Mars Hill Exhibition

Leading up to the Chalk Urban Art Festival I took part in the week before last, the competing artists were given an extended exhibition at the Mars Hill Café exhibition space.
This was a very nice gesture indeed, as renting exhibition space in Australian galleries can often cost hundreds to thousands of dollars for a couple of weeks.

Here’s a peek at my work on the wall.

Another highlight of taking part in the festival was meeting and chatting to Sadami Konchi, a watercolour portrait artist.

Sadami was not technically one of the competing artists, but would come around and paint the artists at work.
Sadami is amazingly quick when she works, and manages to catch a unique likeness in all her subjects. I had fun flipping through her sketchpad identifying all the artists, not only by their appearance, but also by their body gestures and the way they were posed whilst working on their own artworks.

You can see I got into the spirit of my work, and came dressed up every day as a pirate myself. I was happy when Sadami agreed to sell me my little portrait; it will be a lovely memento of the festival.

You can see Sadami's watercolour impressions from this year's festival here: Chalk 2010
It gives a really good overview of her impressions of how we worked, I lvoed reading it as much as I love looking at the artworks themselves... a really touching and lively insight.



As an afterthought, if anyone is interested in acquiring a 2.2 m long canvas depicting a shipwrecked pirate, let me know – I’m willing to take any offers!! (I don’t have space for it in my tiny flat)


So long as you’re happy to pay for shipping in a long tube (or pick up personally in Sydney) I am willing to sell it for any price if anyone is interested.


Thanks ^_^

Chalk Urban Art Festival

Last week I took part in the Chalk Urban Art Festival, a four-day outdoor event.

32 artists were selected to each create a 2.24 m by 2 m artwork on the pavement, reacting to the theme “The blues”.
With any outdoor event, you are at the mercy of the elements, and we were all hoping the rain would hold off. In past years the festival and the artworks have been washed away all too soon. We were very lucky this year, with only a few threatening sprinkles during the early mornings (as we were working on canvas taped to the ground, we were able to roll them up at the end of each day, as it usually rained throughout the night).

In past years I’ve been a volunteer for the festival, friend to many of the artists, and general supporter, but this year I was bullied into entering (I’m holding fast to that excuse!) As my work is usually very small-scale, and I work in a very neat and meticulous way, the thought of working with crumbly pastels on the ground on such a huge scale was definitely daunting!!
Yet I was assigned a spot next to a good friend of mine (Luke Marcatili, who created an awesome piece) so it was nice to be able to chat to him and have a friendly face around.
Most of the time, though, we had our heads down chalking away, furiously trying to complete our pieces for the deadline. Many artists ended up having their fingertips worn down from smoothing the pastels (including me, resulting in a stinging numbness for a few days), all our backs were aching, our legs were killing from squatting and standing and squatting all day, we were grubby and filthy and covered in chalk, but we had a good time, there was a nice vibe, and it was great to see the artworks emerging over the four days.
Okay! Enough blabbering, let me show you how my piece progressed over the festival.

I deliberately decided to steer clear of the more stereotypical depression or emotional depictions, and I don’t know much about Blues music. For my chalk artwork I drew “Blue-Beard the Pirate, Shipwrecked at Blue Lagoon”.
Day One
The first thing I did was to cover my entire canvas in the base colours.

Then I blocked in the major areas of where the characters would be.

Day Two
This was the hardest day. The sun was blaring down on us and we were sapped of energy. I feel like I barely progressed at all, added some details.
As Blue-Beard himself was the main focus of the piece, I worked on him the most.

Day Three
Thankfully it was an overcast day, the sun never peeped out. This is the ideal weather for outdoor work! Got a lot more done. Basically day three is the day to “finish” your piece, so I aimed at getting everything major done.

Day Four
We only had a few hours before judging started at 1pm. This was the day for final finishing touches: highlights, feathers, claws, sea foam.

Here are some close-ups.

By the way, people were getting confused by the two female characters, thinking Blue-Beard was going to be mighty jolly when he woke up to find pretty ladies surrounding him.

They’re harpies.

The months ahead....

...are going to be busy.

I've already mentioned working on my entry for the 2010 FONAS plate auction. I finally started working on it last night, and I have to have it finished this week for firing, eep!

Here it is so far:

I also got bullied into signing up for the 2010 Chalk Urban Arts Festival. This is sure proof that my sanity has departed. As someone who works on a small scale, usually between 15 - 20 cm.... what was I thinking when I said yes to a 4 day outdoor event where I have to complete a chalk artwork on the pavement in a 2m x 2.4m scale???? I've been involved in previous years as a spectator, supporter and volunteer, but never as an artist.

So, if you're in Sydney between October 7th - 10th come and say hi!