25th April 2008
Hello! I am starting a new thing (meme?) here. I am calling it “The Friday Archives”. Feel free to join in!
I have been digging around in my old sketchbooks and discovering recurring themes in my work and I am thinking that every Friday I might post a picture of some art work from ye-olde-days (university, high school, TAFE, primary school etc). I thought if I called it “Friday Archives” it’s pretty open, so apart from old art, photography and craft work, even a poem, short story or some 21 Jump Street inspired Fan Fiction (lawd help us!) might even fit the bill. (If a meme like this already exists, please let me know).
This is my first piece - from 1994. I was doing my first year of Art Teaching Education at Melbourne Uni and was loving printmaking class. I was already using a computer (corel draw from memory) to come up with designs and when I wasn’t playing on the computer I was burning the images into steel plates with acid. This is an artist’s proof of an etching of my Grandmother and her siblings when they were young. I think my Grandma must be the one on the right. They are all looking at the little blonde girl - who was the sister who died when she was just a girl. This ghostly, fabled little sister has always fascinated me.
If you decide to join in the fun - please leave a link in my comments!
23rd April 2008
On my desk on a Wednesday happens so fast! Here’s what I have managed to squeeze in amongst all the detritus today… this is the next stencil I am going to cut. Thank you to everyone who helped out with stencil material suggestions and resources yesterday and today. Every time a comment came in I would say “Wow! Another good idea!”. For others who are contemplating doing some stenciling, the use of spray adhesive when placing the stencil is especially good advice. It’s a tip that a very kind and helpful woman in the art supply shop gave me on weekend and without it I would have been lost and yesterday’s use of tracing paper would have been frustrating if not impossible. For the next stencil I have decided to try Karena’s method which is to treat manilla envelope paper (although I used Kraft envelope paper which I hope is the same thing) with linseed oil (check her comment from 23rd April at 12.44pm for more details — and see a sample here). You can see there’s quite a lot of detail in my design so her words “cut as smooth as butter” was hard to resist. I had both envelopes and refined linseed oil on hand so I am waiting for a coat of oil to dry over night. Thank you Karena!
22nd April 2008
It’s been awfully quiet around here. But this week’s looking up and I have been inspired to do some stencil art using some old spray paint we used to fix up an IKEA cabinet. We only had antique white and fire engine red in the shed so my first (very simple) attempt is a little limited but I am off to buy some more colours and, now that I know my technique works, to cut out some more elaborate stencils.
After battling with a nasty piece of acetate I ended up using tracing paper to make the stencil which did the trick but it is a little flimsy. Does anyone know something that I might have more success with? It needs to be thin enough to make delicate cutting not too stressful but then heavy / resistant enough to handle enamel spray paint and repeat use. I am not sure how many street artists read loobylu (at my guess… none) but any ideas would be useful!
Seriously inspired by Banksy (via Boobooksausagedogs)
10th April 2008
I started working on some small canvases in oils yesterday. This is the first coat. Really, it’s just blocking in colour and form and covering up the white of the canvas. I haven’t done any oil painting in about… hmm.. 15 years! I’m old! Oils are nice. I like the way they smudge and slide.
