Anatomy of a Painting

This painting was completed during two, three hour lessons with Patrick at his Ryhill Road art studio. The flowers and stems were drawn with fabric 'puffy' paints, although Patrick has since perfected  the use of acrylic paints put into squeeze bottles to get the same effect.  Lay the canvas on a table, making sure it is level.

Once the outlines are dry, spray the whole canvas with water using a spray bottle. Apply fabric ink to wet canvas with a brush, doing one colour at a time. If canvas starts to get dry, spray with water again, but spray upwards allowing the water to fall onto the canvas from above. Don't spray directly onto the ink or it will mottle the ink, unless that's the effect you're after. 

Depending on how steady your hand is when you're drawing the lines, there may or may not be bits where the line is thin or missing. This is where the ink will seep through and make the beautiful effects. I think I did too good a job on lining some flowers, so I had to purposely allow the brush to stray into the white lily to allow some colour transfer.

The ink comes in most basic colours but you can mix the colours beforehand to make a new colour.  I also added one colour over the other straight on the canvas. The plant stems I firstly painted  green, then added a bright yellow over the top to make a yellowy green, but it also  made it mottled when I sprayed it with water, so both the green and the yellow were visible.

The colours available in the ink are beautiful and bright, but I went back over them several times to get some really strong colurs - especially the yellows and the purple. 





What I love about this technique is that it's quick (but I'm such a fuss pot I had to keep going back over the colours to get them just right), and it's meant to be a bit rough and messy. The colours are supposed to bleed into each other, so if you're not steady handed (like me), and make a bit of a mistake with the lines or the colurs, it makes it look even better :)


And here's the finished result...

I'm hooked on this technique, watch out for the next one...

"The man who is tired of Weird Al Yankovic is tired of life" - Homer J. Simpson

If someone were to break in to my house and rifle through my CD collection they would notice a few things: an exorbitant collection of musical theatre soundtracks; a healthy 80's collection and a large amount of Cd's from three artists in particular: Elton John, George Michael and Weird Al Yankovic.

I've been fortunate to see Elton John several times, and last year I fulfilled a dream, nay, an obsession that started in 1982 with George Michael by flying to Sydney to see him in concert. My love affair with Weird Al started a bit earlier. I remember listening to the Dr Demento show on the radio as a child and two songs stood out for me: 'Another one Rides the Bus', and 'It's Still Billy Joel to Me'. I was later to find out that these songs were by Weird Al.

I've been an avid fan through the 80's when everyone was talking about his hits of 'Fat', 'Eat it' and 'Like a Surgeon', and into the nineties and the naughties, when all but the fans were saying, 'what happened to that Weird Al guy?' I didn't have to ask, I was there with him all along.

I was also there, at the QPAC concert hall on the 15th of March along with the geekier half of Brisbane. From the opening accordion Lady Gaga /Ke$ha /Justin Bieber polka tribute, through almost all of his hits (notably missing 'Like a Surgeon') from the last 4 decades, and finishing with the most entertaining encore I have ever seen.

The highlight for me was actually seeing Al in the flesh. At 51 the guy is in terrific shape, bouncing around the stage all night and kicking his leg higher than some dancers can.  He donned costumes for each song - yes, even the Fat suit! Between songs, to allow him time to get changed, a screen at the back of the stage showed clips from his Al TV show;  mock interviews of celebrities such as Eminem, Celine Dion and Jessica Simpson. It also played clips from TV shows over the past few decades that had references to Weird Al. As far as pop culture goes Al is the guru! He's been in, referred to, (or voiced a character in) shows from the Flintstones and Friends, to Everybody Loves Raymond, Family Guy, the Simpsons, Saturday Night Live, and more shows than you can shake a stick at!

The finale was everything I could have hoped for. Being a huge Star Wars fan - isn't everyone?? I eagerly awaited his two Star Wars tributes, 'Yoda' a parody of 'Lola' from the Kinks, from his 1985 album 'Dare to be Stupid', and 'The Saga Begins', the 1999 parody of 'American Pie' by Don McLean. He waited till we were all whipped up into a nerdy frenzy, then when the band entered wearing Jedi outfits we knew what we were in for. 'Saga' started it off, blended neatly into 'Yoda', complete with a row of dancing Stormtroopers across the back of the stage with Darth himself in the centre.

Does life get any better than this - I think not!