I now have a website

I finally have a website!  https://www.sandraeterovic.com/ was made using a Squarespace template, manipulated to my wishes by the marvellous Nic McGuffog.  It showcases highlights of my illustration, art and craft work over the last eight years.  I feel proud when I look at it, which is helpful.

I do still love my blog, although I feel that there are far fewer people looking at it now.  Most of the noise is over at Instagram.  Instagram is great for instant gratification, but blogs are way better for telling a story.  (Websites too, come to think of it....!)

I will still post here from time to time.

Random goings on lately

Above: Gardening Australia magazine, March.  Some blooms seem to spring out suddenly, like a Jack-in-the-box!

 Above: This ideas woman is in my Etsy shop, I decided to rephotograph her in a more minimalist(!) setting.

 Above: a detail from a painting which I will tell you more about soon.

 Above: my studio in Tatanja Ross's wonderful book Thank you for Having Me!  More details here.

Above: the Lonely Hipster cushion looking quite eerily like a real bloke on my bed the other day....
(He is the last one in that particular style, by the way.)

New in the shop

New things in my Etsy shop this week.

Above: the first of my new series of burning houses, all based on dwellings found around Melbourne.  This one is in Princes Hill, and is actually a group of flats.  (I have been criticised for depicting houses on fire.  Fear not: the flame is metaphoric.)

Above: I am in a wintry mood at the moment.  A slightly glum librarian, wearing a fair isle jumper seemed the right subject for this particular vintage bat.  (Thanks again The Earwig!!)

 Above: in the meantime, this stripey number seemed to call out for a handsome African Pitta.  I am continuing my fascination with metallic paint in the hope that its glow will keep me warm in my cold studio, and make my humble bats seem a little glamorous. SOLD.

Above: a wooden Mortadella Man.  I always enjoy working with food.  He may be the first in a series.

Above and below: wooden books, somewhat larger than actual size.  A 1970s hardback edition of Thomas Hardy's Far From the Madding Crowd, and a vintage paperback edition of Carson McCullers' The Heart is a Lonely Hunter.

They can all be found here.

Working in the cold

 Yesterday's lunch, above.

Above: a wooden bat painted gold with flowers.  (SOLD.)
I enjoyed painting a humble bat with fancy metallic paint and will make another soon.

New bedroom decor, above and below.  Joan of Arc guards my side of the bed, with her copy of Far From the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy.  Upon The Beloved's request, his hero Charles Darwin guards the other side, while reading The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers.  (I will be keeping the guards employed here for now but the painted wooden books will be in my Etsy shop by the end of June.)

Above: a happy detail from a relatively large and intricate artwork that I have been working on.

 Above: a small portrait that I painted recently for Open Room in Malvern.

Above: Gardening Australia magazine editorial illustration.  The potting shed has become a plant crypt.

The last couple of weeks

Hello!  Recently I had the great pleasure of working on a book cover for Text Publishing: Iris and the Tiger by Leanne Hall.  The little portraits shown here are just a few of those which will be featured on the front and back covers.  I also worked on black and white chapter heading illustrations, which were lovely to do, too.  The book will be released in January, but can be pre-ordered here.

 HOORAY!  Calendar girl for November!  My illustration for the Frankie magazine calendar, 2015, above.

Above: Another wooden figure for my exhibition at Boom Gallery, Newtown (Geelong) starting this Friday November 5.  Egg Woman!

Painted bats for Modern Times, above and in progress, below.  Thanks again go to Miss Pen for being so thoughtful and finding these for me in Tasmania!)

Dark coloured backgrounds are so effective but such a pain in the butt to paint!  You always need at least two coats, sometimes three.

My wooden volcano on TV!!!!  Richard Corser and Sarah Snook in The Beautiful Lie, ABC1.  The couple stares into their sleeping child's room, their lives about to change forever....  (Boom!)

 Above: a very LARGE pile of dinosaurs for Modern Times.....

And more work for Boom Gallery, above and below: No.1 Ideas Woman (a double sided self portrait) and Berliner Pho, a dedication to a strange and wonderful bowl of the stuff that I had in Berlin: a Vietnamese-German hybrid.  I LIVE for that sort of cross cultural food.

Above: an illustration for Jean-Paul Gagnon, a political philosopher specialising in democratic theory, who has been writing about democratic social structures in the animal and plant kingdom.  This illustration will be on The Conversation soon.

The last couple of weeks....

Hello!  I have been busy working on a lovely illustration project that I can't show you yet, and preparing for my show at Boom Gallery which starts on November 5.  I will have a big strange family of wooden figures, and five conventionally rectangular shaped paintings in the show.  Above: a wooden figure in progress.

Details of two conventionally shaped paintings that I have been working on for the show.  Above: Attitude Sofa, based on a billboard that I saw recently going up on the corner of Bridge and Punt Roads in Richmond.  Below: Rotherwood Street, 5pm, part of a series based on scenes I have witnessed while peering through windows in my neighbourhood.

Above: Meet Sidney Nolan in the window of my favourite bookshop, Readings, in Carlton!!!  YAY!!!!  It's next to the Alice Oehr illustrated The Little Book of Australia's Big Things, which makes it even better.

Above: this month's artwork for Gardening Australia magazine, minus a little seed-strewing figure, which I painted separately but now cannot find......

Hotels & magazines

No I am not presently in a hotel reading a magazine, much as it sounds like a very fine idea.  Instead, I am very proud to be able to show you an event that my work is presently part of, above.  'Etsy at The Cullen' is an entire penthouse hotel suite temporarily decked out in artwork and products from Australian Etsy sellers.  A fantastic idea, beautifully realised.  Above: my Flame and Bed Strange Fellows, by the bed.  Of course.  For details on the concept and other items, please click here.  

Above: Fete magazine, Issue No. 10: a feature on Lucy Feagins' Open House 2014, including an entire wall of my painted bats and other items, on the right.

Above: Inside Out magazine, April 2015.  My Girl Wearing Beret portrait print appeared courtesy of the wonderful people at Modern Times.

......I'm really happy to be able to show you not one -- but two! -- magazines in which my work has been featured this month.  Fete and Inside Out, above.  There is something about magazines -- to me it still seems like an incredible honour to have been included in one, even though their power has been diminished in the face of online media.  Maybe it's a sign that I'm old, and it's an old dream that comes true every time my work is in print.  Or maybe it's the fact that I can put these magazines away and look at them in twenty years' time and still feel proud.
(Quite a different feeling to looking at an old blog article.  The internet and email as artefacts: something I have been pondering lately, and I'm sure I'm not the only one.)

Around the place in the last month!

Good morning......This is where I am sitting right now.  I apologise for my blog absence, it is mostly because I have been working on a big project that I am not really able to share with you yet.

I have been trying to decide whether to put the (rather heavy plywood) painting of my lounge room in my lounge room.  I had it propped up against the wall for a few days.  And then a storm hit, and I thought it best to take it down.

Black and white Pete.

The inside of a worm.  (Colours not correct.)

Bird and flowers.  Inspired by a vintage fabric design.

 I have been working on illustrations for a children's book!!!  I have been enjoying the experience very, very much.  These tiny details are all I can show you for now, unfortunately.  I am looking forward to being able to show you the whole thing.

Gardening Australia magazine illustration, April.  (The glove was later changed to charcoal grey in Photoshop.)