25. New Site, New Cover, New Year

I finally have a proper website! Some of you may remember the shitty temporary html scrolling thing that has been up for over a year now… I had thought I would never get around to overhauling it, but my mate Dittmar at Flood Studio helped me out with a slick, clean design. Nothing fancy, exactly the way I wanted it. He usually does curation/graphic design which is the studio’s forte, so it was extra nice for him to help me out on this one.

Check it out - PAQUETTE.COM.AU

I’d love to know if you think it compliments the work.

Im saving the new art up (especially the traditional stuff) for a big update in one go and I may add a traditional section specifically for it.

Also thought I would share this latest cover i finished a while back (still unreleased in Aus). The brief was a bit insane and i think the visual complexity killed it, but seeing the printed version amongst a bunch of other 12″ covers, i was surprised at how effective that was. Mitch at Bang Gang 12″s is yet to finish it off with the title text and the back cover. This is the second cover I have done for the label and they are muchos fun. Not the least because most of our ‘business meetings’ take place at the beach :)

BAGRAIDERS: TURBO LOVE REMIXES

And the sketch/approval stage for shits n giggles:

As for the new year, I have some really definite goals in mind. Both artistically (more traditional painting, performance, storytelling and writing) and in my own life.

The end of 08 in the new studio has been a profound experience and has shifted me into uncomfortable places I may never have otherwise gone. It has reminded me of some things I had let myself forget over the last two years, and has (in a roundabout fashion) brought me back onto some very important paths.

I wish you all a safe consumeristmas season (spend time not money!) and happy creativity throughout ohnine.

Peace.A

24. Some of the crew

Photographer and Promotional extraodinaire Christopher Lee Dusseldorp stopped by the studio yesterday to shoot a promo for the Hallelujah group show. This is a bunch of the guys who work with me in the studio, doing our best to look 'street'. I stole my pants from Vanilla Ice.

23. The epoch of intention

I have had a really hectic few weeks settling in to the new house, taking a plethora of new projects on board, meeting so many amazing artists in sydney i had never heard of, and generally adventuring around. The last 2 weeks or so I have found myself in a purely ideas-based headspace. Apart from work stuff, most of my time has been spent more on writing and development than painting, which is fun. I now have enough work to keep me busy for about a year and enough personal projects to kill my free time till I retire i think :D its a fun feeling to be this busy, to always have something to go on to next. As im deepening my personal maximalism manifesto, im starting to gel with how it works and the differences that occur between it and, say, the path of a 'specialist' artist. Most important is to nail out any fundementalist, self-righteous ways of thinking and be able to interact with all the life views of those you meet, as rainwater passes through the leaves of a tree. (LOL!)


Moleskines

Here are some moleskine pages... this book ended up turning pretty much into a storage space for thumbnails and notes, with only one or two 'finished' sketches. I try to conserve the expensive moleskines for more laboured drawings... but i guess the nature of the coffee shop sketchbook is to doodle and write without thinking too much about it.

you might have to click these to see them properly.





Single Origin Roosters

My caffe of choice for the past few months has been Single Origin Roasters on Reservoir ST, surry hills. The coffee is the best I have ever had (in any country) and the staff are all amazing people who bring caffe service the closest to spirituality I have ever seen! Some of the switched on conversations I have had there have been genuinely inspiring and thought provoking and its amazing to see just how good food and drink can be for your soul when it is prepared by those who care about it. Check it out if you are local, and tell Gav I sent you!


This kid was sitting with his grandpa, playing scissors paper rock. Somehow he found a way to make scissors beat rock AND paper, which gave him a distinct advantage in the showdown. Life is better before someone tells you what the 'rules' are! I played the little champion in a best of 3 when gramps was out of the ring... sad to say i was soundly defeated. How did he always know to use scissors?! Coffee art copyright Single Origin Baristas.


ORLY?

Don't forget CULTURE JAM this thursday night at Oh Really in Newtown. Apeseven is on the walls and I reckon this will be a big one. More info at OhReallyBlog (a worthwhile stop on your daily web route).


MORE ART IN PARTY!

Speaking of live art, we had a big housewarming party on Sat night, got a great turnout and unleashed a crate of spraycans on the back courtyard. Was so fun to see so many people getting up and letting their creativity out uninhibited. Cheers to krez for supplying the good tunes in a timely fashion and contributing to the can fund! The face was the first ever thing I have done with cans... it was easier than I expected but I can see how the finesse of linework with cans is a real art in itself. Monkey king was a collab between myself and David Smit from Amsterdam.






Emptiness

I found a way to get photos off my phone, and noticed this one I took when I was bored on a film shoot last month. I really liked the way my silhouette was made in the negative space from the light. It reminded me of the imaginary nature of the 'self' - essentially an empty space framed by the elements of what we identify with as us - our bodies, emotions, memories, etc. Its one interesting and perplexing way of looking at things :)



Sculpture By The Sea

I never got around to posting my shots of sculpture by the sea, but I did have this one on my phone... i thought it was really nice to see a sculptor in an otherwise somewhat 'highfalutin' show allow kids to walk all over their piece of art in the name of fun! Apart from the graceful perpetual motion bird overlooking the cliff face, this was my pick of the show.


This is Cecily..

She's a poet, I like her stuff.



Hallelujah!

I have no idea what this show is all about but apparently I'm in it! I got added to the roster last minute, last night... and it seems all the family's in it... I'm not on the flyer but I was part of the promo photo (LOL!) They are using one of my old works... anyway a bit of a mystery but check out the show if you are about :) Its at blankspace on crown st, opens on the 18th.



Lots more updating to come next day or two. For now, this is LAUGHING GAS signing out.

22. Weasel!

Evening :)

Today I have christened a new invention - a hybrid wacom-easel contraption I dub the Weasel 1.0!! I am having a lot of fun painting digitally but feeling the lower back pain and foot-sole cramps normally associated with arduous traditional painting!! Why suffer through these tormentuous horrors, you ask? Well it all has to do with freeing up my old friends Mr Elbow and Mr Shoulder, since Mr Wrist can get a bit selfish on the old wacom...



My only complaint is that this angle can force the wrist back a bit (will tweak the arrangement so its a bit lower i think) and that everything can get a little wobbly/unstable when the strokes start to get a bit faster. Overall though, it keeps me much more engaged in the painting.

Here are my sketches from the caffe this morning

This is another one from The Scar - Bellis and Silas strolling through Croom Park (a sprawling parkland/forest grown over old clippers and battleships). I feel the narrative/composition are a bit weak, but i had a lot of fun zoning out and rendering away over my venezualan crack-coffee :)

And the first work in progress for the new cover im doing - Turbo Love Remixes from The Bagraiders. WEEEE! its a bit unclear for now, but i think i have a fairly strong vision to see it out :) What you are looking at is the early stages of a large megacity in the shape of a woman lying prone, with a monolithic band logo behind her. Im going to try to go into as much complexity and detail as I can - particularly around the... er... focal points?? And im after a very cheesy, overtly sexual, miami-neon style aesthetic (which is all to do with the vibe of the band). More updates tomorrow/next day :)

21. A more verbose contribution

Hellooooo :)

I felt a bit more inclined to pondering and prose the last week, so I thought capping it off with a bit of indulgent rambling would be suitable :) Bear with me!

i: 2nd 3rd eye - I was at Single Origin on reservoir street grabbing a morning coffee (awesome place - best coffe I have had in Sydney and inspirational staff working there) and noticed everyone had indian bindi's on their foreheads. I asked the waitress what it was all about and she regailed me with a story about her recent trip to the north of india, and then proceeded to offer me a bindi, which she placed between my brows. Its the second time in less than a week that somebody has placed a symbollic 'offering' on my 3rd eye;

ii: I was stamped with an admission stamp (fluro pink) right between the peepers, last thursday at Oh Really? gallery in newtown, where Daniel O'toole and the gang put on their second 'Culture Jam' gig. Amazing music and art abounded, absorbed by a crowd of dedicated and genuine people. I hang out with the orly crew again yesterday at the glebe street fair, and I have to give it up for them - their dedication and maintained effort to prop up the local scene with good work ethic and strong art practise is an inspiration.

iii: I met two cool young designers at the caffe too - Dan and Emily from Novel Creative (website under construction - but does have a cool showreel) and we had a great spontaneous discussion about our own practises, and the state of the creative scene locally and abroad. They seemed genuinely determined to make a go of their creative, non commercial, more personal work and I want to wish them the very best of good fortune in that endeavor!

iv: I slept in a park for the first time - i mean properly slept - without being drunk or lost! I met another inspiring person over the weekend - a poet - who has helped turn my world around and shake some things up. We spent a very fun early morning randomly exploring poetry, art, laneways and parklands while high on nothing but self indulgent armchair philosophy and cold air. That was a fun night!

v: earlier the same night i hung out across the hallway from my studio at a dance school where I was blown away with some amazing demos of urban break, popping, and freestyle dance. We jammed long into the night and It made me remember how vital it is to work with the body's rhythm and movement - its so fundemental to being a human - and the classes are cheap and run by very professional dancers, so I've signed up for a series of 10 classes to see how many muscles I can pull before I chicken out and go back to wacom-ballet ;)

I have been working on lots of art recently - reinspired by some old novels I am going back to reading for the first time in a few years. One, I already mentioned in a previous post, was China Mieville's 'The Scar', which I have continued to work on with a series of previsualisations which I am in the process of comping out to turn into full feature illustrations. I havn't had this much steam in a long time - and its unusual for me to get so much satisfaction from working with somebody else's ideas - but for now its feeding my soul - so on i roll.

I have felt a big change in the last week. All the spiritually-minded folk are talking about big steps in our mental/spiritual evolution, and while I'm fairly naive to the particulars, I have certainly felt an overwhelmingly clear and lucid change in myself - and I believe in others too - and am very excited by the high spirits and increased communication going on around me. People are talking more, and meeting my eyes in the streets, and discussion and change are being provoked. Im sure you have seen it happening in the arts communities too.

Well thats enough waffling on, for now - so here are some more scans from the moleskine to fill up the void until my next update which will be some digipaints worked up from several of my recent sketches.

A scene from The Scar where Tanner Sack walks through a more quiet district of Armada - This one is the next im taking to colour i think


A page of quick sketches made while I was reading the Scar - visual notetaking to record what was naturally leaking out from my imagination. And on the right, just a random comp started from a scribble.

Left page was some notetaking from a small Da Vinci exhibit put on by UTS university - the students made finctional models of DV's inventions/improvements. On the right, more chaos scribbling.

Random faces. Still struggling!! Just discovered a treasure trove of knowledge on Kevin Chen's space though. Starting to find the forms are clicking and i'm remembering structure.

Random bug-man stuff.

More chaos. I need to get away from using only curved forms all the time when i do stream of consciousness - find ways to loosely approach geometry and solid perspective too.

This one was done to the inspiring live music at Oh Really, and im giving it a small and humble frame to send to one of the band members who got a kick out of it.

All the best to all the best :)
A

20. Speedies

Say no more...

19. moreskine

Time for a few more scans :)

18. Small update

Here are two speedpaintings that I will most likely leave as they are :)

First one is a 'Cactacae' from a great scifi book i went back to reading after a couple of years. 'The Scar' is by UK author China Mieville and has a wicked sense of imagination. Im likely to do some more of these as its good to kill my ego and let my inner child run wild :)



Second is an unfinished painting that seemed to 'lose it' after a while - the background was quite nice originally, and I think giving it the flat wall background stuffed it a bit. May go back to it in a few months with new insights.



Having fun at the new studio :) Have a good weekend everybody!

New Studio!

I'm now in world's end studios, right near central station here in Sydney. Been a hectic weekend settling in - confronting a lot of old fears and new ones, and embracing some amazing new opportunities and evolutions, and chances to do some things over (hopefully with the benefit of hindsight!)

Thought id drop a photo of the new pad (im on the mid left with the screen, of course!) and a speedie i did today to try to nut out some weakness with form and colour.





Hope you are all smiling.
A

Sketches, Lifedrawing etc

About time I scanned all this recent paper work iv been up to. All stuff for practice and out of the moleskine. Working, working, working at correcting my shitty figures and faces!!! Such an achiles heel. Getting there...