Tag Archives: art

Birdman Or the Virtue of Being a Tony Hawk Pro Skater Covers Band

As an artist, you never know where your work will end up.
I did this #ContinuousLineDrawing of a kickflip as something fun (even though I can’t skate but I do own a skateboard). A musician reached out and purchased the original art and…


…now it appears on a deck and it’s kinda blowing my mind!


It would be easy to label myself with Imposter Syndrome (“I am not a real artist” or “I am only starting out” or “My work isn’t that good”) but I refuse to accept the label. I write, therefore I am a writer. I create art, therefore I am an artist. Therefore, it’s in my bio.


I may be ’emerging’ or ‘new’ in the interim in my creative life, and I will always be a learner.
Write, draw, learn an instrument. Do not define yourself against others’ labels.

I have goals, dreams and visions of what I want to achieve in my writing and art.


It’s lead to my art appearing in Dr Willo Drummond’s debut poetry collection, Moon Wrasse, and now my art is on a skateboard.

The deck is available for preorder HERE. (I know what I’ll be preordering for Christmas for myself to put up on the wall.)

I would love my art to appear in other places (your CD cover or liner notes, your poetry collection, your short story collection, your wall).
There are pieces of my work scattered around Australia, probably the world (if I’ve sent you art, or you’ve bought it, let me know and send me a picture of it).

Be the artist.

Be the writer.

Be the creative.

End of Month Wrap – August

Well, this is embarrassing. There’s nothing here.

No, that’s not an error message. That’s the state of affairs for August.

No submissions. No new stories started. No new stories finished. No old stories finished. A couple of ideas for new stories happened and very brief notes were made. One pointillism piece finished.

Here’s the answer to the question you didn’t ask.

Two cups of emotional fatigue. Splashes of mental health that resembled a dropped trifle. Combined with work demands surrounding the HSC and Major Works. Stir and bake in a tepid oven for ages.

It was about the middle of the month when I pulled the pin on everything and simply stopped worrying about producing work and let the ground remain fallow. The idea of a fallow time is something I want to think about in the new few months.

That’s a wrap on August.

Bird of Paradise (Strelitzia) For Sale $70AUD inc postage in Australia $85AUD inc postage for overseas

End of Month Wrap – July

What happened this month?

Each month there are expectations, and each month there is reality. Somewhere between those extremes is a box of doughnuts that turned up unexpectedly because your daughter has a friend whose mum works for Krispy Kreme, and you don’t refuse the offer of free doughnuts.

I am aiming at producing more work month by month but sometimes it is akin to aiming for the toilet bowl and missing, despite all precautions and preparations leaving a mess to clean up, yet persistance is key. Keep thinking, keep making notes, keep writing paragraphs.

There might be strange things afoot at the Circle K but they will be “Most excellent.”

I completed a new pointillism piece

Arum – Pointillism Felt pen on A4 paper $40AUD + postage

Made 4 short story submissions. I missed a few deadlines for a number of reasons, particularly time and lack of prepared material. I have sorted a couple of stories for completion some time in August but there’s always that issue of balancing time with school marking and Major Work readings, plus it’s the busy time of year for dance and Physical culture comps for my girls. That’s always the way. Sometimes is it working inbetween the gaps.

Poem Illustration. One of my favourite things I completed this month was an illustration for Dr Willo Drummond’s poem, Sail, from her debut collection Moon Wrasse. I heard her speak at an In Conversation event with WestWords, and she read this poem and commented on hopefully one day finding an animator to produce it. I am no animator but my brain said, “Oh, shiny new thing,” and so I set about composing a series of images based on my reading. I messaged Dr Willo and asked about the inspiration behind the poem which allowed me to refine a couple of the images. The poem is reproduced with the permission of the author.

I read two books (a new addition to the EOM Wrap):

Peter M. Ball – You Don’t Want to be Published (Brain Jar Press)

This is not a how-to-write book. This is a how-to-understand-the writing-game-and-make-it-work-for-you book. Peter’s collection of essays from his blog posts is mind expanding as you grapple with the notion that you ARE a writer AND a business. Treat them with all due respect.

Kyle Perry – The Bluffs

A cracker of a debut crime novel. Dive in, enjoy the read, experience the wilderness of Tasmania as four missing school girls are thought to have been abducted by The Hungry Man. Fantastic popcorn for the brain. A great beach read or tucked up by the heater under a blanket.

End of Month Wrap: May

End Of Month Wrap for May

At the end of April I posted a summary to Twitter of what creative work I had completed (I had to go searching for it)

  • April Summary
  • 2 chapters written for co-authored novel (first draft COMPLETED!)
  • short story/flash fiction written/polished. Final edits awaiting
  • pointillism art piece completed for friend’s 50th birthday
  • worked on draft of a new short/flash fiction
  • other misc art
This was the first pointillism piece for my friend’s 50th

Sometimes it can be hard to see progress until you look back and take inventory of what you have completed. So I kept a tally of positive creative steps from the past month

What did I get done this month?

  • 3 stories subbed (2 flash fiction pieces, 1 short story)
  • My short story, A Shoebox of Silkworms, was submitted to the About Kids Short Story Prize and was Highly Commended. It was a very quick turnaround from submission to announcement).
  • 2 small art commissions
  • 1 large pointillism piece completed/framed (for sale)
Sunflower – Pointillism – Felt Pen on A4 paper (professionally framed. Message for price)

Looking forward to June, I know it will be a creative write-off with marking assessments for at least the 1st half of the month. There may be opportunity for creating small art pieces but I will be holding off on large scale pointillism pieces until the end of the marking phase.
In terms of writing, I am lining up a series of short stories to finish for a few places I’d like to sub to, and then I think I’ll be turning to some longer form work in the 2nd half of the year. I love the brevity of short form but want to push myself into longer form works. There will be lots of note making and researching to be done with the hope of making 2024 a year to pursue the novel I have been thinking about for a while (and put finishing touches on a novella but I need to focus on one month at a time).


Will see how we go.

What have you been up to?

Gallery

What I Will Leave Behind… and is it worth it?

A story, attributed to Kurt Vonnegut, recounts his time working alongside an archaeologist who began to ask Kurt questions about his life and his interests. Kurt commented on his activities such as choir, literature, learning an instrument. Yet Kurt felt … Continue reading

The Correlation Between Writing and Single Line Drawing

The Correlation Between Writing and Single Line Drawing

A single line drawn; a continuous, unbroken line.

The pen invents the existence of the image from the blank space of the page, drawing the white into the pen to reveal the darkness of the solar system beneath. Conversely, the tabula rasa of sight is given vision through the pen, leaking the blackness of the imagination onto the page.

The line takes shape: straight paradoxes, curved obstructions, angular indices, folded waves, circular epiphanies. The brevity of a single line suggests, coaxes, entices or has the complexity of a woven tapestry to illuminate, postulate, seduce.

As it is with words.

Single words.

Verb. Noun. Adjective. Preposition.

When connected together they expand, like the line, to form phrases and clauses. When arranged in single horizontal lines as sentences they give direction and purpose to the shape of the narrative.

Sentences with the lines of tailored couture bestow a resplendence of awareness.

Sentences with the sparseness of underpants and socks bestow a nakedness of understanding.

What are words but a single continuous line.

August Round Up Part 2

Now that August has officially ended, and Spring has knocked politely on the front door I can wrap up the last of this month’s pieces.

And now, as adults, at a family gathering around a meal of spaghetti bolognaise, abbreviated as ‘spagbol’ – one word, not two – we each cut our children’s spaghetti; fragmenting sentences into phrases, clauses and syllables caught between the tines of forks and uttered between lengthy pauses while conversation pools in puddles of sauce.

The temporality of whiteboards and their content, known to me as a teacher, also makes a great canvas or notepad. I can write on it, amend, and take a photo to preserve it then erase it as if it never existed.

I rub the scar tissue on my knee, the geography of brothers
a reminder of when I had pieces of gravel scrubbed from my flesh
after you had pushed me onto the bitumen
the playful violence having given way to silence in later years
because we never found the words to replace our actions

I’ve had this used drum head for a while and I loved the texture that happens when a coated drum head deteriorates and I wanted the texture to reflect the tone and content of the poem.
I finally got around to finding the right words. I’m not happy with the penmanship; maybe I should have used a different handwriting style. However, I like the content.

1 Object/2 Poems

tongues of flame above our heads
descending to our mouths, our lips
duplicating another tongue withthe anticipation of consuming
tongue-twisted ecstacies of abandonment
unto one another
burning twice, existing briefly

 

tongues of flame
the revolution of the insolent
indolent
insouciant
ashes in the wind

fragmentary colour/blooms quickly then disappears/a father’s anger

August Round Up

Even though August is not yet over, a little over half way, here is a quick creative roundup.

Words have been in short supply due to work commitments (there’s always marking to do when you’re an English teacher) so in the interim, a bit of blackout poetry can fill the creative need.

 

Counting Words. Edging ever so close to the end of this novella. I added a little over 600 words in August (and read hundreds and hundreds more in student essays).

The “blank” canvas.

The finished version of the “blank” canvas. Not totally happy with the results but it was an experiment. Needs more experimenting.

I haven’t drawn in a while and took an afternoon to play around with pencils and pens.

after emily dickinson

after emily dickinson

the batteries in my torch died out early
in my teenage years when I tried to
illuminate myself so I fell to writing
epigraphical epithets in the moonlight
with a label maker, affixing them in lines
of chapter titles to catalogue myself
before others blacked out letters
leaving the white space like stars
new constellations to navigate the unknown

Drought

the rain begins falling on the footpath,
a polite smattering of applause
before the crescendo of ovation

rises, peaks, slackens and fades
watering the seed fallen on stony ground
while the petrichor rises in wisps
then dissipates
the incense to your leaving
and the beginning of the drought