books, books and more books

Have just done something really scary, well for me it was as it involves $$$$$.
I just purchased some books on line - Tim, if you're reading this as they say on the Hitch Hikers Guide "DON'T PANIC" I didn't spend to much.

2 of the books are by Alexander Calder and have a lot of wire sculptures with a series based on circus performers, as I'd used my own personal acrobat as reference for my wire pieces in sculpture class I thought these were must have books and the other book I've bought second hand from the states is called Textile Techniques in Metal for Jewelers, Sculptures and Textile Artists, I found this book in the colour and design teachers personal collection in class the other day and I started drooling and saying "I need this book" and I just found one, at a lot lower price that I expected.
So now I start watching the mail box daily with baited breath, oh, I'm so excited now, can't wait for them to turn up.

Back to reality, this is my first weekend at home since I don't know when.
I have found the kitchen table under the ruble, will need this shortly for the quilt I'm working on, done the dishes, bought something for dinner that I'm actually going to experiment with as Mackenzie is a fussy eater, so the rest of the afternoon is mine, so I think I'll make a cuppa and head out to the studio for the rest of the afternoon, what do you reckon.......

Bits 'n pieces

I promised you a photo of Mackenzie my youngest son, so here he is sitting in bed playing gameboy.



Below are 2 photos I took today in the print room at art school, the room is full of great old presses, we are still working on our clay heads in sculpture, so I don't have a photo to share as yet, I thought it was looking like a Toby Jug and a couple of people thought it looked like Lunig's cartoon so with any luck it may end up looking like a person........and I'm still etching my plate in my printmaking class and will get to do my prints next week.




Here is our first crop from our passion fruit vine that I found today, can't wait to eat them.



I've been distracted again, went looking for a photo of Mackenzie and got side tracked with my photo file, I must get back to getting notes ready for the class I'm teaching tomorrow.

Callans new hat

Callan has been complaining his head was cold once he cut his hair off so I whipped up a beanie for him.
I had some spare black wool, they can only wear black at school, so out came my trusty crochet hook and I whipped this up.



Though now he looks a bit like a thug, oh well......
apologies to anyone who may be offended by the badge that he stuck on.

This weeks drawings

Our life drawing teacher likes us to do a quick sketch of a skeleton before we start on the model, then he puts the skeleton next to the model in the same pose so we can still do the skeleton first then put the flesh on, so here is my skeleton.



front



back



and reclining

I had the unfortunate angle (somebody in the circle had to cop it) and had to deal with foreshortening, the teacher fixed up the legs but said the rest of the body was OK - not sure about the head though!


but at least I feel as though they actually look like a person now, the last few have had more teacher lines than mine so I didn't think I'd share those as they weren't really mine.

What do you think?

Glorious colours

Isn't this wool glorious, it's a 100% Merino wool, not quiet sure what I'll do with it as yet, but I have this idea rolling around in my head of crocheting an odd shaped vase then submerging in hot water to felt it, if/when I do, you'll be the first to see the results.



Had a better day at Art school today with life drawing so tomorrow I'll share a couple of my drawings with you.

This week at school

Well I thought I'd give you a review of my week at art school this week.
I start Tuesday with life drawing and the past 2 weeks we have had a model but this is my least favorite of all the classes and I'm not confident enough to post my work yet as the teacher made a lot of alterations so half of what is on the pages isn't mine.
In the afternoon we have colour and design and spent the class mixing grey from opposite colours on the colour wheel using several combinations and generating gradual tints with adding white.

Thursday is our messy day as we have sculpture in the morning, here are 2 shots of the latest wire piece, I base most of my "movement" pieces on my husband Tim, this is him warming up before a show, I added the ladder and the rope for a bit of visual interest.




We have gone back to working with clay and made a start on a head but using coils of clay to build up the structure, I'm only up to the chin so maybe after next week I may have a photo to share.
Thursday arov is our Printmaking class and at the moment we are doing etchings from zinc plates.
I have finished a series of prints of a shell I had drawn, from our first plate and now we are working on a larger plate that I've done a line drawing from a photo I had taken in NZ of a bay that we stopped at.
We have etched the initial line drawing into the plate and now we are doing Aquatint layers, these are shorter stints in the acid bath but first we had to put a layer of resin across the plate and to do this we had to don maskes and squeeze into a small room.
Have a look at Nic Bridges blog http://www.nicquiltz.blogspot.com to see a photo of the 2 of us as we came out of the tiny room and also to see Nic's progress at school as well.
Hope you are enjoying my progress as much as I'm enjoying sharing it with you.

Every mothers worst nightmare

This is my lovely son Callan (17) who has had long coloured hair, (green for the past few years) for all of his teen years, the green has been hard to find so it has faded to yellow and with a lot of regrowth, so he decided to generate his own dreadlocks as it was way to expensive for me to afford so it just took on a life of it's own - and that's where this saga started, a couple of nights ago he said to me "I think something is living in my hair"....... AGGHHHHH this is why I'd fought the whole dreadlocks idea for a year or 2, so I googled and showed him head lice and he said "Yep - that's what it is" I thought great, don't have time for this and we had actually gone 17 years with 2 boys all through pre school and primary and also almost through high school and had escaped the dreaded head lice, so on Tuesday after I'd come home from a day at Art school I was armed with the appropriate stuff from the chemist and said the only way out of this is to cut it all off.

So he decided he wanted to do it himself with scissors.....


and I think he did a pretty good job to


Mackenzie (14) started calling him Normie cause now he looks normal !!!!!!
I'll have to post a photo of Mackenzie one day as he has long black hair almost down to his waist and still gets mistaken for a girl.
Today is "Crazy Hair Day" at school and Callan recons he'll win hands down, cause for him this IS CRAZY

PS just for the record, the entry title only refers to why we had to cut the hair off not how he looks with his long hair, it was a shame it had to go because when it was newly coloured and brushed it looked fabulous and unique.

Play day

I had a play day yesterday and made these 2 pieces.
I layered wool tops, silk tops and Angelina fibres between 2 pieces of soluble web and quilted them to death.
I've never worked with soluble web before and it's really bizarre (and sticky) as it disappears.
These are to be cut up and combined with other stuff, the final design I'm not sure about yet till it happens.
Must run, I'm off to Tai Chi.

on the road with The Leaping Loonies

I was trying to get the poster for the Leaping Loonies "Crate Show" tour up as well but the best I could do is the tour dates, but I just went searching and came up with a couple of photos of them bumping out after a show and sightseeing while in Europe last year.
The one in the middle is my husband Tim.

Leaping Loonies "Crate Show" tour dates

LEAPING LOONIES "THE CRATE SHOW" TOUR

QLD

14tth March - 10am & 7.30pm - Empire Theatre, Toowoomba QLD

16th March - 7.30pm - Riverway Arts Centre, Thuringowa Central QLD

17th March - 7.30pm - Burdekin Theatre, Ayr QLD

WA

20th March - 1pm & 7.30pm - Queens Park Theatre, Geraldton WA

22nd March - 7pm - Moora Performing Arts Centre, Moora WA

24th March - 6pm - Don Russell Performing Arts Centre, Thornlie WA

25th March - 4pm - Bunbury Regional Entertainment Centre, Bunbury WA

28th March - 7pm - Margaret River Cultural Centre, Margaret River WA

30th March - 8pm - Albany Town Hall Theatre, Albany WA

1st April - 5pm - Esperance Civic Centre, Esperance WA

4th & 5th April - 9am & 7.30pm - Walkington Theatre, Karratha WA

VIC

11 - 14th April - 10am & 12pm - Alexander Theatre, Monash, Clayton VIC

18th April - 4.30pm - Robinvale Community Arts Centre, Robinvale VIC

19th April - 1pm & 7.30pm - Swan Hill Town Hall, Swan Hill VIC

21st April - 7pm - Kyneton Town Hall, Kyneton VIC

24th April - 8pm - Portland Arts Centre, Portland VIC

28th April - 2pm - Wyndham Cultural Centre, Werribee VIC

29th April - 6pm - Barry Jackson Performing Arts Centre, Wodonga VIC

Latest sculpture

This is my latest piece from my sculpture class, I'm really enjoying working with wire.
Again I used my husband Tim as a model, I didn't have time to take a photo of him warming up in this position so I used the mannequin, it's not finished yet as it will need to be tweaked next week then attached to the wall/floor base.

Colours in the window

These are the clean up rags hanging in the window of the Print Making room, aren't the colours glorious, wouldn't I love to highjack some of these to use in my art.

Can't get away with anything....

A quick funny story........

I ran out of time before I went down to Melbourne to work at the Quilt Convention to ring my mum to let her know that I was going away, but I rang her when I got back and she knew that I'd been down there - and do you know how she new - her home care cleaner READS MY BLOG --- hi Raylene

Wire Sculpture

These are my efforts in Sculpture class a few days ago, we are working with wire at the moment.
We had to do a basic line drawing of someone in our class and unfortunately the lady I drew in the top one looked like "Sideshow Bob" - the drawing and piece not the lady.
The second piece is mounted on a board in individual pieces, again it also looks like someone from The Simpsons.

My next mission is to work out how to put text under the photos individually.

back in the swing at last

Better keep this short as there is a thunderstorm about to hit.
Today I finally got back into sewing, haven't done much since before xmas with the 3 back to back exhibitions Nov/Dec, then xmas, throw the school holidays into the mix, home to Perth for a couple of weeks to see mum at the end of Jan, start at art school (TAFE) beginning of Feb then down to Melb to work at the Aust Quilt Convention at the end of Feb which brings me to the start of March - are you all exhausted like I am, pheeewww
So today I decided to have a play, I need to make some small pieces for an exhibition in a month or so, they are to be 10cm x 10cm (4" x 4") so these are what I started on today, they may not be the ones that I enter but at least I've made a start, what do you think? the stitching on the orange one doesn't show up very well, the landscape one is made with silk paper scraps.
Better get off here before the mother board gets fried, it's getting loud and scarry.....

back in the swing at last

Better keep this short as there is a thunderstorm about to hit.
Today I finally got back into sewing, haven't done much since before xmas with the 3 back to back exhibitions Nov/Dec, then xmas, throw the school holidays into the mix, home to Perth for a couple of weeks to see mum at the end of Jan, start at art school (TAFE) beginning of Feb then down to Melb to work at the Aust Quilt Convention at the end of Feb which brings me to the start of March - are you all exhausted like I am, pheeewww
So today I decided to have a play, I need to make some small pieces for an exhibition in a month or so, they are to be 10cm x 10cm (4" x 4") so these are what I started on today, they may not be the ones that I enter but at least I've made a start, what do you think? the stitching on the orange one doesn't show up very well, the landscape one is made with silk paper scraps.
Better get off here before the mother board gets fried, it's getting loud and scarry.....