This week: at the studio and at home

Seedling tag and seed packet painting in progress.

Painting a cut out wooden life size head: like playing God, but also kind of like playing with one of those life size Barbie hairdressing heads that I really coveted when I was a kid.

 Wrapping for an Etsy customer: quite a nice way to use a page from the current issue of Broadsheet...

Studio table in a mess: working on Gardening Australia sketches, portrait sketches, book illustration sketches....

 Spam + Souleiado

Kicking goals while watching the Grand Final yesterday.

I am a finalist in the Etsy Design Awards!

I am extremely happy to announce that my The Hungry Eye illustration has been chosen as a finalist in the Etsy Design Awards.  Whether I deserve to win a trip to New York is arguable, but I know for a fact that I really really really need a holiday!!  If you have a spare moment, please vote for me by clicking this link.  You will also have a pretty good chance of winning a $250 voucher to spend on Etsy yourself.  Thanks very much in advance!

This week: Hut 13 and Gardening Australia

Hello!  This week I painted more table tennis racquets, including this one, which received a surprising number of likes on Instagram.

 Above and below: details of a painting I am working on for the Hut 13 show next month.

Above: I still enjoy looking at this childhood book, The Knowhow Book of Puppets (by Violet Philpott and Mary Jane McNeil, published by Rigby Osborne in 1975) mainly because I love these simple little heads.  The little girl's is actually a pink sponge.

This month's illustration for Gardening Australia magazine was so simple that I almost felt guilty charging for it.  Almost: times like these make up for those months when the work seems to take forever.

Playing with words, snow domes, etc.

 Most of this week has been spent on making work for the Hut 13 show starting mid October.  Above: this one comes from a thought that struck me while I was swimming in the Richmond pool recently on a rather cold winter's night.  The fact that the pool in Richmond is indoors and I was swimming in the slow lane did not deter me from having such a thought.  I took it as a form of psychological progress (i.e. being kind to myself instead of harsh) but really I think it is symptomatic of our culture of self entitlement.
And I put it on a guy's t-shirt so I guess that makes it OK.

Above: I had lunch with the lovely Rob Snarski this week, who gave me this special gift and confirmed that he has never been inside a snow dome before.  I will confirm in turn that my artwork has never been inside a snow dome before either (for a better look at the actual artwork inside the snow dome, pop over here).

I finished a painting which has been sitting idly in my kitchen for over a year.  It is a portrait of my lounge room, and I have just shown a detail of it above.  Trouble is, half of the stuff in the picture wasn't actually there to refer to anymore.  Luckily the Lips Mirror was, so I painted a portrait of the artist reflected into it, kind of in Renaissance style.

And last but not least: I painted this in the kitchen yesterday too.  Spring 1883, the art exhibition held in suites of the Hotel Windsor last month, had many highlights.  Number one for me was hearing someone say "I'm still waiting to be blown away."  I thought it was a very 2014 thing to say, especially as the exhibition was actually pretty damned good.  Self entitlement, huh.

New things for Hut 13 show

Working on some new things for a little show that I will be having at Hut 13 in Richmond next month.  

Mirrors in the shop

Hello!  These hand painted mirrors are now in the shop.