Robertson Studios

(images via: light stalking)

These are the eyes of a jumping spider. Irridescent. Mesmerising. Stunning aren’t they? Also…who knew they were furry little critters?

More often than not I rush to get through my days and I don’t see much more than a blur of the world around me as it passes by. It seems to be par for the course at this stage of my life, but the problem is that it can make life seem tiresome and monotonous at times.

It’s only when I slow down and take the time to take in the details that I am overwhelmed by the beauty of the world around me. It is then that my energy returns. None of the things that I need to do each day disappears, but I seem to have more patience to deal with them.

Little details that turn a scary spider into something that looks like a plush toy.

Little details that make me smile.

Little details that make me want to pick up my pencils and draw in an attempt to capture that magic on the page.

Little details that inspire me to action.

How do you let beauty fuel your days? Do you experience more creative moments when you stop long enough to feel the velvet petals on a rose in your garden or gaze into the eyes of a little spider?

I do… just need to do it a little more intentionally 🙂

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For my weekly artist date yesterday I went to the exhibition of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec’s art at the National Gallery of Australia. It was fascinating. The loose lines and bold colours, the huge lithographic posters. Beautiful.

The thing that fascinated me most though was the subject of the vast majority of the artworks … they were prostitutes and cabaret personalities. Toulouse-Lautrec lived for weeks at a time in brothels in order to do series of drawings – to capture these women in their most vulnerable, humane moments. He hung out back stage at baudy cabaret shows and painted the portraits of young men who had drunk one too many absinthe cocktails. His portraits … although sensitive and beautiful portrayals … are of a very dark and seedy underworld.

As I looked around me in the gallery halls it was easy to see that there were a lot of families and several very wealthy, high society patrons visiting and viewing the artworks. The kind of people that pride themselves on being the pillars of the community…and yet here we were all standing together admiring this deeply sensual, gritty art. Were they understanding what they were seeing? Perhaps they had abstracted themselves out to the point where they were merely looking at marks on paper. No-one seemed to bat an eyelid.

I found it more than a little ironic. Was that lifestyle no longer shocking or disturbing because it was being portrayed as oil on cardboard? Would photographs have been more confronting? Was it the passage of years perhaps? Looking at the dark side of life through the lens of history….did that make it less desperate? These were real people caught in a lifestyle that left their mouths twisted in wry little pasted-on half-smiles that hid the conflict within and with eyes that seemed to lead to a haunting emptiness.

All of those artworks collected in a beautiful, pretty, clean gallery, presented as an exhibition….it almost felt as though prostitution had been normalised and made acceptable fodder for upper-class entertainment, just as it had been in the halls of the Moulin Rouge in La Belle Epoch Paris. It felt romanticised.

It’s not acceptable of course. Would you want your child working like that? No, me neither.

I don’t know what Toulouse-Lautrec’s intent was when he was capturing these tableaux, I doubt his motives were altruistic, but they certainly made an impression on me. Good art makes us think. It makes us uncomfortable. It makes us react.

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I finished this little realistic graphite piece last weekend. It felt good to be working with pencils again and taking time to do a  painstakingly detailed drawing. This one is on my favourite paper – Fabriano Artistico hot press….so smooth! It has just enough tooth to allow for some delicious dark tones.

This piece is now for sale in my Etsy store. Click the Picture to be taken there!

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This past weekend we had the unexpected pleasure of camping with a family that have been friends of ours since before we were married. We have been through a lot together, but of late, life’s stages have meant that we haven’t seen a lot of each other. So…we jumped at the chance to spend some time together roughing it by the ocean.

On Saturday morning one of our friend’s little girls came screaming down to the beach in tears after making a trip to the primitive bathroom facilities. She said that she had seen a dragon. We didn’t think much of it…and chalked it up to the furtile imagination of a seven-year-old girl…until we went back up to the tents and came face to face with a family of lace monitors.

They are BIG lizards … as long as a medium sized dog, but with short stubby legs. She HAD seen a dragon! The family of dragons, so far as we could tell, consisted of two adults and a juvenile, and they wandered lazily past our campsite a couple of times a day in search of the sunny spots on the cliffs.

As a child my mum used to read me may Gibbs’ Snugglepot and Cuddlepie stories and for a long time I have wanted to have a go at drawing a banksia pod. Here’s what I came up with:

I had hoped for some time early this morning to draw a family of blue wrens that I observed as I wrote my morning pages, but instead I was visited by the sweet Miss Emily who scared the birds away, but who was so interested in my paints and pens that I simply couldn’t resist her charms. Here’s the drawing that we created together.

I love the excitement of little minds playing with pretty colours and seeing how paints mix and swirl together. Perhaps she was a reminder to nurture my own inner child artist.

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A Parisian woman watches on

I’ve been back from France now for almost three months and finally I can say that I am making progress on my book! Yay! I have finished the actual travelogue part of my journals, and I’m working on approximately 30 supplementary sketches to fill out the second Moleskine. Today I start on the tedious task of high res scanning my journals so that I have print-ready images to share 🙂

I cannot tell you how excited I am that I am working on this project! 🙂

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Figuring out how my paints behave on the Moleskine watercolour paper is fun!!

learning how to do maps and freehand lettering…

Crap photo…but practising buildings…

Sketches during worship this morning…

Loving that I am making time to draw so much. 🙂

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One of my architectural practice pieces for the trip…

I’m too excited to keep this a secret any longer!

I have been inspired by the beautiful Blurb books created by Liz Steel showcasing her urban sketches and adventures with Borrmini, that I am thinking that I will create a Blurb book of my own from my adventures in France later this year. I am more than a little excited 🙂

What is a Blurb book? It’s a book that is available for order and printed on demand just for you and then posted directly to you. Nifty system huh?

My French holiday sketchbook will contain all of the sketches I manage to capture while I’m travelling, and be combined with the odd photo here and there as well as excerpts from my written journals. I am so wound up about it that the anticipation is just about killing me 🙂 I may even include some of the lead up and preparation sketches and back story …. we’ll see.

Anyway…I’m telling you all now so that I can’t chicken out later 🙂 I would love to have it out in time for Christmas, but having a realistic look at my work schedule and art commissions on the list…it will probably be early next year.

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It’s been quite a while since I did a “proper” drawing. It was nice to slow down and work on this one over the last couple of months.

4 x 6″
Graphite on W&N Bristol Board

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Here are a couple of drawings from the last couple of weeks…

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