Gardens as Inspiration.

Artists have long been inspired by gardens and plants. We just have to think about Monet and his beautiful garden Giverny in France, providing a lifetime of inspiration! Van Gogh painted many stunning works; think of Irises, Sunflowers, Pine Trees and Dandelions and his beautiful Almond Blossom. Klimt’s art is filled with flowers and blooming landscapes. Pissarro’s work often featured simple peasant gardens and of course Matisse’s wonderful paper cut out shapes echo back to organic plant shapes. You can see these shapes in his ‘Moroccan Landscape, Acanthus’.

Still our artists use plants and gardens as a source of inspiration. Sophie Munns is a wonderful artist, inspired by the beauty of seeds. I am always impressed with the richness of variety she can achieve using these lovely yet simple shapes. Her use of colour, media and pattern is outstanding and each piece is beautiful. I am waiting to attend one of her workshops as soon as possible!

Heidi Gallery and Gardens in Bullen inspired this hand coloured lino print.

Thanks to Sophie for the use of her lovely pictures on my blog.

Mixed Media Artist Book.

This little concertina artist book was a bit of fun and a bit experimental too. I just felt like trying something different and worked out how to join it all together as I went along.

I used charcoal pencil, acrylic paint, pastel and then gave it a good spray with a varnish fixative. Then joined the pages with little rivets and ties. I’m quite happy with the end result as it unfolds and hangs down.

It’s great to spend some time just playing and trying different things, you never know if it’s going to be a success or not and what does it really matter if it doesn’t work as long as you enjoyed it and you learnt something along the way.

Lino Print Artist Book, finished!

It has taken some time to get this project done. There are quite a lot of processes to go through to create an art work.

This project started with a collection of watercolour pics and sketches for each print. I decided I wanted the pictures to be connected to each other in some way so I had to work out an element to flow through the eight Lino prints. The middle prints worked the best.

Next it was all the carving, two of them I redesigned as I wasn’t happy with them. Then a run of practise prints to check for problems, a little bit of cleaning up of untidy areas.

Finally it was time to print the final pieces which I was very happy with. The prints then sit on the floor for a few days until the ink is dry. Now I have joined them together to make a concertina book. I haven’t as yet worked out what the cover will be, but I want something special. Any suggestions?

I have another artist book on the go but this will be a mixed media piece, quite different, should have some pics for this very soon.

Marvellous Melbourne

Melbourne is a wonderful city with so much to see and do. The gold rush of the 1850s eventually lead to Melbourne becoming the richest city in the world by the 1880s. It grew quickly with immigrants from all over the world, including mine.

Melbourne offers beautiful gardens and parks, excellent sporting venues and events and fabulous arts and cultural exhibitions. There is always something happening and a multitude of great places to eat, every cuisine you can think of, or simply have the best coffee you can imagine.

The National Gallery of Victoria, NGV, always has great exhibitions and at Fed Square you can see stunning home grown art.

Here is our famous Swanston St Train Station, The Arts Centre Spire, Federation Square, Shrine of Remembrance and Southbank on The Yarra River.

Maybe it’s time for a visit!

Printmaking afternoon.

Finally I have finished carving 8 scenes from my trip to Austria and Italy. Featured towns are; Verona, Attersee, Innsbruck, Florence, Durnstein, Lake Garda, Vienna and Salzburg. Each block is 20×20 cm and it has taken a few weeks to carve the set.

Once they are dry I plan to trim the top of each piece and join them together in a particular order so that the images flow from one picture to the next.

I would quite like to add some moments of colour here and there but not quite sure how I will go about that yet. Maybe just one red market umbrella in Salzburg might be enough.