Wooden Cliffs

The surfing and art for the day are presented in this still-life.

A righthander is peeling down the rugged shore.
I am a knob on a harp taking off at the end of the point.

The cliffs comprise some of the wood-carvings I've mentioned previously.
They still need to be scraped and sanded and coated.

Sculpting groove over. Time for some drawing and painting.
I'll be doing a lot of details/abstracts in Photoshop too.

The Pragmatic Town

I don't know what time Blogger is on but the time here is 1 pm Thursday October 30.

Last night I did the tutoring of art thing I do at a local community college. It is my favourite thing to do besides surfing. Coaching four mature women to do more and become more confident in their art making. Sometimes the class has had 13 members, but four is good, it presents the opportunity to apply a more customised service.

I'd like to be doing much more tutoring in art. However Warrnambool has an oversupply of Fine Art graduates and a general lack of interest in doing art as a populace. The mindset is largely rural and pragmatic, and the coast is inspirational to the artist.

The above picture was taken at Armstrong bay at one of the Merri River openings. What I like about it is the timeless beauty. No houses or people clothed in a manner that says 2008. There are many cliffs, coves, beaches, without even a footprint in the sand not far from Warrnambool. No signs, telephone wires, antennas, and certainly no houses perched and peering into what might have been a moment of timeless consciousness.

No car noise, just the birds and the rythmic rumble of waves.

Lost in a Groove

No surf. Played backyard cricket.

Sculpted all day and night. Chiselling, rasping, scraping, sanding.
Hands are blistered and sore. The whirlwind of a groove.
I know I couldn't be bothered sculpting last week. I'm scraping in my head as I write this.

The other day it was oil pastel, 2 or 3 days of intense concentration. Abstract, ochre pallette, figures and landscapes.
Then comes a shift of sorts, a distraction or a diversion. A shifting of brain, a changing of persona, to accommodate the new intrusion. Maybe it is from those I love and very welcome, or from work or a job to do. Either way the intrusion is neccessary. However, momentum may also be lost

I would love to get more lost more often in such grooves, and for much longer too.
Sustained bursts can generate a more intense and rigorous result. Then its back to life.

The above picture was done about 10 years ago. The higly detailed allegorical piece, also containing narritives of green activism, was, of course, done in a burst. I havn't done anything like it since.

Redgum boogie

Not worth surfing today. Maybe Thursday. Surfline says so anyway.

Just did lots of sanding today on the redgum sculptures and they'll be ready for a photo soon.

Heres a scan of a still-life i did in watercolour-pencil. Number nine of fourteen. August 2005.
The aim at the time was to do a drawing a day and be disciplined and at my very cleverest.
Ive been trying since that series to develope a personal style of abstraction or line & shape.
Gettin there.

Flatness, Murals, and Not Ranting

Its offshore but flat today, which is good cos i had a balmy bbq, music & lotsa beer eve yesterday.

The art component is a review of doing a coupla murals for my sons kinder.
Ive just finished them, 99.9% anyway, though I still have to put them up. Used exterior house paint on cement sheeting.
Mez helped with the dinosaur theme piece. Sometimes I was just embellishing the shapes he created. It wouldn't have occurred to me to have a giant wave hitting his T-Rex on the nose.
We were painting and I left him in the studio for five mins while on the blower, only to come back to 'lava' sprayed/spewed/dripping all over the land.
The piece was turning abstract expressionist which looked great, however I made the decision to restrict the lava to a trickle with some fast rubbing/wiping off of the rampant red.
The dinosaurs and landscape are derived from a child's view, so its devoid of scientific credibility, and this only made the pleasure of painting increase.
The scene is looking east of Warrnambool and the river is the Hopkins.
I also did a second similar size mural in a Faery theme.

Wow, the rant component of my last post, it appears, has generated a response. Cheers, Pat. Um, I suppose I now respond with a comment to the comment on the subjects raised, in a comment box, so its there.

I've just deleted another long rant and decided not to, except that from now on my blog is about surfing and art and any political, sexual or religious views are in the context of art and surfing.

Rips, Redgum, and a Rant

Japs was a bit over-ripped this mornin'. Its nice to have a gutter to zip out the back on, but it was also messin' with the face.
Still, got a few 'rippers'. The above pic is a view east from Japs, which is a reasonably reliable beachy with a bit of punch.

Have been finishin' about 6 or 7 redgum sculptures, varying in size from a stubby to a lifesize figure. I'd like to share a tip from an indigenous mate who got it from his mob in the action of making artifacts, boomerangs and spears, etc: When the object is shaped but still rough, get some broken glass, brown is best, and scrape the object smooth. Its a bit haphazard finding the right kind of edge, but it works. I use the glass offcuts from pic-framing and cut them into a manageable size, deliberately making curves as well.

Well, there's a little surf & art update.

Hmm, lookin' at the last post, I mentioned in a round about way the act of not flying with the higher common denominator, which I suppose is a classic 'Lefty' point of view. Indeed, I am annoyed by the whole rat-race mentality, the cunning of those who wish to accrue more material wealth at the expense of others, nations who exploit the less well positioned just cos they can.
I'm waiting for the rule of 'what-goes-around....' to cause nations like the USA to implode, Australia etc too. Its only fair.
Someone said 'the meek shall inherit the earth'. Empires come and go, typically by blind greed, eating themself.

Wow, didn't know ranting could be so fun!

ABI, Draw Club, & Surfing

I suppose a blog is a diary of sorts so im gonna use that as an entry point to get going.
As well as art i'd like to include surfing as well.

Well, this morning i sat down with an ABI (acquired brain injury) group to work through the steps to produce the graphic art for a DVD they'd made with a local film-maker.
One of the women asked me to slow down. I ended up slowing everything down, timeline the lot. The lesson was to work to the slowest in the group rather than get carried along with a couple of the faster blokes.
Gee, while we are on lessons, after watching the DVD and a couple of others on the same subject, a glaring statistic struck me. Most of those with an ABI were involved in car accidents. Slow down and take care everyone, please.

Last night I attended another round of 'Draw Club'. It consists of sitting down in a mate's studio with a handful of other drawing devotees. A couple of beers helps the banter and daring to draw each others portraits. Often there's a still life in the middle too.
It is the next best thing to surfing.

Yesterday I had a wonderful surf with the break to myself. As I type, I notice out the window that the wind has died down and its time to go you know what.

Gee, What Now?

Now that I have a blog I suppose I'd better use it.

I don't really have much to say of consequence, but then that hasn't stopped millions of people who blog regularly. I once found a blogsite that had the greatest erotic art collection I've ever seen, and maybe I could get that theme going...maybe not, perhaps I'll stick to what I know, plain old art, with smatterings of opinionated ranting on politics etc.

hmm, decision made. Its about art. That way I can do a bit of shameless self-promotion and I can pretend I'm working while bangin away here.

The above pic was sketched onsite at Hopkins Little Cove about a month ago. A seal was frolicking and it inspired the fun line use.