk off into the distance. His face was so full of character and so weather beaten from a lifetime of exposure to the Egyptian sun. I'm not normally a portrait artist but I enjoyed doing this guy so much that I may pursue it more. Click for a larger image
Tasmanian Devil, miniature scratchboard
Click image to see it actual size.
These are the world's largest carnivorous marsupials, but they're still quite small. There aren't many carnivorous marsupials to compete with. They're in a bit of trouble at the moment with a form of facial cancer that can be spread by biting, something they do quite a bit of, so let's hope that this can be solved.
A couple of pieces that were originally joined, but have now become separate. I really messed up. We went away for Easter and I thought I'd take this piece to work on. I didn't pack my portfolio but I put the piece nicely wedged between some sheets in a place in the car where it wouldn't move. We got there ok and I spent quite a few hours working on it. When we came home, I confidently put it in the car as before, but on arriving home, I discovered that luggage had moved. The piece had been bent in half!! Being clayboard, it had cracked where it had bent and so I tried to repair it. After lots of goes, I finally settled on spraying affected areas with matt black aerosol paint. This was a total disaster and I was forced to cut it in half and get two pieces for the price of one.
Sketching time again, a couple of orangutans in done 30 minutes each. I'm pretty certain regular sketching is a huge benefit. It trains you to work fast and accurately and it also helps you to build up a bit of a muscle memory and a memory of animal anatomy. It helps you with animal gestures and action. There are no downsides to sketching.
Click images for enlargements
Here's something different for me, a 'scratchboard and gel pen' of a beetle. The gel pens were used to created the shiny wing covers and comprise removing the black ink and then coating in gold gel, with purple, red, blue, green and black stippled over the top, and silver gel to create the highlights. 5.5" x 4". Click image for enlargement
"Getting to know You" Pastels on blue Colourfix 16" x 11"
I find elephants fascinating. Like any kid who grew up in East Africa, I've always been touched by elephants. We used to go on safari regularly and saw many elephants. These were the days when you could see them out in the bush without having to go to a National Park. Areas like that do actually still exist, but it would only be a tiny percentage of what once was. Nowadays, if you want to see elephants, you go to a zoo or a park. Those were amazing times for a kid and they instilled in me a great love of animals of all kinds.
Here's another elephant, Coloured Pencil on black sanded paper, 3.5" x 5"A little different for me using coloured pencils. Something I wanted to try to see what kind of effect I could achieve.
Black and White All Over 5" x 4" miniature scratchboard In this piece, I used the three heads as compositional elements but I didn't want any complete heads, to highlight the confusion a predator must feel when trying to work out which zebra to attack. No wonder they are so successful with their camouflage, which works just as well when they are alone in tall grass.
A quick glance down this page would show that most of my work is with African animals, not surprising considering I grew up there. This time however, I thought I'd have a go at a North American Grizzly bear, scratchboard, 16" x 12". It's quite amazing what colours you find in the fur of a grizzly if you look closely enough
Zebra and ticks, scratchboard, miniature 3.75" x 5". The natural world is not always pretty and here's a reminder that the most wonderful zebra carries a host of little nasties along for the ride, in this case, a couple of ticks. I know all about tick fever!!
Chimp in scratchboard, miniature 3.5" x 5" I guess he's got something stuck between his teeth. He certainly was a cute little fellow.
Wedgetailed Eagle at Glen Helen Gorge, near Alice Springs,Something different for me, a combination of pen and ink and digital. The black areas were drawn with gel pens and the water with coloured gel pens. I then scanned it into a computer and finished the rest by painting with the mouse using a program called Gimp.
Pastel on black velour, 16" x 12". Giant Tortoises and Ladybird, "Who's lunch is it?" This was a hard one. I chose black velour to add pastels too and it really soaks up the colour. I think the result was quite nice. It's two of the Giant Tortoises in the Adelaide Zoo which I saw. There's always flies buzzing around, but I used some artistic license to add the ladybird instead to be the colour focal point.
Horse with horseflies, miniature. The clickable version is shown at lifesize. Horses are beautiful but they attract their fair share of flies and if I want to keep it real, I need to show those flies
Vicky, Bornean Orangutan. Ok, some might not call her gorgeous, but I think she is. She's the resident matriarch in Blackpool Zoo. She posed nicely for me and 'smiled' a few times. It looked like a grimace or a warning to me, but the keeper assured me it was her smile. I won't argue.
Dung beetle I saw this in Kenya. It's an odd subject, but that's what I like, odd things! They are one of the world's great environmentalists, making perfect use of elephant dung and returning all those juicy nutrients to the ground.
Back to the pencils. I came across these banded mongooses (or mongeese if you wish) in Singapore Zoo and had to have a go at them. They were really interested in something, probably the stupid tourists chattering away.
Crowned Crane. This is one of my favourite scratchboards that I've done. It's also one of my favourite birds, a stately elegant thing that is paradoxically almost comical to watch. SOLD at the Camberwell Art Show, Melbourne 2008
Lion's Eye I worked really hard on the composition of the following scratchboards. I used the rule of thirds, where focal points (in these cases the eyes) are a third of the way into the picture and a third of the way up or down too. And I used the same rule for the reflection in the eye of the first one too. It all hopefully adds up to a pleasing effect.
"Royal Dawn" I was really taken by this pair of lions, looking as if they are about to embark on a day's hunting. The sun's just rising and it's time to do some work.
"Golden Orb Weaver Spider" Well, I hope this one doesn't creep people out too much. I don't have any phobias about things like spiders but I sometimes forget that other people do. I was reminded of this when I used this as my 'Myspace' image and all of a sudden I had all these messages from people to get rid of it as it now appeared on their 'Myspace' pages too. I got rid of it, but I find all animals fascinating, and that includes spiders. This was one we saw camping near Alice Springs.
Rainbow LorikeetA while ago, I painted a rainbow lorikeet in pastels on a cheap paper. I tried my best but it looked lousy. The saying "A poor workman blames his tools" is only partly true. Even Eric Clapton would sound lousy on an out of tune guitar. Now, I hardly compare myself to Eric Clapton, but painting on lousy paper is doomed from the start. I just got around to trying the same picture on colourfix sanded paper and am much happier with the result. I think it's important to at least give yourself a decent chance by working with good materials.
Red tailed hawk's eye. I'm really trying to get that sinking look of a pupil that is deep in the eye, but that you know is covered with a reflective cornea. The colours that seem to suit this purpose are a combination of black and pthalo blue. Their coolness seems to help it sink deep into the eye.
Gibbon
I'm trying out my black velour again. This is a lovely surface to use but it's hard to get the colours to really sing out as they sink so much into the black nap. On the wall in indirect light, it looks very muted, almost as if there's not much of a picture there at all, but if you aim a light at it, it stands out quite well. Could this be a drawback or a selling point?
Warthogs
Titled "One day you too can look like me". At my last art show, I got a commission to paint a warthog. They are so ugly they are beautiful so I decided to paint a youngster looking at the adult, perhaps contemplating the changes it'll make, a bit like the opposite of a butterfly
I've just finished this piece, meerkats in soft pastels on colourfix paper. It's to be titled "I'll look after You". The meerkat to the left is the dominant 'protector' of the group. Maybe there's a snake, or an eagle close by. Seems like some members of the group are nervous. It's 400 x 300 (16" x 12")
I've been using Art Spectrum Colourfix paper and soft pastels almost exclusively recently, but I've just decided to branch out a bit. Some of my gel pen drawings can be seen on the drawings and sketches page and I've also tried my pastels on a surface called velour, which is like suede material sided paper. This is an interesting support to use and I've just completed the following elephant's eye
Watching Over, soft pastels on colourfix. I guess this one can be thought of as two views of the same tiger, or as I intended, one tiger watching over the other one. Tigers are great and in this modern world, they really need watching over because there aren't many left at all.
Gerenuks, soft pastels on colourfix. These are odd animals. The are somewhere between a giraffe and an antelope. Well, they are an antilope but they've adapted to conditions and are able to browse where the competition is less fierce. With their long necks they can reach branches that other antelope can't by getting up on their hind feet and reaching out with their necks. They also don't need to drink, deriving all the moisture they need from their diet. As such, they aren't seen as often as other antelope as they don't need to congregate round waterholes which is useful, especially in hard times. This painting is actually of one individual from two angles. We saw this one in Amboseli National Park in Kenya.
The Shire King (pronounced Shirrey). We took a trip on the Shire River in Malawi, a riverthat feeds the massive Lake Malawi. If you can remember the old Tarzan movies where everytime someone fell in the water you saw loads of crocodiles and hippos and laughed thinking "Yeah, sure thing" at the amount of animals they would have you believe are there - well this place changed my mind. In one two hour boat trip, we would have seen at least 200 hippos and 100 crocodiles. This old guy was one of the hippos we saw that day. Most were in family groups but he was off on his own.
Gorillas. Just testing different surfaces, colourfix which is a sanded surface, and velour which is like curtain material on paper. One of my gorillas has gone a little more psychedelic than the other. The colourful one is on the colourfix sanded surface.
Last One Standing. Here we have a wildebeest. They're the ones you see on documentaries that migrate through the Serengeti in their hundreds of thousands. This one is on his own. It's chucking it down in one of those typically African downpours that rarely happen but when they do - they really do!! Normally, plains animals turn their backs to the driving wind and rain but this one's turned the other way in a sort of defiant statement, possibly relishing the change in weather from dusty heat to the promise of greener pastures.
I believe in sketching. It sharpens your eye, builds up hand eye coordination, builds up memory both in your muscles and in your head for the subject you are sketching, and it's fun. Here's a montage of some of my sketches. Some are more developed than others and could be classed more as drawings than sketches.
