Little Fish Creations

I am dead tired, but wanted to share today’s creative endeavour with you. I love looking at stylised vegetation in rug design etc, and I’ve been meaning to do some of my own for some time.

We finished watching The Tracker tonight. It is a film set in 1922 – it depicts a police party tracking a fugitive aboriginal. Using an aboriginal tracker, they weave their way through a raw, dry and breathtakingly beautiful landscape. A film of violence (although not depicting violence in the normal way), it is also about revenge, growth into manhood and, most importantly, it reminds us of a not so distant past in my country where aboriginal people were hunted and killed. Where aboriginal people were herded onto ‘missions’. Where children were ripped from their mums and dads and family groups.

On another note, if you sometimes struggle for a way to start being creative then you should check out Keri Smith’s blog Wish Jar Journal. She has posted a pdf of her 100 ideas to aid journal work. It could be a good way to kick start your creativity. I’m going to try it on days when my brain just isn’t in gear and I can’t think of anything worth creating.

nighty night.

As indicated above, the PAPER has arrived. As expected, there is HEAPS of it. As feared, the Dutch Etching Paper is not as smooth as I need to pick the detail on my monoprinting plates. I’m gonna try the Hahnemuhle when I next monoprint. It is such a soft paper and I think it might press nicely into the plate, even though it is rough textured.

The roll of drawing paper is monumental, almost as tall as me and 10m long! I have big plans for this baby, but after ClaArProMo I think. I want to do BIG charcoal drawings and I expect they will take me a considerable time to complete.

The new ink I bought (graphics brand?) is so much better than the Speedball brand I was previously using, it gives much better coverage of the plate because (I suspect) it has more pigment.

And check this out, 36 brushes for $10.

They are exactly the same brushes we used at school (although the last formal art education I encounted was in grade 7, so it is really no recommendation), they will be my ‘knockabout’ brushes, to be used and abused, but not for any sort of detailed work I imagine.

I may have difficulty producing art tommorow night, we are having friends over for dinner. The house is a mess. I’m too tired to clean tonight, so I’ll have to do it before work tommorow.

In an effort to bring more colour to ClaArProMo I cracked open the watercolour for the first time in ages 🙂

And I think this brings me a third of the way there

We won our second game of touch footy last night. We thought we would struggle against the team we played, but we really have it together early on this season. It helps that most of us know the rules (unlike this time last year LOL). Riscy sprained his ankle though, so I spent my time last night packaging ice into little ziploc bags and keeping Riscy’s tootsies warm whilst we chilled his ankle.

The doctor was quite impressed this morning and could tell we had been vigilant with the ice 🙂 Riscy has the rest of the week off work since he is hobbling around on crutches.

Tonight was very exciting for Australians as we qualified for the World Cup. For the first time in 31 years. It went all the way to a very tense penalty shoot out. The graduate who works for me was at the game which is pretty cool as the tickets were enormously hard to get.

I don’t like the above piece, it was good to practice some techniques out, but it is about nothing, of nothing and doesn’t work for me at all. But, since I’m 7 pieces behind my goal, I can no longer throw the shit away, I either have to produce art that is acceptable to me… or face the pain of showing it publicly. 🙂 That’s me trying to be a self dicipinarian LOL

The neck is feeling a lot better today, I can move without pain, YAY!! It’s just a little stiff now. We have a bloke at work who is a passionate massage student and he came around this afternoon and gave my shoulder a good massage, he ‘tried a bit of reiki’ on me and tested out a few trigger points. I feel a little bit more free in my neck movements, but not totally right. I’ve got to play a game of touch football in 45mins so here goes nothing!

I was half expecting the delivery of some art supplies today. I have gone totally crazy with the paper sales which are happening at the moment (Neil Wallace Printmaking Supplies and Melbourne Etching Supplies) and spent a huge sum of money on paper. I even rang Neil Wallace’s in a panic yesterday so I could add some smooth printmaking paper onto my order.

I had originally ordered a heap of Hahnemule paper (150gsm for bookbinding and 300gsm for printing) which is a beautiful and soft, but quite rough textured paper, great for use on the etching press. But I need SMOOTH for monoprinting and relief printing which I do at home using a bamboo barren. The stuff I got was way cheaper than the other brands, it is called Dutch Etching…. I’m now very worried that I’ve made a $60 boo boo.

I sort of wish I’d just gone down to the shop instead of mail ordering, I have a feeling that I’ve way overdone the whole thing and I will have more paper than I could possibly use in a decade. I also bought a 10m roll of drawing paper! Yes, I think I went crazy. I’m going to take some down to my sister when I visit Hobart next week, I hope between the two of use we can use it.

My sister and I have an informal postcard swap happening and I owe her one:

I woke up this morning with a very sore neck and shoulder. I lasted half a day at work before I called it quits and came home to rest on the couch. I’m feeling slightly better now, which is good.

I knocked off work at 3pm yesterday so I could get my entry form in for the Traralgon Agricultural Show. I’m entering the Homespun section, my Kiri shawl and a skein of wool (yet to be spun).

Then I took myself to the library to look for books on printmaking. They have three books in the lending collection but I had to put an order on them since they are held at the Moe library. And there were two books in the Ex Yallourn section.

Yallourn was a town which was demolished to allow for the expansion of the Yallourn open cut coal mine. A work mate of mine grew up in Yallourn and it sounds like it was a great town with a cinema and a wonderful golf course… I also found out yesterday that I cannot borrow books designated ‘Ex Yallourn’.

But the librarian went out back to get me the two printmaking books from the collection. They were old but extremely absorbing, they have put the books aside for me and I’m going back for another read next week.

So, one of the techniques described was monoprinting…. I’ve done a bit of it with dye on fabric and with acrylic paints on paper, but never to my satisfaction, as it tends to look a lot like finger painting.

We’ll now I’m set, because I read about the technique where you roll out a thin film of ink onto a glass surface, lay the paper on top of the plate. The paper picks up the ink when you press or draw (I used a knitting needle) on the back. You can reuse the same plate to get a negative of previous images then press again to get interesting layered imagery.

The two photos above look slightly different in colour but in real life they are the same.

Yes people, I reckon Nick Cave (and the bad seeds)albums are perfect in every way . If you see it, snap up his double album Abattoir Blues / The Lyre Of Orpheus.

When I was at Uni, Nick Cave seemed to be more loved by persons of gothic persuasion, probably because he had written an album about murder (and did a duet with Kylie Minogue of all people), but that didn’t stop me from being intrigued by his music. Over the years I have come to really love and appreciate his work. I’m not one of those obsessive fans who knows every detail about an artist, but holy crap I love listening to his albums 🙂

I’ve come down with a little sickness, not enough to have time off work, but enought to shit me to tears. Here’s to Friday.

I’m loving this challenge I have set for myself. I couldn’t spend as much time on it as I would have liked tonight. We had our first game of touch footy for the season… first game, first win!!

If you wish to see larger versions of the pictures I’m posting here just click on the pic and another page will open up, with a bigger picture 🙂

I’m starting to get excited about going to Tassie for Chelsea’s wedding, I think it’s gonna be like a slumber party as Kate and I will be bunking at Marge’s place in Kingston.

Chels, Kate, Marge and I were flatmates for a year at university, we lived in a place in Quayle Street on the boundary between Battery Point and Sandy Bay. It was a pretty amazing year looking back on it. It was the year Riscy left Tasmania (I cried a lot), Kate was in love with Tim, but he was American and lived in UTAH (of all places!), Marge and Pax shared a single bed for most of the year LOL, he used to traipse through the lounge room to the bathroom wearing her dressing gown (oh the memories of seeing that whilst eating breakfast!). Chels and her Pizza Hut buddies (groan), Monica dropping in for a goss (she met Matt that year). Wednesday Nights at Club Surreal were brilliant, the discovery of wine… from a bottle (Hanwood Estate Cab Sav), how posh, riding my bike to uni… they were good days (but I’m glad they are over, uni sucked!)

ClaArProMo No 2 😛

A few years ago Riscy bought me a subscription to National Geographic. It had been my total favourite magazine when I was a teenager, our school had hundreds of old copies and I devoured them all. I wanted to be a photojournalist real bad (for about 6 months), but I couldn’t work out how you become one…. so I decided to become an engineer instead.

We only had the sub for a year, we let it lapse as it was just before the Iraq invasion and I couldn’t stomach even a hint of propaganda. It is a great mag though, and I might resubscribe again at some stage.

I tore one of them up to make the above collage, and a road engineering magazine. Just for good measure LOL

You will note that I have put my a link in my sidebar. If you want to see all my creations this month in one glorious hit; Click on the ClaArProMo over there.