Oops, haven't posted here for a while...and I promised myself not to neglect my blog. Well my art block seems to be gone, which is great because now I can really rip into commissions and other artly duties.

Here's a birthday gift that I painted:



Sadly the scan does not do it justice. I like to think that it looks better in real life. It was appreciated by the recipricant, which is always awesome. :)

I've also been on a bit of a reading binge. George Orwell is pretty great, I'm tearing through 1984. If you're into that sort of thing I also recommend The Chrysalids and Brave New World.

Also, I'm moving in a few weeks. Excitement! I look forward to living without parents, the way most of my friends do. I feel like I'm really lagging behind. But not for much longer!

Art Block and Ron Mueck

I've had art block for a little while now. It's driving me crazy. So this picture is me trying to work through it. I really want to do some painting, I have some spare canvases lying around, but I feel pretty uninspired at the moment.

Went to the Ron Mueck exhibit the other day with my sister. It's pretty damn awesome, I recommend it to everyone in Brisbane. You feel as though the sculptures are about to get up and walk around, or talk to you.

People are allowed to take photos in there. So about 80%-90% of the people are taking about a million pictures of each piece of art instead of really looking at it. They're so concerned with creating memories and collecting momentos that they don't really absorb what they're seeing. They don't experience it. And they don't watch where they're going, so they back into you all the time.

Anyway, I did a few sketches, these ones are ok-ish. I really need to find myself a life drawing class, I haven't been in SO long and you can really tell. While I was drawing the man's head, there was a little gaggle of children watching me and asking their mum questions. According to them I was drawing because I don't own a camera.

Just some REALLY REALLY rough sketches for my next film. Yeeeaaah. :D It's so far just an idea and a few drawings, I haven't even written a script yet. But so far I like it. Actually, I love all my ideas when they're at this stage. Nothing is nailed down, everything is possible, therefore it has the potential to be totally AWESOME. Of course, once I start refining things it bogs down and is never as good as I'd like. But I guess that's how it goes when you expect too much from yourself.

Oh yeah, the two characters above are sisters.

Showreel

Alexis Sugden - Animation Showreel 2010 from Alexis Sugden on Vimeo.

And it's aaaaaall the way down to the basement.

So I've been spending a lot of time in the basement. I live in an apartment and the basement is the storage area and carpark for the whole building. I really like drawing on the concrete posts that are down there. It's a nice way to loosen up...at first, then I get really into and spend about an hour on each picture.

They're just regular sidewalk chalk. I wish the posts were black like a chalkboard, it would really make them pop. They're all about my height because that's the easiest size for me to draw.

Here are a few!

Murders and Poetry

Sketchbook pictuuuures. Ink and watercolours.

I did the first one with the intention of it looking vague and ambigous. I wanted it to look like, did her kill her or just find her? What really happened? But as it progressed it became pretty clear that he killed her.

So I did a companion piece and tried to make it opposite. I made the dead man more angular and more sort of folded inward rather than smooth lines and opened up. There's also blue instead of red, he was drowned rather than stabbed or anything. And his killer is very remourseless. The woman's killer is filled with regret. FOREEEVER.

Also, when my dad saw these, his first reaction was to ask if I could paint them up on big canvases. Apparently this is the very first thing he would like people to see as they enter the appartment. I didn't think that Mum would be too thrilled with that concept, so I said no.

Anyway.

Went to a poetry reading the other night. It was everything I had imagined it to be. Every poetry reading that I'd ever seen in movies and TV shows turned out to be accurate portrayels.

It was in a tiny cafe in West End, packed with very bohemian looking people and a lot of wanky looking people in their early twenties. (I was in the second group.) Everyone took it all very seriously. After each reading evreyone clapped and looked at each other while saying things like, "Wow. That was so deep and profound." Everyone who read got really into it.

And. The best bit. There were a couple of people with an assortment of instruments, making noises as people read. There was someone playing a bongo drum. There was someone with a pan pipe made of plastic bottles.

It was pretty awesome.

Anyway, I did a few very bad sketches. I need to draw from life more. Also, I would just like to say that I was drunk when I drew these.

Beach babe

It's my beach babe again! Enjoying some sun and sunburn. I drew this while I was waiting for my film to render. Everything is almost done. YAY. And it felt so good to draw something that wasn't for uni. I suddenly find myself full of ideas again. I really feel in the mood to do a big painting or two. I'm itching to paint, although I do need to reign it in while I finish up the last few things. Fun fun fun.

Ocean

Sketchbook picture. Markers and pencils and whatnot. The words are from a song called "In the Morning" by a girl called Bec. Her music is awesome. This song gets stuck in my head ALL the time.

Other than that, not much to say at the moment. Working, animating, getting stuff done...oh and drinking and dancing of course.

Commissions

A neighbour saw that last picture and commissioned me to make more like it. So here they are:

They're A3 and my scanner only goes up to A4, thus the shiny spots on them from the camera flash.

Next time I'll upload some art that's different!

Mother

Recently I added an old high school friend on facebook. Today I went to her baby shower. I find it so surreal that people my age are married, getting married, have kids or are having them. According to this friend of mine there are lots of people from our year who are married, engaged, pregnant, and so on. One guy has a two year old daughter, a wife and another child on the way. Oh, and apparently there are twelve models from our year. Wow. It's all so bizarre.

Anyway. I drew this for her as a gift and she seemed to like it, apparently they're going to hang it over the crib. Hurrah! Also, a neighbour saw it and commissioned me to draw two similar pictures for her, which is great. I much prefer earning money via artwork than any other way there is.

This is coloured pencil on A3 cardboard.

Arts

The words in this image are from 'The Jeep Song' by the Dresden Dolls. Love this song. Love all their songs, actually. And I am excited to say that I am seeing Amanda Palmer perform in March! Yaay! I've seen her when she was part of the Dresden Dolls and I've seen her solo and both concerts were my all time favourites. So it's safe to say that I'm looking forward to this. :D

I haven't been life drawing in about a year. SLACK. So I've been drawing from stock images recently to try and improve my rusty rusty skills.



Stock from: http://felixdeon.deviantart.com/

I love his stock, it's so creative and the poses are really interesting.

Ugh, I foolishly went to bed at 4:30am. So I set my alarm to go off at 9:00am, 10:00am, 11:00am and 12:00pm to make sure that I got out of bed. All it really did was distrupt my sleep. So I woke up with a massive headache and have basically done nothing useful all day. All the animation that I did in the wee hours of the morning I didn't like and I was too useless to do much today. WIN.

I'm trying to animate Viola playing her back like an instrument. Last night I made three attempts and all three were pretty crap. But they got progressively less crap so it should be alright.

Infinity

When forever means never and never is for forever.



I never seem to draw happy looking people. Perhaps I should draw happy people for my next picture. Anyway, here are more sketchbook pictures! I quite like them, I should do something more polished with one of these. Or both. I should also do more digital art. So many things that I 'should' do.

Hhm, Saturday night and here I am, writing in my blog. Being broke is boring. Well, not too boring, I have been keeping myself occupied, drawing, animating, that sort of thing. But I can't really go out and enjoy my Saturday nights due to lack of funds. I'll be back at Masala Point next week though, so it's all good. So NOT looking forward to waitressing again. Bleeeeeeeeeeeargh.

It'll be good when Viola's done and I can go and find other work. Studio work, hopefully. Freelance doesn't appeal to me much. Making a government funded short film would be pretty sweet though. I've been forming an idea for my next film...it's incredibly rough, very unformed. Very much like a lump of clay sitting around in my mind. But every now and then I poke at it, giving it a bit more shape.

Books and Fruit

There are so many books that I want to read right now. And so many different things that I want to do. My mind is a everywhere right now. I feel like...there's this bit in 'The Bell Jar' where the central character (whose name I have forgotten) is talking about her future. In her mind's eye her future is like a tree, with all these different fruits growing on the branches. But she can't have all the fruit. Each one is a potential future, and she can only have one, or a few. I feel a little bit like that right now. Not enough to drive me crazy (as it did her) and not about my ultimate future. I suppose that I just see that tree for each day. It's like, today I should take this fruit...no wait, that one...no wait! I really need to stop thinking like this, it's getting on my nerves.


Anyway, here's another picture from my sketchbook. Not a very cheery looking picture, I'll put something cheerier up tomorrow. Or the day after, whenever I post again.

This is so much dirtier in my book, it's just a scribble on a page where ink has leaked through. The wonders of Photoshop, eh?

Saw Ben Drake and a whole mob of other uni people yesterday. It was good and makes me miss uni a little, despite the fact that I'm technically still there. But because I don't have schedualed classes and I don't have to go into uni (and therefore don't, because it's quite far away) so the uni atmosphere that I liked isn't there. Just the work. Hhmmmm...Although I do enjoy the work as well. Even the thesis.

Speaking of uni work, it's time I went and did some.

New Blog

It's a new year and it's a new blog. I've enjoyed having my Viola blog http://viola-animated.blogspot.com/ so I decided to make a blog for my general art as well. Especially seeing as I seem to be incredibly inspired just at the moment. I just keep drawing and drawing, it's fantastic.

So, here's a picture to start off with, done with white acrylic paint and blue and black ink. Didn't scan too well, so just take my word for it that it looks nice, okay?

I'm reading 'The Whole Woman' by Germaine Greer at the moment, it's interesting. So far I'm a bit over half way through and there are a lot of things that I don't agree with. On the flip side there are a few things that, for me, ring true.

One of those things is this;

"The woman who is never mated must grieve. If she is mated and left, she remains forlorn. The maintenance of the pair bond too often requires the gradual obliteration of her individual self. 'I want to make him happy,' she says, unaware that if he is not happy it has less to do with her than with any of the other factors in his life. If she tries to treat men as men treat women she toughens herself and tarnishes her self-image. If she bears no child, she is disappointed; if she bears a child she is sentenced to long periods of confinement at home with that child and sole responsibility for any problems that child may face. When it grows up she is not entitled to remain in close contact with it and must mourn its loss. If she terminates a pregnancy she must shoulder that grief and struggle on. She may find satisfaction in her life's work, if she is so lucky as to have work worth doing, but she is likely to be left with nothing but that work."

A long chunk of text, yes, but it really speaks to me.

Well, that's all for tonight,

Lex