Category Archives: art projects

Mini Masterpieces

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There are only a few hours left to bid on original Australian artworks in the IBBY fundraising auction

Rachel — collage on vintage book board available to buy until 28 Nov 2025

Hello gentle readers. It’s been a while. I’ve just finished a book project, (more on that later) and I’m at the clearing up stage. Putting things to rights in the studio, starting to clear up the house, dipping my toe joyfully into the waters of recreational sewing.

I thought I’d reach out to make sure you’re aware of the IBBY fundraising auction that finishes tomorrow. You can browse all of the items for sale, here. They have been donated by Australian illustrators including me. If you’d like to contribute to this worthy cause, you will need to register to bid, (which is easy), and then go for it! Bidding closes tomorrow 28 November, at 9:00pm AEDT so you don’t have much time.

At the bottom of this post I’ve pasted in a little bit of information about IBBY, so that you can understand why IBBY might be on my radar. They’re all about young people, books for young people and supporting the creators of those books as well. But first, here’s a little background story about these rather unusual artworks.

Anyone who has been following this blog since the very beginning will know that when I started it, I was discovering the joys of altered book art. I was visiting used book fairs, collecting old books, some to read and some to cut up or draw in. After a few years, it seemed to me that altered book art was everywhere; everyone was doing it, and so it interested me less. The simple fact of a drawing being on a book page was not in itself interesting to me any more, although it had been a wonderful breakthrough for me when I was trying to find a medium, style and colour palette for Thunderstorm Dancing. (If you’re curious, go here.)

I still loved the subtle ways in which a drawing could respond to the text on the page, reinterpreting a few words, or taking an ironic look at the subject matter. And found poetry was and still is a delight to me. But I let it recede as my work went in different directions.

Later, I found myself irresistibly attracted to the cloth-covered book boards from vintage hardbound books. I began using them as substrates for drawings and paintings.

Collage has always been an important element in my work, both the paper and scissors kind, and the digital variety. In 2023, IBBY asked me to contribute a mini artwork for their Mini Masterpieces fundraiser and book boards were more or less the right scale. Some playful collages emerged. Below you see Mike, Maxine, Jennifer and Alan. They became my first Party Animals — characters who seemed so alive to me that they virtually wrote their own stories. If you’d like to read their accompanying microfiction stories I now have my Party Animals collected together on their own Instagram page https://www.instagram.com/judywatsoncollage/ and I’ll also add a page for them on this site in the coming weeks. As I make new Party Animals from time to time, they’ll be made available for sale there.

But now to the 2025 IBBY Party Animals!

Rachel and Trent

Trent — collage on vintage book board available to buy until 28 Nov 2025
Rachel — collage on vintage book board available to buy until 28 Nov 2025

These two followed their own stars. They look a little different from the 2023 partiers, but this time, they have been wrapped for travel with their own stories enclosed, so that you will know a little bit about them. I recently purchased a 1970s vintage typewriter, and I’ve been writing poetry on it, but I felt I wasn’t quite up to the challenge of typing their stories to the correct size and without a plethora of errors. Instead, I carefully chose a suitable typeface and printed their stories on good paper.

I also contributed three quick dip pen and ink sketches for the fundraiser. They’re based on reference photos of dogs and their owners that I took at a local pet day. You’ll see them here too. Below is the promised information about IBBY. If you’d like to support a wonderful organisation that supports children and the children’s literature community and if you’d like to purchase an original work of art from one of Australia’s book illustrators, then you can’t go wrong throwing in a bid for one of these artworks. Even if you don’t win the auction, you will bump up the price and help IBBY in the process. Good luck!

About IBBY Australia

IBBY Australia is one of 85 National sections of the International Board on Books for Young People (IBBY), and will be turning 60 in 2026.
IBBY is a non-profit organization which helps to build bridges to international understanding through children’s books. 
IBBY Australia submits authors and illustrators and their work for several IBBY administered international awards, including:
• the Hans Christian Andersen Award
• IBBY Honour Book List
• the Silent Books collection and
• the Outstanding Books for Young People with Disabilities list. 
You can read more about IBBY on this web site: https://www.ibby.org, and about IBBY Australia here: 
https://ibbyaustralia.wordpress.com
or join online here:
https://ibbyaustralia.wordpress.com/join-us/ – we welcome new members!

The Kick-About #125 ‘the Rorschach Test’ (part 3)

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Hello again. Here is my last (I think) post in response to the Rorschach Test prompt from the Kick-About challenge hosted by Phil Gomm. This is my fully analogue response.

This inkblot looks EXACTLY like a lugubrious Long-nosed WhaleFish swimming across the surface of a lake carrying a weird, slightly menacing figure with a smaller figure on its lap.

It looks like that to you too, right?

So I tackled this one with Polychromos pencils and Posca pens. I really wanted it to be travelling left to right (English language picture book illustration is now in my bones), but when I was most of the way through, it looked better up the other way, mainly because of the colour in the water reflection.

I’ve refrained from ‘cleaning up’ the image in PhotoShop in order to remain true to its hand-made inkblottiness. All I did was dot a bit of white Posca pen to some of the more intrusively messy marks. So here it is.

Dogfish with Piebald Child riding a Long-nosed WhaleFish who is Really a Prince Under an Enchantment. If you want to rescue the prince, you’ll probably have to climb a mountain, wearing slippers made of prickly pears, and retrieve a plum from a magic tree that only fruits once every 50 years. Then come back and feed it to the fish… or something. I wish you luck. There’s no guarantee that he’ll be a nice prince when he is human again, so you’d better be on your toes, if you haven’t lost them to frostbite.

Below I’ve flipped the image so that you can compare it with the original ink blot.

The Kick-About #125 ‘the Rorschach Test’ (part 2)

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Hello again. I’m not finished with ink blots for the Kick-About. And I‘m not finished with islands reflected in still water.

It’s not the first time I’ve gone down this road. I remember printing dozens and dozens of icebergs and islands for When You’re Older. In some illustrations I was conflicted because I liked the reflections on the water surface, but I was also enchanted by the creatures underneath the surface.

Question: How to have both in the one illustration?
Answer: Not easily.

But back to the current time! Yes, I did produce something new for this Kick-About prompt. The theme makes me think of (self) reflection, and it seems the world is full of people who see themselves in different ways.

Some don’t like what they see.
Some delight in it.
Some refuse to look at themselves at all.
Some see a version of themself that is invisible to others.
And the opposite is also true.

I sketched 12 small characters with dip pen and ink, to place into a scene of self reflection. Here are a few of them. (below)

Then I printed a few ink blots. A couple really do look like very interesting moths, (I’m not sure what that means about my personality type) and they are begging to be used as collage materials for something else. But they don’t suggest islands to me, so I used the more solid results.

This ink blot on yellow paper is so evocative of a rocky island, that it didn’t need my interference at all. And the yellow just added to the atmosphere. But I wanted to use at least one of my characters, so I added some mist, and background islands, and then put my character in.

I was quite pleased with the result, and I feel for this little creature having an identity crisis, all alone. Although the text is at a scale that would work best on a full page illustration, and is probably illegible at this size.

And then I played with a second character with no background at all. I think this funny little creature is a cousin of the legendary Narcissus, but if you flip the image upside down, you have the more universal experience of looking in a mirror.

Paradisaeidae Pyjama Party

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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.

The Kick-About #110 ‘Paradisaeidae’

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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!

Three things

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Hello gentle followers. It’s been a while.

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.

Screenshot
Screenshot

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.

Hello Kick-About! (#36)

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Look at that! I’ve jumped seamlessly from Kick-About #28 to Kick-About #36 without a single kick!

I was busy there for a while. By putting just about every other thing to one side, I have finished my picture book project for Allen and Unwin, and I’m very excited that I will have an advance copy of When You’re Older in my hands in late November this year. So Hip hip hoorah! But more on that another day. This rather hasty post will be about surrealism and the language of dreams.

The theme is Sheila Legge, seen above in costume in 1936 as a ‘Surrealist Phantom’ in Trafalgar Square to promote the opening of the 1936 International Surrealist Exhibition … Should I call it a costume? Because she is a living work of art, the living embodiment of a Salvador Dali painting Printemps nécrophilique.

I’m sure I’m not the only one to be having vivid dreams and nightmares at the moment. Melbourne is currently still in lock-down while we wait for enough people to be vaccinated against Covid-19 to allow us to step out without swamping hospitals and losing many more lives. Unlike so many others around the world who are facing real danger and hardship, I am here, at home, living in a kind of paradise with a partner in full time work, a roof over my head, a vista of green outside my windows and the company of my family. For all this I am truly grateful. Nevertheless the night time world of my dreams is a wild one – a Rousseau Paradise, rather than a Fragonard. This was even before I started re-reading short stories by Angela Carter and Leonora Carrington… Ahem.

So there’s a coincidence! Just when I was reading the short stories of Leonora Carrington, who met Max Ernst and became involved with the surrealists in 1937 at the age of 20, the Kick-About veered into the very same territory with Sheila Legge.

This book beside my bed… Could it be influencing my dreams?

All I have to offer the Kick-About today is the beginnings of a… something… featuring some bird-headed, flower-headed women. They will possibly eat one another. I may add colour if there’s anything left of them by tomorrow. (growls softly)

The Kick-About #28

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The Kick-about #28 takes a film by Howard Sooley, as a jumping off point. The subject of the film is Derek Jarman’s Prospect Cottage. I loved the film. It is beautifully peaceful. My image, a single one this time, is not very thrilling because it’s simply a rendition of Prospect Cottage, with the garden made even more minimalist, save for a few small creatures dotted about.

I’d love to do more but I haven’t time. However, this little exercise was a useful one for me, in that I was consciously dampening down my rather over-excitable palette, and also practising the careful placement of a few elements in a pared back landscape. Looking at it now, I can see that I haven’t gone far enough with either. But I’ll post it anyway.

And here is Howard Sooley’s lovely short film. Enjoy!

The Kick-About #26

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Time Out! For the twenty-sixth Kick-About Phil Gomm, blogger extraordinaire is celebrating a year of kicking about with artists from around the world.

This fortnight, Phil is doing all the work. He’s assembling a collection of everyone’s favourite kick from our year long kick-about. I participated in less than half of them, so that shouldn’t really be hard, but I’ve travelled down several dark, overgrown roads and I am fond of all of them. Those places of the imagination that are dripping, have hooting noises, and a buzz in the background; where a soft-looking plant will feel unnaturally firm to the touch, or a solid-looking branch will crumple in on itself as you brush by, or turn to look at you and hiss. The light is curious; dim and yet saturating the environment with too much colour.

Below are some of the places I’ve visited over the last year, and though they are dark, there is life. Pulsing with energy. Brimming with potential.

The Girl, the Snake and the Cicada. Girl meets snake.
The Girl, the Snake and the Cicada. Girl meets snake in a full colour forest.
More creepy fairytale imagery: a grotesque fairy, possibly involved in a kidnap.
Part of the settlement at TRAPPIST-1e including some of the local flora and fauna
Metropolis – the Eternal Gardens – the first version, before the women turned into bird people.
Metropolis – the Eternal Gardens with bird people.

Phil, thanks for the kick-about. For some of us, making art is as natural as breathing, and sometimes almost as necessary to life. During a dark time in history, thanks for stimulating art prompts among creative friends, unfettered by constraints, rules or judgement. Freedom to make in any direction. It’s been a joy. And since you want one favourite, I’m selecting the last one. Those Bird Ladies. And I hope they sort themselves out soon and send that bureaucratic penguin back to Antarctica.

The Kick-About #25 ‘The Age of Aquarius.’

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The prompt for Kick-About #25 The Age of Aquarius and it made me think of the song from the stage musical Hair.

I did go briefly down a rabbit hole to look up the meaning of the expression in astrological terms. It’s complex but predictably vague and controversial. The Age of Aquarius may have begun in 2600 BCE, or may have begun in the 20th Century or may be yet to begin. Having grown out of what limited interest I had in astrology years ago, this was not a direction that inspired art. It did lead me to quite an interesting little reading session about hippies, beatniks and the New Age movement of the 1960s and 1970s, but the complexity of this material reminded me of why I was never very good at history in school and why I admire people who are good at history!

But visually, the culture of the ’60s and ’70s is interesting. In fact I already had a digital collage with a psychedelic flavour that I made in November last year after watching the progress of the US elections with horror and dread. I had a powerful craving for the dawn of a new era, and for women to play an important role in it.

In Australia, that thirst for a change of culture, and a redistribution of power is even stronger now. If you’re interested, journalist Leigh Sales talks about it here or there’s a briefer version on her Instagram page here.

This is my November collage. These women are welcoming a new dawn.

But what the heck. I had to make something new just for this prompt. So I decided that peace, love and harmony were the go, but sticking with the a secondary theme of female solidarity and friendship.

When the moon is in the Seventh House
And Jupiter aligns with Mars
Then peace will guide the planets
And love will steer the stars
This is the dawning of the age of Aquarius
Age of Aquarius
Aquarius
Aquarius

Harmony and understanding
Sympathy and trust abounding
No more falsehoods or derisions
Golden living dreams of visions
Mystic crystal revelation
And the mind’s true liberation
Aquarius
Aquarius

And here’s the dawning of the Age of Aquarius being celebrated in a small way between two friends. The moon is definitely in the Seventh House. Need you even ask? It is quite peaceful, but it seems to be darker than the November artwork.

See? Seventh House.

A celebration of female friendship.

Naturally, I did my paper doll technique again. Draw them, then dress them. It never gets dull. I should have given the second woman another arm. But she manages ok without it. (You go, Sister!)

And you can hardly even see the giant pollarded woman in the forest behind them. She represents my anxiety and is taller than the tallest tree. But see how well she hides? She’s kind of cool though. She reminds me of all those centuries old mythical giants in story forests. Sometimes they’re sleeping, and they awake when they’re needed. A bit like anxiety, they have their uses. You just don’t want them hanging around at every party.

Thanks Phil. I’m looking forward to seeing what people choose for the anniversary edition.