Just a quick one to say that a last minute closing party has been planned for Board at NGV studio. Here are the details, if you're in Melbourne and are looking for something to do in, oh, 4 hours' time!

There was plenty of live painting during this show. I for one would have loved to see Mr Ken Taylor working on his second board last week!

Even though the shape drove me nuts sometimes, I really loved working on this deck. It's one of my favourite pieces to date! (You can still buy the boards here.)

Ok. I'll be back before another two months go by, I promise ;)

I picked each page by how aesthetically pleasing its layout of paragraphs appeared, rather than paying any particular attention to the words...

...and now, having read the top line of each page, I think I could have chosen a little more wisely:

Page 1: "Her son, your grandchild, has been killed outright."

Page 2: "... he felt the heavy doughy feeling of dread in his guts."

and to save the best for last:

Page 3: "... to regurgitate its cropful of rotten carrion for its young."

Those three snippets don't really bring to mind the nicest images for artworks now, do they? I may have to try a bit of crafty obscuring in a few places I think! 

I haven't decided what I'm going to paint on top of them yet, so for now they are taped to my studio wall, fluttering in the breeze, until I figure out what comes next.

{Shock!}  I tidied my studio!

I'm very happy to say that I will be exhibiting in On the Wall again, thanks to Angela and Renee from Leeloo. You can see this collection of A4 artworks, from 28 different Australian artists, at the Leeloo stall at Finders Keepers, from tomorrow night!

I tried something a little different with the artwork for this one. It took a very long time, but here's a shot of how things looked in the very early stages. I was aiming to 'keep things simple,' but it seems I lack all ability to do so. Completely. I'll post more process images, plus the finished piece, once the show is up! 

I may have gotten distracted by redesigning my website rather than posting this final Board pic, but better late than never! (Please take a peek at my new design if you have a chance and let me know if anything looks whacky?!)

I REALLY enjoyed working on this one. I counted up out of curiousity, and this is about my twelfth painting, but, this is the first painting that's felt like it's gone smoothly from start to finish. Usually I'm constantly fixing things, but this one just worked. The short deadline probably helped too, because I didn't have the time to over-analyse every little step - I'm terrible at doing that usually! I should try to force myself to shorter deadlines from now on (HA!).

This guy is one of the kookaburras that's been hanging around outside my studio window lately. He's painted in acrylic. I left some of the blue stripes showing through his belly because I couldn't bare to cover them up completely. I've drawn two kookaburras before (my first 'real' artwork was one!), and since they're one of my favourite birds, they'll no doubt be making plenty of future appearances.

(I had a lot of trouble getting any good photos, but here's an attempt at a close up...)

The Board show is up at NGV Studio in Melbourne for 3 months! From the NVG website:

Board is all about the creativity behind skate culture. Presenting 1970s & 80s skateboards and ephemera from Tony Hallam’s collection alongside decks created for the exhibition by 50 Australian artists, it explores the evolution of board graphics and design. 

I'm hoping to make it down for a visit to check out all the boards while they're still up. You can see some photos of all of them at Just Another Agency's blog here and I spotted some more photos here :)

For now, here are some process of my deck. I enjoyed working on it so much that I'm sad that it's over and gone!

1. Beginning by wasting some decorative masking tape, just because I didn't want to stop and go and buy the proper stuff!  2. Masked stripes and leaf sketches.  3. Matching paint to my studio buddy.  4-5-6.  Leaves and backgrounds in the making.  7. The latest palette solution: clear plastic stuck on the artwork.  8. Hacking in the bird with my favourite dreary art-making weather.  9. More supervision from my night time studio buddy.  10. Wing details.  11. Last-minute finishing of the final details.

Final artwork pic tomorrow!