Alex Louisa

It's no point spending a Friday night drawing if you don't have some company.

 
This is who you can't see too clearly at the end of my dodgy video. He swings by every night to eat a stupid amount of the Christmas beetles that obsessively pound on the flyscreen, trying to get to the magical golden orb that is my desklamp. It's too bad the flyscreen's in the way to mess with the photo, but if that wasn't there I'd get pummelled by beetles.

He's charming, really. He even sucks his eyeballs into his head to help push the beetles down his throat...

I'm quite happy that people can't do that.

Mini Art Video!

Long time no see, and now it's November. (Get serious?)

Now to make up for it, I've returned with a video. My first video, so it's about as primitive as first videos go - shot on my phone with wonderful phone resolution and wonderful phone munchy crunchy sounds, but at least it's something ;)

So, rather than yet another work-in-progress photo, it's a WIP video, with a shot of my typically tidy artist's desk (is there such a thing as a tidy artist?) and a little something else, or someone else - I should say:

 

 

I'd like to get some kind of video camera so I can create some timelapse start-to-finish artwork videos, because I've always loved watching them from other artists. It doesn't need to be anything fancy, just something that will do the job with decent image quality, with videos that aren't too hard to edit, as I'm very much still in the learning stage. If you have any suggestions for me, please share!

Working on this right now:

Hopefully it won't be too long until I can post the finished version. I'll ensure plenty of annoying sneak peaks and work-in-progress shots in the interum though. I promise.

Drawing Board

Here's a quick pic or two to show you the colour of the board I'm working on:

 
The blue tape is holding it to the wooden board, while the white tape is just masking. In the photo on the left, you can see the grey colour of the board next to the white tape. There's no surprise that I'm working on grey, since it's my favourite colour. You can also see how my overhead lights only work sometimes, so half the time I'm working only by lamplight. Hoorah!

The second photo shows how the background of my new piece turned out - a bit of blue and orange splattery, not that it looks like much yet!

Now to get on with the rest of it...

Third time lucky

Yep. This artwork is finally finished. The third time around I got it right (round one and two were on dodgy surfaces, in my quest to find the perfect archival board).

She's about 45 x 60cm. Acrylic and coloured pencil on museum board. I think she'll be called Timekeeper.

I only had such short bursts of time all over the place to work on the piece (you know, when by the time you get into the drawing, your time's up?), so I have no idea how long it took me in total. I'd rather not know, really! But, the first piece always takes me the longest, then I get into the swing of things, and I can charge through the rest.  As much as I am capable of charging anyway. A moderate trot, maybe?

 

Artwork Preview

Fiiiiinally.

Things are rolling. Or ticking, if you like. Here's a preview of my current artwork:

This one is so close to being finished. I need to stop messing with it and just call it done.

I'm also going to try my very, very best to get back to regular posting.

Ok. Finished image on Monday. Late night art night tonight!
 

Drawing Hands

I've always loved to draw hands, even though it's usually really tricky, and they nearly always look really silly until you're a fair way through.

I'll get plenly of practise drawing hands in the pieces I'm working on now though. Hands in nearly every one. For the moment they're all female's hands, so at least I can model them on my own.

When a guy's hands are required, I call Steve in to model, and he gets the joy of not being allowed to move for a very long time instead.

Frog Party

The one good thing about the spring weather warming up, is the frogs come out to play again.

And you may have noticed from here and here, that I have a thing for frogs. Always have.

These little guys are less than an inch long at full size, and dozens and dozens of them live in the row of plants between our driveway and dam, and they plaster themselves on the windows at night to catch bugs. So cute!

Now I find it hard to sleep if I can't hear a chorus of crazy happy frogs outside, especially if there's rain in the air, but then, when friends visit wonder how we can sleep with all that noise. It's funny what you get used to...

Of course, being in Queensland, we have a silly amount of horrible cane toads too, but I'm hoping that the little green guys are fighting back.

I might be over drawing only animals for the moment, but I can't get tired of the real thing :)

hatch hatch hatch

I thought the material for the girl's top was looking a bit flat, so I've gone a little hatch-happy with it:

I keep telling myself that I'm not going to get lost in the details, but it's the details that I love, so why change that? Sure, it takes much longer, but I can't present something that I feel is only half finished.

[I also keep telling myself that I won't watch the V8 races when I should be doing artwork, or that I won't attempt to do artwork while watching the V8s, but I'm still working on that part.]

'night.

I just updated my about page. Not such a big deal but at least now it isn't blank - not quite sure when that happened...

I got plenty of drawing done tonight though, and it's been a while since I've been able to say that. Now I'm off to bed, so I can get up early and get back to it. There's going to be a finished artwork tomorrow.

Yes, there is.

On the drawing board

I'm only starting this piece for the third time over. But at least I've settled on a drawing surface (finally). I'm hoping she'll be finished over the weekend. It's been so long since I've been able to post a finished artwork!

Such a tidy desk have I.

Just for the record:

I'm going by this name from now on. Alex Louisa. I know it's sort of silly to up and change your 'art' name but it's something that I've been thinking about for a while now, and it's better to put it out there sooner rather than later. And, change is good.

If you hadn't already guessed, Louisa is my middle name, and I'm quite happy to to use it instead of my surname, because I've never liked "Tebb" anyway. Not at all. I'll also be getting married early next year so I'll be ditching my surname in favour of a new one then anyway! (I'll still go by Alex Louisa for my art though.)

And my silly self gets a kick out of the extra syllables. 'Tebb' just sounds too blunt to me. My great-grandmother's name (on my mum's side) was Louisa. She was an artist, and I think it's kind of cool that I turned out to be the same.

Just thought I'd introduce myself...

I meant to post much earlier this week, but things have been a bit hectic as we're getting a new driveway. It's amazing what a novelty a simple thing like a driveway can be when you haven't had one. We're going from horrible dirt and rocks, to nice smooth(er) coloured concrete with inlaid black stones. I'll be able to go and check the mail without needing to put shoes on! Of course, Steve wanders around everywhere in bare feet, but my dainty little lady feet are a bit on the pansy side.  

Shadow has been on house arrest to make sure we don't get big pawprints in our fresh concrete, though he doesn't seem to mind the incarceration. He's just been lying at the window with his head on the windowsill watching the concreters. They're lucky they didn't have to start on Monday because it was 35^oC!! In Winter. Hooray, heatwave (not). I was feeling a bit ripped off that my favourite season had ended far too early, but now it's passed 8am and it's still 9^oC so there's hope for me yet! (Even if Qld winters are kind of lame.)

We have new neighbours! Though I only had one photo left on my camera this morning so all I got was a bum shot:

The little things all swam away from me once I got near. But I thought this photo was funny. I'll try to get a better photo in the morning because oh, they're cute.

{And, the Rising Museum Board is going well. Really well. I just want to get a bit more done before I post a pic.}

 

Stubborn and Stubborner.

Such blog neglect. I wish I had lots and lots of artwork to post, and it annoys me that I don't. (I did have a good trip to Melbourne though!!)

I can happily say that I've finally had a breakthrough in my hunt for the perfect drawing surface. Is it weird that I love to draw but I don't like paper? It seems pretty silly, but it's true. There's a very specific surface texture that I like, and I prefer to draw on something quite thick, so I'm never going to find that with paper. (And I've bought a lot of paper to try, with no luck. Stubborn enough?)

In my last post I'd said that I was about to try out Ampersand Pastelbord. There's a fair few coloured pencil artists out there who use this support and produce some pretty awesome artwork, and oh, I had such high, high hopes that it would work well for me too.

This is a piece that I started on a piece of sand coloured Pastelbord last week:

 

It's the full size version of the half-finished study from my last post. And that's as far as it's gonna get. Pastelbord too, goes in my pile of no-go's. It has a textured layer of grainy marble dust and clay sprayed over what looks like masonite. It is a really cool surface, but it just doesn't suit my artwork, but for all I know I'm not approaching it in the right way.

(The sunlight this morning highlighted the texture:)

But, I'd gone from too-little texture with the Claybord (a perfectly smooth clay surface with no marble grain, also from Ampersand) to too-much texture, with the Pastelbord. It looks great from far away but your drawing looks like orange peel close up - a prefect texture for some subjects, but not for a young female's face. And it's very hard to draw a fine line on the Pastelbord. The tip of your pencil just wants to skip around the grains of marble. Even with a very light sanding to remove the largest chunks of grain, I couldn't really fix this problem. Of course, it's designed to be used with pastels, when you won't want a really fine line anyway, so I can't complain! I'm going to come back to the Claybord and Pastelbord one day though. They're really great, high-quality surfaces. You just need to use them in the right way.

Then it was Canson Mi-Tientes Board, and, no luck again (the texture was too "patterny" - I know, just roll your eyes at that one). Then, my ridiculously expensive single sheet of Rising Museum Board arrived from America, and of course being only a single sheet it got pretty munched in the post, but the smallest amount you can buy in Australia is a box of 25 sheets. I've only had time to muck around testing on a tiny scrap of it, but oh, it's l-o-v-e-l-y. I can't wait for the weekend to roll by so I can get started on it. You have no idea what this scrap of incoherent scribblings means to me:

Me and my pencils are finally playing nice again. I will report back next week on how it goes. High hopes! High hopes!

Currently on the tiny, tiny easel:

This tiny easel makes an appearance every now and then. I like to prop my current artwork on it so it's the first thing I see when I walk in the room. It helps me see what needs to come next with shadows, highlights, etc. Just a weird little ritual.

I'm ditching this study halfway through. I'm happy with the image, but it's just not working over the sealer I tried. So, her face is still pretty flat and her clothes are only in the early stages, but she'll have to do.

I'm on a quest to find the perfect archival substrate to work on, hence the testing with different sealers and boards. I haven't liked anything I've tried so far, so next up it's Pastelbord. All this searching/testing/searching/testing is driving me nuts, so it's a good thing I'm going on a break to Melbourne tomorrow, just for 4 days. If there's something going on in Melbourne that I should know about let me know! I'm definately heading to the Forty Thieves show tomorrow night at Gorker Gallery!

Testing, Testing...

I'm driving myself a little crazy around here. I've been trying to get the exact right combination of sealer + sanding + paint + pencil, so that everything just works. But, the larger boards I'm working on have a slightly different surface than I'm used to, so everything is reacting a little differently.

So, I have a bunch of boards lying around that look like this - covered with patches of different brands of sealer, different layers of sealer, different amounts of sanding, and then all of the above with paint and pencil tests too:

 

They're really attractive. I just didn't want to start on any of my final pieces without knowing that I was going to be able to get the finish I wanted. But I think I have it sorted now, so I can finally get some proper artwork on the way.

I think everyone identifies with their birthday month, and August is mine. It feels like August should be months away, and all of a sudden I'm going to be 25 on Friday. Now, only three posts in July really wasn't good enough. I'll at least try and make it four for August!  ;)

I can't believe how the weeks keep ticking by. It feels like the clocks are speeding up!

My work week just kept getting busier so I only got back to finishing this little red wren this morning. If you have a keen eye you might have noticed that the bit I had forgot to add last time was the hatching on the branch, to make it match the first blue wren.

 

For far too long he only looked like this:

 

But at least he's finished now. #3 still to go. The male wrens around here are starting to go bonkers. It's that time of year when they start bouncing off anything with a shiney surface, battling with their male-rival reflections. At the moment the most popular opponent is the reflection on Shadow's metal water bowl. There will be two or three of them surrounding it at one time, going all ninja-bird. Maybe they think they're fighting each other. But every time I try to creep up on them with my camera they fly away! It won't be too long though, and they'll be so obsessed that they won't even notice me approaching.

This weekend: Another quick study before I start a large artwork, just to figure things out. I need to choose paint colours for the house, and i can't decide so I'll probably have to get a stupid amount of sample pots instead. We're heading to the Renovater's expo in Brisbane. We need a new microwave before our current becomes a fire hazard. We're also going shopping for a dishwasher because Steve thinks there's something wrong with our current one. [Please note: I am the current dishwasher...] And we're topping it all off with a Sunday BBQ.

Sounds like plenty of time for artwork.  (?)

Oh, whoops.

Bear with me. I was all set to post my second little wren piece that I finished on Sunday, but I've just realised there's one more thing to do first!

So, I'll try to add that final touch tonight after work (I'm hoping the masking fluid doesn't kill it), and hopefully, hopefully, will be able to post the finished version tomorrow night.

In the meantime, here's a sneak peek:

I made him red this time, because I could. Gotta mix it up a bit.

July, hey?

It's halfway through July and the last time I posted anything was June. That's so wrong.

A bit of an explanation: I'm feeling like I'm in a bit of a bind, because for the next four and a half months I'm going to be working on nothing but show stuff, and I of course don't want to give too much away. But, I'll do my best to post a good amount of previews and in-progress peeks along the way. I wanted this to be an art blog that I updated every weekday, but from now until the end of the year at least, it's not going to be quite possible. And I'm not just going to write about what I had for breakfast...

Since I still work full time I won't have time to work on any non-show stuff, so my options for things to post about will be pretty lean. (And somewhere I have to fit in the one big commission that I agreed to before there was any talk of a show!) Plus, there'll be some big outdoor renos going on around here soon, and there's a wedding to plan!

But I do like to be busy so I can't complain. So, that's what's been going on!

I finally finished this little study though:

 

In the final, much larger piece, she'll be looking down at what's in her hands, but so far I'm the only one who knows what she's holding! (This one's gouache + pencil on a board that's roughly A4 in size.)

So yes, posts from now on will be more often than once a fortnight. I'll even post again before August!! Ha.

Thanks for stickin' around.

Study #2

I'm still preparing my bigger boards so I've started another face study to keep things moving.

Not that I'm going to do a study of every face, but it's good fun for the moment while I'm working out angles, colours, etc.

I still have to finish those last two birds though. At the moment they're still ghosts! I should get onto them next.