How a picture came to be

This post is for my dear writer friend Kate Constable, with whom I was recently discussing parallels between the process of writing a story and the process of making a picture. We decided that there were many. But I wonder whether anything important gets lost in the process sometimes? Above: the final Lady and Egg. Below: the initial sketch. I doodle sometimes, a relatively new habit, but one which always gleans at least one little creature worth dignifying on its own in a more "finished" medium rather than just remaining on a page of numerous biro scrawls.

Below: the first attempt at a "finished" picture, done using a fountain pen with pencil over the top. I thought that it looked too laboured, especially the egg yolk, which seemed too dark.

... I'd be interested to know which of these three pictures people like best -- the one that I consider to be the "finished" one -- the simplified one with the green background (top) -- might not necessarily be the one that viewers connect with. Let me know!

I have also been admiring the work of the French artist/illustrator Marie Delafon lately. I wonder whether I was thinking of her work while I was doodling that day?

A wall disguise courtesy of Melway's

I am again taking part in a game started by Pip Lincolne over at Meet Me at Mike's. This week, the theme is roughly this: what makes your place noice, different or unusual? (Of course this to be pronounced in Kath and Kim style.) I might have photographed my entire house for this post, being a 100 year old weatherboard place with all sorts of cracks, quirks and patch up jobs everywhere. However I decided that I was most proud of this particular disguise for my half painted and pock marked kitchen wall: an extremely large polystyrene board on which I have glued the entire eastern section of an old Melway's*: from Warrandyte to Fawkner in the north down to Dandenong and across to Black Rock in the south. People quite admire it. It also serves the purpose of actually helping to work out where you're going occasionally.

* two copies of the Melway's are actually required for this little project. A random patchwork of pages would look good too, although it might be very confusing for out-of-town visitors. Spare pages also make nice wrapping paper, I have found. Especially for out-of-town visitors.

By the way, the theme this week was dreamt up by Toni from Little Suitcase.

Knitting Frenzy Part I

I have doing ALOT of knitting lately -- highly recommended in times of stress! This bag is the first result. The deer is a traditional Swedish motif that I found in a book, the little people holding hands are from my mum's old German sewing magazines. I had a short sleeved sweater with these motifs on them when I was a kid (in lemon and lime: it was the 70's) and I have loved them ever since. I've used lots of beautiful Australian and New Zealand wool and wool blend yarns which are soft but sturdy and highly recommended to work with. The bag is lined in beautiful vintage cotton which I found at The Chapel Street Bazaar. It's modelled here by my beautiful sister-in-law Esme in my father's garden (soon to be featured on Vasili's, by the way).

It is available in my etsy shop. The bag, that is.

A tiny part of my vintage scarf collection

Details of some of my favourite vintage scarves, above. Apologies as usual for my mediocre photographic skills. My criterion for a collectible scarf is largely subconscious: if it grabs my eye and doesn't look too much like something I already have (e.g. Italian tourist scarves) then I grab it! As it happens, looking at this little bunch I can see some common themes emerging: a certain level of kitsch, maps and travel themes, bright colours and a simple illustrative quality. The final one is my favourite: a relatively large Jacqumar London scarf commemorating the QEII, which according to last August's The World of Interiors may well be worth a couple of pretty pennies. Or it would be if I hadn't blu-tacked it to the hallway wall one summer and stained its corners permanently. I love it too much to part with it anyway.

This post is part of an ongoing game over at the lovely Meet Me at Mike's, which anyone is welcome to take part in. This week's theme of collections was dreamt up by Kate at Fox's Lane.

Working 9 - 5: Painted Eggs

Above: I designed these A G E S ago and couldn't wait to show them here, and now that they have arrived in stores for the Christmas toy rush, I can. They are small handpainted wooden eggs that make a lovely sound when you shake them. Below: the artwork which was sent to China for the manufacturers to interpret in three dimensions. I think that they did a good job. (There was a fourth design -- a flower -- which was deemed boring by the higher powers and cancelled.)

Lessons in Australiana!

An important lesson about Australia for foreign readers of this blog (hello dear cousins!). Here, kangaroos deliver our strawberries...

Butterflies guard our homes (this one is quite close to mine actually)...

Pineapples help us to see...

...and our ubiquitous tomato sauce comes via a koala.

The last three images are from Barry Humphries' Treasury of Australian Kitsch, Melbourne, 1980 (though most of the images in the book seem at least ten years older). This book is out of print as far as my brief internet investigation has gleaned. Why, oh why?!

Hans and Huey

Above: Gustav and Franz now have a rather poetic little brother called Hans, who bravely asks "Do you believe in love?" inspired by the 1982 song lyric by Huey Lewis and the News. Click here to watch the video -- I know you want to.

January 7 addition: my little band of brothers are visiting a beautiful blog called Enhabiten, based in New Hampshire. They are very pleased with themselves!

My Secret Weapon!

I am taking part in a game started by Pip Lincolne over at Meet Me at Mike's. This week, players have been asked by My Bricole to share their special creative weapon. Mine has to be my beloved copy* of Auguste Racinet's The Costume History, first published in the 1870's. A seemingly endless, enormous treasure trove of people, costumes and cultures that I open at random pages regularly and always find something that intrigues me. There's nothing to beat the colour, pattern, detail, interaction between the figures, oddity and variety of human glory that it documents with Victorian zeal. And when I feel that I have been too saturated by this dip into history, I go for something cooler, like Vitamin D. But when I want to go back to the endless glories of human culture, I go back via (Un)FASHION by Tibor and Maira Kalman. Brilliant!

* Until recently I had been borrowing the E N O R M O U S copy of Racinet held by the City Library in Melbourne. Do NOT attempt this unless you have a wheelbarrow. I found my (smaller) copy at The Brunswick Street Bookstore, and it was pretty well priced as Taschen is celebrating an anniversary this year.

Gustav the Little Wooden Man

Above: presenting Gustav, brother of the previously posted Franz. My obsession with the strangely proportioned little German doll continues. In addition to that obsession, Gustav gets to have another manifestation of one of my great loves: Scandinavian/Spode inspired blue and white decoration. He is quite a profound little fellow, containing in his body both a blue citrus fruit tree and and entire landscape. Perhaps I am becoming the hippie I have always threatened (my mother) that I would become. Om!!!!

Movember is in full swing!

So Movember is in full swing! By the second week you can really start sorting the men from the boys, from bum fluff shadows to the full plush handlebars. However, I myself will always prefer cheap wine and a three day growth.

...Yep, even Barnsey was once a young spunk.

Franz the Little Wooden Man

Above: meet Franz, the Little Wooden Man. He is based on an early 19th century cloth doll which I found in a book a long time ago. I have always been charmed and intrigued by his strange proportions and I thought that I would have to use them as inpiration for something one day: whether it be a drawing, object or even an ongoing character. Franz is the first fruit of that exploration, and I don't think that he'll be the last. I have put him up for sale in my etsy shop and I feel a little sad as I am quite fond of him. But hopefully he will have all sorts of brothers one day who will visit me, if only briefly. And I kind of like the idea of him going to live somewhere exotic. In the meantime I badly need to improve my photography skills...

Mirrors from my Etsy shop

A selection of mirrors from my newly opened Etsy shop! They measure 18 cm across and are all hand painted using acrylic, then varnished. I really enjoyed painting these little mirrors, especially choosing images from books like Auguste Racinet's Complete Costume History and Bernhard Roetzel's oddly named Gentleman: A Timeless Guide to Fashion and various ephemera from both my collection and brilliant sites like this one.

Working 9 - 5: Vacation in Hawaii

A Hawaiian vacation print for Seed. The scenes were all painted separately in watercolour on textured A4 paper. I used colours which were not correct but as contrasting to one another as possible. The pictures were then scanned into Photoshop, and each colour was 'picked out' (made easier as they were contrasting), placed in a different layer and re-coloured until it looked right within that month's range. My favourite image above, and the finished repeat fabric artwork below. The resulting shorts will be posted onto this page in the last week of October.