Siren is also the name of Tara Moss's new book

Tara Moss is not only a great looking model, she is an exciting writter ... her latest book is out in australia today. Its called Siren not sirenS ... haven't read it yet but who could resist with a teaser like this -

ENTER A WORLD OF BEAUTY AND DANGER, OF FRENCH CABARET AND TERRIBLE REVENGE

girls drawing back

I don't always get my way, sometimes my subjects get cheeky ...take my pencils and sketchbook and draw themselves or friends ... who am I to argue?

venus reclining

venus reclining,
originally uploaded by sigh clone.

This is another sketching exercise ... my skills at taking the video haven't improved ...not up to YouTube quality just yet ... but hopefully ot lets you see what I do ...how i work the washes ... and my mistakes and errors ...and the feeble attempts to fix them ... but most of all i want you to see feel the image coming together ...it takes about 5 minutes but i have made sure the video is small enough to be low-bandwidth friendly ... sketched from the natural curves group on flickr ...its a private group but if you are nicely you can join

wow ...i'm worth something!

Not sure why I even checked ... but you can even get a quote on the value of your web site ... is it the indepth content that brings the crowd? ... ok maybe its just the boobs :)

My site is worth$2,696.6Your website value?

Wet & Overcast & Sketching

I did ask if anyone wanted to be illustrated on twitter... but only one reply and that was probably a bot ...so I returned to flickr for yet another torso challenge in watercolour.

sirens

The painting "The Crucified Venus" cause a real stir back a long while ago in Australia. Some of the controversy is covered in the film Sirens

Sirens (1994) - The best free videos are right here

This is a good film ...much more to it than just the speculation of seeing elle naked ...have we really progressed very far? ...is good art recognized? ..must nudity be always confused with pornography? ...are religious images sacrosanct? ...or was Norman just a naughty boy?

ear ear (again)

who could not help being a bit distressed at a gory item wrapped in newspaper ...not a gift of love that I think anyone would like to have to accept? poor rachel!

just had a massive argument with some fellow artists about the Kaufmann claim that gaugain cut off van gogh's ear ...it wasn't about the ear abd who did it, over who and why? so much as what was the deeper disturbance between the two artists. Van gogh insisting (quiet rightly) that art needs to be grounded in what we see ...landscapes need to be painted in plein air ...while gaugain insisted (maybe just to rattle van gogh) that it was the artist imagination that made the picture ... the artist just needed to be inspired ...and then his mind could do the rest ...it was me against everyone, the rest of the world maybe ...but i was adamant that your need to have the visual reference ...studies from life ...that what makes for a great nude ... then I was called a hypocrite and deluded ...you see I often sketch from photos or direct from the computer screen ...but isn't that also a visual reference ...ok I know I'm outnumbered, but i still think vincent was onto something.

not getting out of line

I haven't been drawing as much as I'd like ...for a start I don't like the cold and I prefer to sketch & paint on the deck ...but the health fiascoes of the past few months have slowed me down ...but i know i need to get back in the saddle and keep the mark making, marking marks, making lines and making shades .. just making stuff ...keeping the eye hand coordination subliminal not labored ...art is as much about seeing as actually making the lines ...that is why I need to sketch

“People only see what they are prepared to see.”

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

not seeing eye to eye

its not funny, its art

poor bianca, she doesn't get art ... or is it us ;)

sketching from flickr (again)

circumstance has conspired to restrict the amount of time i have spent sketching ... yet i yearn for the challenge of analyzing the tone and composition ... coordinating my hand and eye ...letting my arm feel the turns and gestures ...have my brain distill the colours and how to build the washes ...watercolour take practise ... and what better way to tune the skill than to paint a delicious tease from flickr ... merci elli

Shut up you are making me hungry

Melbourne has always been a food obsessed place ... not in a bad way, just savy about food, fresh ingredients, rich cultural diversity and tastes, a decent restaurant culture from the simple (eg the age's cheap eats) to the ridiculously opulant (and they get no free advertising from me) but lately the conversations äre becoming very focused ... and its because of a TV show ... masterchef ...everyone is watching ...it eclipsed the michael jackson saga here, more popular than the current sporting draw cards the tour de france and the ashes (that's true cricket to the heathens and we have started poorly I'm afraid) ...something more important than sport is so un-melbourne! ... then tonight little george let the cat out of the bag with two four letter words FOOD PORN ... yes that's what we all need to stop thinking about the global financial crisis, tax and other bad stuff

Don't get me wrong this is not wanton GLUTTONY or depraved use of edible items in exploitative sexual acts, it is the thrill we get about imagining our next meal ...we need to be excited about eating, it is a survival instinct, and you don't just need TV to do that ....I belong to a food porn group on flickr and I have noticed a lot of tweeters post photos of what they eat, MegaNom has a particularly delicious tastes ... the only problem I have with all this is ...damn am I hungry

Beaux Gestes

Most often I get questioned about what is my style and where did it come from. I don't paint like my cartoons and I don't paint like the artists I admire (eg Gauguin) ... so where does my style start ...my theory is it is is not a conscious thing, it is much more physical it comes from the interaction of my eye and hand ... and it very much related to how I hold the brush and flex and bend my arm ... i don't paint in a slow considered way ... it don't even use pencil construction lines any more ... i just pick up the brush .. mix the colour and dab it here and there, my hand just does it guided by my o copy, but I eye but not its slave ... my mind and ego are looking away distracted ...music helps ... ok i do work from photos or a computer screen a lot so that is already resolving the perspective and giving a two dimensional thing to copy, ... but to be honest I look more at the tone than the lines ...confusing isn't it ...I struglle to explain it just love to do it. Four or fire gesture sketches and I'm away in the creative place, time, logic and sensibility vanish, this is a place of colour and emotion and .... and... no one knows until the wash drips of the brush as it flicks this way and that.

Like ideas & words, gestures have a life of their own.
Laurence Wylie

Curves on Curves

Pencil Sketch on normal bond paper

Iranians can longer see the twitterverse

What you will see in Iran when You try to use twitter today!

The story of twitter(so far)

This wonderful illustration is from monolith's article that begins

...Twitter, Twitter, Twitter. Seems every where you turn these days that little blue bird is staring you right in the face

Are you part of the Twitpocalypse?

remember neda

remember neda, originally uploaded by sigh clone.

Remember Neda ...even with an offoicial ban on "public" mourning ...and even if the truth gets "officially" shredded!

Neda ...a needless murder

neda ...a needless murder, originally uploaded by sigh clone.

The murder of a young teenage girls, out watching the crowd with her father (apparently not joining in the protest) is a horrible and callous act. The anguish of a doctor trying desperately to help her. The fact that it was caught on video and posted on YouTube does means now the whole world knows. But will the world remember? Have we forgotten east timor already?

I would like other artist to capture their feeling of this event, and like picasso did for guernica leave some powerful images, and other works so the world can not forget.

We need peace not more bloodshed.

about counting votes

counting my vote, originally uploaded by sigh clone.

My view is that the depth and size of the responses to the elections in Iran, have caught politician on all side out ... well off guard ... with not the slightest idea of how to respond .. which is good. it may mean they listen to the people ... BUT I am worried that peace and truth will be the next casualties.

The movement may not last past friday prays, I worry that we will see east timor all over a gain ...my fear is the Basij & maybe security forces loyal to Ahmadinejad may run amok .. The slogan will change from "Where is my vote?" to "Who can we trust?"

From afar we need to keep public the message that people have a right to see their votes counted, we should not meddle in who the vote is for.

Support Iran Protests! #Iranelection

Support Iran Protests! #Iranelection
Originally uploaded by harrystaab

There are now about 900 entries on flickr, but many duplicates, related to protest and demonstration in support of free elections in Iran

Congratulations to the many, mainly young folk, who are posting so the world can see.

Truth is the first casuality

Things may be already getting very nasty in Iran, these are just kids, and it is worth noting that a lot of mis-information may be already circulating, even on twitter and blogs.



Those still with net access will be working hard to get the truth out.

SO 2) don't dilute the conversations
2) those tweeting could be putting themselves in grave danger
2a) don't post ISP address or twitter names etc
2b) Become an honorary Iranian, this will overwhelm any clandestine attempt to locate tweeters by the Iranian "security" force (& the feared Basij malitia)
3) follow the hasthags like #iranelections or search for "where is my vote"
4) try to source your news from reliable source (eg SBS Australia's assessment of the situation)

return to the two minute torso

I have returned to this simple painting exercise to try and get my washes flowing more freely (... i eneed up letting them get way too wet) and my tonal balance back (I want rich glowing skin tones again) ... it just practice but practice makes perfect doesn't it?

"Art washes from the soul the dust of everyday life.” -- Picasso.

its all in there

I have long admired Helmut Newton's delicious black and white photos of sensual and erotic women, what i didn't realize was he was living and moving in the same haunts of Melbourne, he as a refuge, as I have the privilege to inhabit now. better still i have just discovered he was also a follower of the new objectivity, a movement that developed in Germany before world war II out of and in opposition to expressionism. Here was Helmut working away as a fashion photographer developing his skill and style at the same time the angry penguins where ramming expressionism justaposed with surrealism down the establishments through. Who said art was boring?

The point of my photography has always been to challenge myself, to go a little further than my Germanic discipline and Teutonic nature would traditionally permit me to.

Public art is not immune

Seems it not just in cyberland that art is a little misunderstood, covered in grafiti spray, stolen and melted down (This allegedly happened to a Henry Moore sculpture) focus of public scorn or removed on health and safety grounds

The Art Fund, in London, recently hosted a debate entitled "Can The Public Be Trusted to Choose Public Art?"

Will true art become another causality of the cliches of fear an uncertainty that some call the global financial crisis? I hope not. I hope that artist make art despite what others tell them to do. But more importantly I hope that they can sell their art and not have it stolen, defaced, or degraded my indiscriminate exploitation.

L'art pour l'art

"L'art pour l'art" translates roughly into art for art sake (same name as the 10cc song) is the true bohemian anthem, art is valuable and worthwhile because it is art, political correctness, moral correctness, functional and value for money are just sentimental concepts that can obscure the truth in art. Why then are the interwebz so filled with crosslinkings, embeddings, mash-ups and RT (retweets) ...is this copycatting just straight theft disguised as homage ... do people have so little to occupy their minds that they have run out of originality after just 400ish characters (approximately three tweets)... surely with our ability to share over the net we should see creativity blossoming ... but has originality and beauty been stuck back with things hand drawn ... I for one hope not ....i just don't know how to tackle the great blandness and formalized sameness (me-too-ism) spreading through the social media sites ... worse is the blatant copying, or plagiarism ... or as I am coming to believe just simple theft!

garden is a metaphor

I have been told that the garden is a metaphor for life ... many times ... I never understsood what was the point ... but this humble leaf stopped me in my tracks ... made me rethink ... reminded me I could so easily whither (and die) ... damn that is a metaphor I don't want to know about ... roll on spring and the new growth ... the rejuvination

macabre message?

I'm still under the weather and struggling to get the art stuff happening today was a lovely day ...i wanted to draw beautiful and exotic fruit and flowers ... ok I tried but the looked like crap ... then the fullness of the apples turned into sculls .. the macabre stuff looked way more beautiful ...i trust I am no turning into an Edgar Alan Poe

Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing, doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before.

ear ear

The theory that Gaugain was the one that actually cutoff Van Gogh's Ear is quite believable. Gaugain was skilled at fencing and the pair were quarreling a lot and had basically fallen out at the time of the incident. However there does seem a lot of sensationalism, for example, the speculation that they were fighting over a prostitute, would they really make a secret pact to keep the incident quiet, how secret can you keep it when you give your ear away? And wrapped up like a gift? How many destitute artists carried swords at night in 1888? the other medical issues poor Vincent suffered. All a bit too conspiracy theory-ish for me in the end.

"Near the brothel, about 300 metres from the Yellow House, there was a final encounter between them: Vincent might have attacked him, Gauguin wanted to defend himself and to get rid of this 'madman'. He drew his weapon, made some movement in the direction of Vincent and by that cut off his left ear." Kaufmann said it was not clear if it was an accident or an aimed hit.

Painting @ElliGirl

Watercolour on paper

Prevention is better than cure

palomita 7, originally uploaded by eduardo.delabarra.

back in the light

sorry if i have disappointed any regular readers with my extended absence I have been in a dark and unpleasant place, full of sick people, a place you are supposed to mend but it is souless and impersonal, and with the health scares related to H1N1 (notice I didn't use the pig word) many people may also regret being taken to such a place ... so my advice don't panic, eat and sleep well, and stay in the light.


Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint. ~Mark Twain

gestures sketches

gestures sketches, originally uploaded by sigh clone.

having been "out of action" for a what seems likes mopnths but may have jut been a week, I find myself muddling around and just pushing paint ... so I wanted to get some spontaneity back ... so i've changed to a new sable dagger brush and a simple wash or two ... but i am focusing on gesture ... gesture of my brush strokes

life following art

knowing a little bit about anatomy, doesn't help you stay healthy, but some knowledge always helps ... just a little understanding can ease pain, visualize things and give you a longer term view ... to be able to fix something you need to know how it works ... by these mechanics are soulless, often cruel and painful ... the soul need beauty and light

“Without art, the crudeness of reality would make the world unbearable.” George Bernard Shaw

stop by and have a coffee

As well helping out as a real barista, i've been playing with a new web 2.0 toy thingo .. called digsby, not sure how to describe it but is sits on my computer and monitors my social network stuff (ok not flickr) but it has a neat little widget (its down on the right a bit) that gives me a little chat window ...so i've made it into a virtual cafe, where you can order coffee, or anything really, and have a chat (it know when i'm online and when I'm not) ... so stop by and say hello

some pencil work

soft pencil on paper

How sweet it is

I have been thinking about using honey as a paint medium ... yes it does make a really sticky transparenty mess by itself ... but then i read this, and tried adding some bricklayers oxide (used to colour mortar and cement) ... the honey takes up the oxide beautifully and it dilutes done to some a wonderfully natural colour ... the washes take a while to dry but that only makes it better to work with ...i think i am onto something wonderful here, but like so many of my discoveries the old master where onto to all this ages ago.

new palette

pastel over watercolour wash on paper
I've decided I needed to change my watercolour pallette, both the palette itself (the new one is a lot bigger) an the colours, with a cool and warm version of each of the primary colours. my aim is to get better washes under skin tones. whilst this sketch is finished with pastel the underpainting is watercolour washes in my primaries 9see the bar/test strip at the top of the sketch. indian, red, crimson and ultra marine all very dilute ... then some cad yellow in with the indian red as a slightly heavbier glaze

the radiant rose

pastel over watercolour wash on paper

loving the feel of pastels

i showed a couple of artist mates the open shirt ... and we quickly got in a deep technical discussion about using pure pigments over a wash ground ...and the importance of the pastel pigments, and their bindings ...ok i wont bore you ...what i discovered is already well known ... pure pigment pastels, and being australian, i use naturally art spectrum range, over a coloured ground is essentially mixing the colour on the art work itself .. it adds to the vibrancy ...mixing the same colours in paint on a palette first tends to muddy the colour, the more contributing colours in the mix, the more media used the duller the resulting colour. Using thin washes and glazes of one colour over another is another way to achieve this but no where near as rich as the pure pigment results



ok i'm not claiming to be einstien or anything ... its just nice to be able to understand why and how the colour works ... so here are a couple of videos I found on You Tube to verify that what I stumble onto is legit art, and already know by the real artists ...maybe its a my right of passage, or something similar, into secret artist business ... as Gauguin once said with the research comes the ecstacy and satisfaction of art