Kittys Drawings

Hii!!

Omg omg prepare for some serious fan-girl gushing…

Now when it comes to celebrities and famous people in general, I’m not really the gushy type…However – with artists I admire it’s quite the opposite. So it is with some trepidation and much elation that I look forward to the coming exhibition at Outre Gallery – the one and only Audrey Kawasaki showing her latest work, a collection called Tangled – starting Friday Oct. 22nd (next week!)

So this post is my attempt at scoring a dinner with the artist and the awesome Outre crew
I’m not gonna lie – I want stuff. Not like this blog is filled with ads and sponsored posts anyway So I hope everyone’s okay with me yabbering on about ART for a bit.

I shall begin with giving props to everyone at Outre – Jonny’s been taking photos for them for a little while now – and they’ve always been our first port of call when choosing something to hang on our walls.  All the staff are super friendly and it’s hard to leave the place without wanting to buy almost everything in-store! Not to mention they have the BEST artists. Angelique Houtkamp and Tara McPherson being two other favourites whose opening nights/signings we went to…Jonny took photos – I stood around completely stars-struck and speechless. Pathetic really

So – about Audrey ….Well I can’t remember when I first discovered her work. It must have been either through Outre or via the web somewhere. I became an immediate fan – Everything about her art is perfect to my eyes. Her linework especially is so immaculate and clean – everything flows so neatly and the shapes just sit right. It’s kind of a hard thing to put into words – but the lines capture form and weight so effortlessly. And the hair – oh gosh! If I could draw hair half as well!
I particularly like how in some of her more recent stuff she seems to be loosening up a degree – most noted in the backgrounds which are more textural and abstract. They remind me of the visual static at the edges of dreams – kind of like that hazy soft memory after you’ve woken and can’t quite remember all the details.

See

So delicate and intricate. I love how she renders eyes – sultry and languid and kind of cunning. Awesome.

The other thing we are to write about for this competition, is what we’d suggest Audrey would enjoy in Melbourne. Where do I begin? Melbourne is a fantastic city – I’ve been here 7 years now and there’s always something new to discover. When I first arrived here on a short visit in 2003, it was the first time I’d truly felt at home. And this came to me on the drive into Richmond from the airport! Entirely unusual for someone who’s lived in two countries and both sides of Australia, to come to a foreign city and immediately feel more comfortable than any place before it.
Anyway – Melbs is a haven for the artist – we have more things to entertain the creative mind than you can poke a pencil at. It goes without saying, you can lose yourself for hours in the city’s lane-ways. Almost every seemingly scummy, bin-lined alley has a restaurant, cafe or boutique tucked away if you just look.  Some of my favourite hangouts when in the CBD would be around Degraves St of course. It’s the domain of the posing Hipster but it’s a good spot to have a coffee (Degraves Espresso is your best bet in this area) and just people-watch.  There’s a whole bunch of cute shops around there selling everything from cupcakes to (tasteful) lingerie. I love Kinki Gerlinki and there’s a fabulous jewelry store (Gazelle) just inside Centre Place right next to Shag
Shag gets touted for it’s vintage goodies but it’s laden with too much 80′s for my tastes….If you’re after pretties, there’s a new shop just on the corner of Swanston St & Flinders Lane in that building called Harry Wagg (I think!) which sells “new” clothes made from vintage fabrics. Very pretty! Oh and you MUST stop at Zomp for their gorgeous shoes…..If you’re into Australian designers, Green With Envy have a stunning selection of dresses which is just opposite Zomp.
From Flinders Lane to Collins/Little Collins St – More laneways – The Block Arcade for chocolate, cafes and shoes. Royal Arcade has one of the best chocolate shops in Melbourne – Koko Black – delicious!

Now you couldn’t come to Melbourne without a trip out to Fitzroy. Gertrude St and Brunswick St have too many treasures to mention. The new Seven Seeds cafe De Clieu at 187 Gertrude opened today! - You can always count on these guys to serve up some of the best coffee in town (I don’t say THE best because we have that many really excellent coffee spots). And Circa Vintage for real vintage.
Industria is on Gertrude as well – Full of industrial (der) goodies for your home – think bowls made from butane gas tanks, those big hospital theater lighting rigs, antique dentists cabinets and much scientific paraphernalia like beakers and test tubes. Awesome! I could spend hours in that shop.
Up Brunswick St you can have a beer at the Little Creatures Dining Hall – and there are so many jewelry stores and independent fashion boutiques. Oh! And the best choc in town (better than Koko Black) – Shocolate. Sumptuous desserts and chocolate yum!

(some pics for distraction)

I could go on – Writing up a huge guide on Melbourne…St Kilda is great too but a little too touristy – There’s an art market there on Sundays along the Esplanade. And numerous cake shops – which I think look better than they taste. It’s fun just to ogle at the cakes. If you want sweets, better head to Il Fornaio where it’s said they do fantastic desserts. I’ve only had breakfast there – which was ace. Also there are fab pastries to be had at Baker D Chirico.

I really hope Audrey enjoys her trip – I’m not sure if I like exactly the same things she likes – I can only go by how I like to spend my time. We’re in the city and inner suburbs every weekend – It’s a beautiful place just to wander in, the architecture being so diverse…from the ultra modern Fed Square to the stunning Manchester Unity Building – or the Gothic bank on Queen/Collins St.

OH! And I mustn’t forget the graffiti – there’s some fantastic street art EVERYWHERE. Hosier Lane is excellent and there’s quite a few spots in Fitzroy too.

Blabber blabber blabber. I love Melbourne! Should wind this up huh. If you’re still reading – please come along to the exhibition at Outre – It runs til the 10th of November. If you’re in Sydney – dates are the 29th Oct to 15th Nov. Don’t miss it! I honestly think Audrey is one of the most talented and accomplished artists alive today. Without a doubt, my favourite (that’s a big call I know – but I’ve thought about this okay ).

Umm…see – gushy.

Shuddup Esz.

Signing off….

*crosses fingers*

(all images belong to Audrey of course)

Hi All!

No drawing for you this week – folks are down and its been busy-busy here.  Today we went to the Taste of Melbourne….photos aren’t as good as last year – the difference between a point-&-shoot and a super DSLR is big – but I’d have to say the event was a lot better. Overall much better organised and laid out. It was easier to navigate and they had quite a lot of things upstairs whereas last year it was only extra seating. Speaking of seating, it was much easier to get a table to park at – or eat standing at one of the astroturf covered box things

So here’s some silly photos and some of the foods I nommed.

Starting off with some alcohol – nice (Smirnoff vodka cranberry things. Shuddup!)

Pistachio panna cotta & caramel salted popcorn from Sarti. Tasty and not too sweet

Crowd shot – it was busy but not unbearably so. You never had to wait long to get your hands on some yums. This was taken at the start when the doors had only just opened.

Yellow curry of wagyu beef w/ cucumber relish from Longrain. This was tasty indeed. And a very generous portion.

Pork BELLEH!! Omg. With peas, wild sorrel coulis, purple potato and fromage frais from Embrasse. This was super yum but probably could have had a dash more seasoning in the pork crumb. But gee, I really love pork belleh (scuse my horrid shiny thumb – I’d just got a free hand treatment thingo which left moisturiser on my hands)

Dad making a difficult decision….

Smoked duck, apple & walnut rillettes from Libertine. Interesting. Toasts where a bit too crispy but the flavours were nice.

Truffle rabbit agnolotti w/ game consomme again from Libertine. This was the better dish of the two.

Ben & Jerry’s ice cream. I retract my earlier judgment that B&Js aint all that….Guess I just tried a dud flavour the first time cos this was YUM!! Phish Food (the choc one) was a clear winner with choc bits, caramel AND marshmallow. *drool*

Get in my belleh!!!

Blurry photo of vanilla panna cotta w/ blood orange jelly from Mr Wolf. Better than the pistachio one

Spicy meatballs w/ freekah, parsley salad & Turkish bread from The European. Tangy and delicious and filling too.

Derp

And then we did some wine tasting. Yes, I drank all that. The Mr didn’t finish his share. Pussy

And to finish off with some sweets – from Sweet Treats (I think that’s what they were called). Had some Crowns left. I have such a big dumb head. Heh.

Thanks go to Innocent Bystander and Agenda Melbourne for my tickets. It was definitely a great bonus not having to pay for entry as I really think the price for it is a bit too high.

Hopefully my next post will be drawing related….

Seeya round!

Hi All!

Another week and another life drawing class. And still with the black and white.

Just LOVING the charcoal right now, particularly the pressed stuff – it gives such a velvety rich black. Usually I start with the regular willow charcoal to get the basics down as it’s more workable – much softer and easy to rub out if you make a mistake. Then when it’s time to pay attention to the bits I want to highlight, I use the compressed charcoal. So much awesomeness.

Attempting to format my pictures a bit better too as I’ve been very slack on that front ( ). I also found a Flickr widget that makes importing my pics onto the blog a bazillion times easier. No annoying copy and paste yay!

This weeks class was excellent as ever – I like the last piece the best as usual but not sure if it’s my favourite of all….was a tricky pose from where I was standing but it came out okay. The teacher does give me an awfully big head too so I usually leave class feeling rather good about myself….though often with that little voice in the back of my head squeaking, “Oooh but you can do BETTER Esz – you can do MORE. Tsk tsk never enough never enough”.

A couple of the 1 minute warm-ups – most of these were shocking so you only get to see these two:

A go at trying to show weight and volume with line only and the next one ‘sculpting’ with charcoal. This is done by first laying out the basic shape of the figure in a mid-grey and then ‘pushing’ the parts receding from you in a darker tone, and ‘pulling’ out the opposite by removing the charcoal from the paper. Hard to explain. I’m a bit meh about it.

Then, the last piece which is all YAY Hehee. Looks more like a landscape doesn’t it?

Oooh and of course, Puss wants a look-see

Hope everyone’s week has been treating them alright so far Til next time!

Hello Everyone!
So since I’ve been such a hopeless blogger of late…I thought I might do a little post about the things that got me a bit excited over the past week or so.

First off…I won tickets to the Good Food & Wine Show through one of my fave food bloggers, My Food Trail along with entry to the Celebrity Theatre. I generally suck at taking photos of food etc but me and the bf had a blast. They didn’t do the “Drunk Corral” as in previous years where they fenced off the wine tasting sections. Instead everything was spread out evenly. You buy a glass for $3 and just hand it over to the various vendors to get filled up
We wandered around, trying wines and sampling foods. There was heaps on offer and lots of good deals to be had. I didn’t end up buying much being a bit short on funds…I stocked up on Vegeta and couldn’t resist the $10 Always Fresh ‘showbag’.
The Mr also bought 4 bottles of wine which will only contribute a tiny bit to the filling up of our way-too-big wine rack. We’ll never fill all 480 spaces – especially when we drink it at the rate we do! Ha!

The Celebrity Theatre was fun too – George and Gary (from Masterchef) are pretty funny guys. I was disappointed they didn’t pick anyone for freebies from our end of the seating but oh well. They each made a dish out of beetroot and one with prawns. Can’t remember specifically what they were – Gary roasted his beet and there was prawn tortellini in there too.

So here’s my pile of goodies that I brought home…Not much but it’s all about the samples you try there.

Next up is some more free stuff! I’m a member of Meg’s Makeup – Linky to your right –>
…a site where you get points for contributing to makeup reviews and general forum-y stuff. The reviews are always hilarious and informative and Meg and her team often pick products that aren’t so mainstream. It’s a good place to go to find out about new beauty products etc..
Once you build up either 50, 150 or 250 points you can choose to get some goodies sent out to you – for FREE. Well, almost. This is my first ever claim on points and I submitted it back in March. Back then it was 100% free…However, since May you have to pay for postage for your items. This I think is completely reasonable as Meg was spending quite a bit just sending these packages out all over the world. So I’m totally okay with spending $15 for $100 worth of stuff!
And yes, that’s how much cool stuff you get for redeeming 250 points. This is my haul:

* China Glaze nailpolish in Bad Landing
* Napoleon Lip Glass in Protege
* Tarte Seal the Deal lip sealant
* Tarte Eyeliner in Ballet Dancers
* Urban Decay Cream Shadow in Whipped
Score! Check it out

Aaaand….to finish off – a gratuitous photo of my kitty Boof, being utterly cute and hanging his super floofy paws over the couch. Look at them! SOOO cute!!

Bye bye for now then – til I actually do some drawing

Hi All!

Feeling a bit better lately. Got over being sick in about 4 days – blergh – reminds me how much I hate being sick!

So I’m picking things up again. Only a few sketches here and there and some more work on the preview I showed you all before.
They’re pretty crap but meh….Just some warm ups.


I like this one the best….

Other news….We had a HUGE storm here on Saturday. I saw it coming on the weather radar but wasn’t expecting hail. Stones the size of golf balls!! I was scared our skylight was going to break in. The sound was incredible and the cats where running around freaking out like it was Armageddon. The hail built up in our courtyard as we are on the bottom of a small hill and the drains were way too full to contain all the downpour. I was ready with towels in case the water came high enough to reach the door. They didn’t – but only just…we were only about 1cm off! It looked like snow outside. The roof leaked a bit too but no major damage. All my sad little tomatoes which had only just started growing properly are now completely obliterated! Boo! The lemon tree survived though thank goodness.
So that was our storm – the city was in chaos with train stations shut down and many buildings closed because of leaking or even caved in roofs. Fire engines were screaming around everywhere. I hope no one was seriously hurt!

Well – back to playing around. Hope you’ve had a good weekend!

Happy Aussie Day guys! Hope you’re all suitably relaxing and possibly downing a beer or three. Absolute stunner of a day here in Melbs too. Yeah!

Not doing much here ourselves. Just listening to tunes and chillin out. I made double choc pancakes for breakfast. Yummo. Might go for a ride later also.

Onto some art stuff…..
I finally got the labels printed for my parent’s palinka (the Hungarian name for grappa)….45% alcohol made out of the fermented grape skins left after the pressing. You can make it out of pretty much any fruit though – some people use pears or plums too. Whatever you have an excess of!
There’s two bottle sizes…375ml and 100ml…the label is a bit squeezy on the smallest one…so Mum, if you want the label a bit smaller I can send some over because I still have plenty of paper.
It turned out pretty good I think. Looks great against our exposed brick wall and stainless steel bench (I still LOVE my house so much). That’s some great reflection there that you just can’t fake in Photoshop! Hehehe.

Other stuff….I went to my first Melbourne Gra-fight Club meet with the local ConceptArt peeps on Sunday. We bum around in town for a few hours sketching people we see. Lots of lessons to be learnt and cool people to hang with. Here are the results. Pretty blah but they get better as I started getting the hang of the process.
(click the pics to go to my Flickr account if you want to see larger)

The only one I really like is the profile of the guy with the glasses and the grandpa hat.

And finally something a bit prettier….A cute corset by Maya Hansen – soooo many pretty corsets. Want!! Oh and excuse the deformed head. I suck.

Seeyas!

Just before I left for Tassie, the letter for the LIA Graduate Award nomination arrived in my letterbox. Yipee! Except that the time for the interviews was only two weeks away – on the 17th of THIS MONTH!

Cue mini freak-out.
Eep.

But really, its okay. I have been mentally preparing myself for this for a while now.
So – I got back to Melbourne with plenty of thoughts in my mind about what to put in my portfolio. I started compiling some images today in Illustrator. And then, on the advice of my friend, I rushed out and bought one of these this afternoon:

Check out the pretty colours these binders come in:

They come from Bookbinders Design, on Elizabeth Street in the CBD. Such beautiful things in the shop I can tell you! All the pretty colours and quality notebooks, binders, and other stationary – it’s a paper fiend’s heaven
I bought a bright red A3 folder and some plastic inserts to put my art in.
Hopefully the quality of such a binder will help me stand out from the others in the interview.

Oh – and more about the comp….Well I have to pass the Victorian state finalists, which is what this interview is about. If I win, I get to go to Sydney where they announce the winner of the $15,000. I really really hope I get to go to Sydney. The opportunity to set up my own business without incurring any debt is just too awesome! Eeeeeeeee!!!

Anyways…I will let you all know how the interview goes. I am not nervous at this stage actually – I don’t know if I will be at all. I am pretty confident about my technical skills at work and my plans for the future. But then, I have a tendency to be a little *awkward* in a face to face situation with people I don’t know very well. Oh dear. Well – See how it goes!

I’ll also put up my work on the Gallery section of this site when I’m done.
Ta ta for now