I was just clearing up my art equipment for the day’s activities, and I couldn’t resist one last little go with the Big Chungus, so here are some baby birds of paradise.
By the way, writing the plural for Bird-of-paradise reminded me of seeing the stage play Shadowlands about C. S. Lewis and Joy Gresham. I remember laughing at the bit where Lewis debates whether he should be ordering gin and tonics or gins and tonic. This is just the sort of thing that delights my brain. But alas, I’m not sure these work so well as Bird-of-Paradises.
I forgot to give the Spotty-Pyjama-B-O-P a tail. By rights, there should be a stumpy one at least.
Hello Kick-About! I haven’t participated in the longest time. I’ve watched the posts flash by every two weeks. Some of them would have been a challenge indeed, but some of them were right up my alley. I nearly cried to miss ‘Kenojuak Ashevak’. But I haven’t been able to squeeze the Kick-About in.
I’m the Burrow in Adelaide on a writing fellowship during July so the demands on my time are fewer. Saturday seemed like a good day to take a break from the keyboard and play with mixed media. I’ve brought a limited selection of art equipment with me, focusing on dry media and collage to keep it cleaner. But I’ve still managed to make the kitchen table look a lot like my drawing board at home.
A shout out to Zoë Collins who sent me a packet of her gorgeous up-cycled crayons to use several months ago. This is the first chance I’ve had to play with them. They are really an upscaled version of what Ann James calls magic pencils, the multicoloured pencils she used to illustrate the Dirty Dinosaur series of books by Janeen Brian. (When she wasn’t using mud. See this video to watch that!)
On to the paradisaeidae! This is just the family name for the Bird-of-Paradise. And since I seem to have been drawing bird people for the longest time, it couldn’t be a more perfect prompt for a one day session using crayons, pencils and collage. It does occur to me that these pictures are equally suited to the previous Kick-About prompt ‘Chinelos’ and I seem to have blended the two in a sneaky way.
I started with the chungus crayons because I was very curious to use them. I had a ball with them. Part of their appeal is the letting go of control that goes with them. As you apply them, the colour changes, so it takes you to unexpected places. And letting go of control is about the best thing you can do if you are taking just one morning out to play with art materials. I started randomly colouring a bird shape and let it form itself as I went along. I soon felt the need of black, which wasn’t in my crayons, so I introduced soft pastels.
To give the bird a bit of dynamism I made it hurry forwards looking furtively over its shoulder. Apparently my subconscious was dwelling in the venal world of politics, elections, the patriarchy, and the progress of the Far Right, because my bird was evolving into a pompous creature, over-dressed, clutching at his medal of office whilst walking though a field of smoke and with blood on his feet! My subconscious has opinions, apparently. At least the Tories are out. Below is the unfinished collage, with pieces not yet glued down.
However, in terms of colour there was no focal point, so although I was enjoying the texture interactions, I started to overlay further collage pieces over sections of the bird, and ended up by cutting him away from his background. This is what he ended up looking like.
I think my subconscious was happy to have got him out of its system by this time, so I moved on to these little sketches that I had dashed off as soon as I read the Kick-About prompt earlier. My plan was to overlay digital collage on to them and to make them look like quirky dancers or mummers of some sort. They’re generally much more cheerful.
I made a bit of versatile colour and texture to clad them, using soft pastels and Posca pens. I made sure I had both light and dark areas. And then I simply dressed them up in PhotoShop without fussing too much. Mission completed!
Firstly, an update. I’m fortunate enough to be in Adelaide for the month of July courtesy of the May Gibbs Children’s Literature Trust to undertake a Creative Time Residential Fellowship. I was awarded a Mary Wilson Fellowship, and was supposed to undertake it last year, but we had a few serious health and wellbeing issues in our family at that time and the Trust was kind enough to squeeze me in for this year instead. The Fellowship is named after Mary Wilson, a patron of the trust who has been involved since its inception in 1989 and is passionate about our natural environment, so projects undertaken should have a significant environmental theme. My original intention was to write a non-fiction picture book about an Australian animal, but things have shifted slightly since my application back in May 2022, and instead I find myself writing a verse novel about tadpoles.
One of my other projects is a picture book with a climate theme, but I’m a bit scared of that one. Last time I worked on it the most devastating ear worm attacked me with a doggerel rhythm, and I couldn’t shake it off. I’m scared the worm will attack again, so I’m postponing that project until I’ve gained some writing muscle over the next week or so. I’ve been doing all sorts of keyboard push-ups in preparation. If that worm attacks I will be prepared.
I also made this note for myself and stuck it on the wall. It hasn’t completely worked yet.
The colour photo is by Melisa Savickas
I’ll be doing a bit of teaching while I’m in Adelaide. This workshop is at the State Library. If you’re local to Adelaide, you can click the image to read more about it or make a booking. Below is the delightful Norwood Library. I scooted out to join it the day after I arrived. I can’t survive without a library membership.
So that’s the first thing. The second is that my son Hugo is creating a website for me – a task I have been meaning to get to for years. So this blog will jump across to the website when it’s ready.
I suspect that readers who have subscribed with their email address will be transported across the techno-wilderness and stay on the mailing list. Those WordPress users who follow using the WordPress follow function will probably drop off. So if you still want to hear from me and you haven’t subscribed with an email address, you can do that now, or do it later on at my new website.
I’m planning on having two options. My blog will be about things I have been working on. My newsletter will be occasional notifications of upcoming book releases or exhibitions, for those who are interested in purchasing or attending.
Which brings me to the third thing. For those of you who are in the vicinity of Sydney, the Incognito Art Show is coming up very soon! I am quite envious of those who can visit this show in person. It looks like quite an occasion, judging from photos of previous years. And having gone through the artwork on-line (which takes a while!) I can attest that there are STACKS of fantastic postcard sized artworks up for grabs. They are all at the one price of $100. The screenshots below from the Incognito Instagram account give you an idea of what the walls will look like.
ScreenshotScreenshot
The fun part is that all works are incognito until after purchase. You can read all about it here. And you can register your name on the website to create a wishlist of your favourites here. The best thing of all is that all proceeds go to supporting artists living with a disability.
I’ve currently got over 150 saved in my wishlist, so that says a lot about my inability to make decisions, but also a lot about the gloriousness of the artwork. And I’m not telling ANYONE what my favourites are, because the people who attend in person get first dibs, and I’ll only be in with a chance when the online sale goes live after the in person sale days.
I have three artworks in the show. I can’t show you what they look like of course. But for those who like puzzles, I am including a greyed out version of my artworks with little windows cut into the grey. If you can work out which art is mine from this, you are nothing short of a genius. I’ve only been able to find one of mine on the website so far, and I know what they look like.
Mystery artwork 1 Mystery artwork 2
13/7/24 I’ve updated to add the actual artwork for this one which has just sold. Titled Family Group. Mixed media A5 size. So many bird people. Where do they all come from?
Mystery artwork 3
Believe it or not, I will post again tomorrow, because today I took a day off writing and made some art with limited materials, for the Kickabout! But also because I miss my blog, and I’m a bit disheartened by social media. Cheerio until tomorrow!
Here’s a bonus dog-bird doodle. My dog people and bird people finally met in the middle.
Judy Watson 