fire hydrant - 100 drawings in 100 days

ok, i am behind a couple of days, but that's only because i've been busy taking some paintings to and attending a charity auction.

so, i'm pleased to say that the two small oil paintings i donated to the Daffodil Day, Hazell's Lunch for Cancer Research, sold!! yay! i love it when i can give something to charity and the woman who bought them was so thrilled!! i did get to meet her, and after a nice chat, i discovered that this was her first "grown-up art" purchase! how cool is that?

the event was held in the ever-popular power house in new farm park, brisbane. this is the most amazing building, as it's old, and used to be (apparently) the place to go shoot up heroin, back in the days when it was an old heap of rubble. now it's home to many a fine art event, 2 restaurants, and it's just gorgeous with it's interior still showing signs of the grafitti here and there.

this is the fire hydrant in one of the entrances, and really caught my eye - ever since i made giant wood-block prints of such urban work fixtures. there were tons of things to draw there, so i must go back for a photo and sketch session.

the car and the cafe girl - 100 drawings in 100 days

i took a drive to my home town, toowoomba several months back, and i just had to go check out my old street. my old house was a little bit different, but the house across the street was just the same. old man cumner (after whom the street was named. i want a street named after me!) owned this huge block of land, and among other things, he was fond of collecting old decrepit cars. this one is no exception - i think it's been there since i was a child! so, this drawing is called "old man cumner's car", and features the down-trodden fence to boot!

the other drawing is of my friend alana, who works in my favourite coffee shop in the world - the red cup in oklahoma city. if ever you are in the midwest and need a great coffee, and a fabulous vegetarian meal served by the sweetest hippies, go to the red cup on classen blvd. in okc. this is a picture i took of alana arranging some yellow roses, and i think it might just make the cut to the 100 paintings in 100 days!!

studio freak-show - 100 drawings in 100 days

i'm over a third of the way, and i'm finding myself a little stuck on what to draw... i hate that feeling!!!

so, the key here is, JUST DRAW! so, here we have the line-up of likely and unusual suspects from my toy shelf. minus the rubber ducky. he's in the bathroom... he's innocent.

my poor old "cat in the hat" talking doll (far left) is (now this is going to date me...) 35 years old. yes, folks, he's an antique. AND... he still talks. i didn't yank on his voice-box rip-cord until he died, oddly enough, because i was kinda tough on my toys. but he was my favourite, besides "bunny", which i still have, but he's looking a little sad - too sad for the line-up. and the others are, well, just inspirational muses for me, like right now.

so, this piece is called "studio freak-show", and i hope i will always love freaky little toys.

booger - 100 drawings in 100 days

i just received an email from a dear friend in oklahoma city, telling me that my kitty, booger, has a bladder infection. apparently, they are quite common with cats, but do have a tendency to recur quite frequently. he was in the kitty hospital overnight, and has to go back again tonight, so i am very sad...

booger was named as such by the marking under his right nostril - a brown smudge. so, i had to call him "booger", as is the name of this drawing.

i hope you get well soon, booger!

circus truck grill - 100 drawings in 100 days

i'm still all wound up about the fair. and especially the groovy truck sculpture i saw there. yesterday's drawing was of a section of the front and the tire of this amazing beast. today, i give you a drawing of the grill - yes, this jolly roger was welded onto the grill of the chevrolet. now, the cool thing is that all of the parts that make up the skull and cross-bones are tools and ratchets and other things that i don't know what they're called. i know they are either truck parts or just found pieces of metal. the reason why i am so attracted to this piece, is that i myself used to go to the train tracks and pick up whatever scraps of iron and metal i could find to use in my paintings. and i wish i would have thought of this skull and crossbones first!

circus truck - 100 drawings in 100 days

well, i finally got to the fair! it was great - not as weird as i was hoping for, but maybe that's just the experience i had when i lived in oklahoma city.

this was the highlight - i didn't catch the artist's name, but i must go back and get it. this is an old army truck he had bought and added, by way of welding, all of these tools, scraps of metal, etc , to make this fabulous sculpture! the whole thing was rust-ridden and gorgeous! i just love rust in art! in the places shown here in my drawing, "circus truck", the rust looks just like black islands in a rusty sea... i think this truck sculpture is one of the most amazing pieces of art i've seen in a long time!

chesterfield - 100 drawings in 100 days

i really wanted to draw more circus-inspired things, but that will have to wait until tomorrow... i am going tonight!!! i'm so excited. but my best friend from high school wants me to draw some of the whales i saw the other day, but alas, the photos i did manage to get of them, although they are great photos, and i will have some great memories of that day from them, i don't think anyone else would recognize what they are... so, i will have to create something special that involves whales soon.

so, i was just flipping through a magazine, and saw this gorgeous sofa, which looks a lot like the leather sofa in one of my paintings of a miniature schnauzer that i was commissioned to do years ago. the dog was perched upon this chair, looking very much like Thurston Howell the Third (gilligan's island) and wearing an ascot. from then on, i have always enjoyed drawing/painting beautiful furniture and architecture, as well as wild wallpapers.

the face of the circus ii - 100 drawings in 100 days

oh how i just love the circus!! and the carnival, and the fair, and mardi gras, and, and, and...

i saw tons of these when i was in new orleans in 2002, pre-katrina. i was there just right after mardi gras and was sad that i missed it, but the city was still vibrating from the big festival.

i would just love to go to venice when they have their mardi gras.

but, mardi gras originated in rome, where it was called lupercalia, long before the new world began in europe. the ancient custom began when Christianity was embraced in Rome, and rather than abolish all pagan rituals, it became a period of festivities and merriment that preceded the penance of Lent.

circus and snakes - 100 drawings in 100 days

in honor of my anticipated visit to the city fair, i have drawn
"circus elephant" (top left) and a goofy-looking weird snake, "ninderry snake" (bottom left). the snake theme came about when i was at my mom's this weekend, and they had found the skeleton of either one very large, long snake, or possibly two. nonetheless, there really are no good snakes in australia, so i'm quite glad that it/they were dead. the reason why we couldn't really tell if it was one snake or two, is because the crows had been around and the majority of the skull was absent. i did, however, manage to swipe a few pieces of skeleton for artistic research...

"venus de sydney" - 100 drawings in 100 days

i came across this figure in my "inspiration" folder on my desktop. it's so interesting to me how i collect all this information from the web, and i can even get my act together enough at times to create an "inspiration" folder, in which i keep any and all things that COULD potentially inspire me in those moments when i am stuck. and such a devastating void it is, to be stuck in artist's block. but here, i have created myself an escape route, an easy way out, a cheat-sheet...

do i use it? no. not really. only when i'm searching for something else and i accidentally stumble across this folder. like today. so, here she is, "venus de syndey" or "venus de fogotten folder"