mushrooms and moth

Hello again,
Well the year has gone by in a chaos of house renovations, work and family upheaval. On the art front it was one of the least productive years I've had in ages and while I always feel frustrated when I cant work on my art projects and feel that my arts career is slipping away from me I have to remind myself of all the things we achieved this year. We got so many other things done that we have been putting off for ages. We renovated most of our house and did lots of it ourselves. And other big things have been happening too.

With that said I am soooooooooooo happy to be able to get stuck back into some studio work and finish projects started long ago. Currently I only have half my studio back, the other side is still full of boxes of stuff . I've eased back into it by experimenting with some new screen-printing designs and some found object jewellery and a couple of little watercolour portraits of pretty goth ladies from Instagram . More to come soon.

                                     Original drawing

Screen printed in grey on a bleached black t-shirt.

My mini portrait of @manicmoth and her original picture below. I was kind of going for a sorceress from a 1920s movie vibe.

gostly print

New design for screen printing.  I find it hard to get my head around colouring in black what I want to print white. Lots of concentration needed.

 Gost  is taken from my watercolour painting "lonly mountain passs" from last year.

Twist and grow

Some more treespiration today. All these betties are from northern Australia, 

 

 

masking fluid disaster 2

I spent last weekend ruining my latest painting. I had a bad experience with a new type of masking fluid called "Molotow". The stuff comes in a pen and was super easy to apply and I was initially very pleased. You might be able to see the blue dots on the trees. They were supposed to eventually be highlights but the stupid stuff wont come off and now the painting is ruined with blue goo.
The packaging did warn not to leave it on for more than two days but I tried to remove it on the next day and it just smeared. I had a similar thing happen with regular masking fluid once before but in that instance I had left it on for over a week so that was my own fault. Last time I did eventually get the regular masking fluid off by putting the painting in the freezer, but this stuff seems to have partially soaked into the paper, I cant even scratch it off with the edge of my palate knife. I was really likening the colours on this piece too.
 Dam you Molotow.

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Memory Dream Myth

 

Every year or so, the art shop where I work on Saturdays has a group show. This year it was titled "Memory dream myth". I did not get the big painting I was working on for the show finished in time however it was a really fun show to be a part of from start to finish. The opening night was great and three of my works found new homes.

 

My pictures "Lily in Bialowieza" above and "Dragon" below.

 

Ingrids big ceramic garden flower lady.

 

Phthalo haze

New paintings from the last few month. I seem to be lost in a dream vision of phthalo blue, green and purple.

 

 "Birth" acrylic on canvas.

 "Butterfly daze" watercolor on Arches paper.

"ice flowers" watercolor on Fabriano paper.

Bialowieza

I cant quite decide if I'm finished with this watercolor piece or not. I am aware that I still  try to paint with watercolors like I would with acrylics, so I don't  want to overwork it. Maybe a few more delicate touches on the hair and a couple more reflections on the water. This is based on a picture of the Bialowieza forest in Poland. The forest is one of the last remnants of old growth lowland forest left in Europe and one of the places I most want to visit. Once the forest covered most of Europe and was know as the "Hercynian forest" or "Hercynia silva" in Latin, which is the what this blog is named after.

In other news, I have also been screen printing some bags and tshirts. I love the soft misty effects I got by using watery washes of dye. I have some tops already listed on etsy and more are on the way.
 https://www.etsy.com/au/shop/styx2stars