A research January

I can thoroughly recommend Dunn's book on pen & Ink drawing, above and listed below. its one of the best books I've come across on the subject, very practical how to guide with heaps of great examples.

Spent a lot of the Christmas and New Years break on holiday, tradies over fixing and doing things around the house, you know the million or so things that you put off during the year and learning new skills. I've been using the time particularly researching and experimenting a lot of new painting skills.

So for example putting a grey down, painting over this with white and then using a stipple or toothbrush to brush back i.e. take the white back off in irregular patterns as a great way of creating backgrounds and textures. Their is a danger of going too hard and going right back into the grey and undoing all your good work.

It's been good to take a bit of a break form commercial work to concentrate on drawing for a while in a concerted effort.

I went and saw John Gollings retrospective exhibition at the Monash Art gallery in Wheelers Hill with 2 photographer friends and then we had lunch and coffees. My favourites were John's latest works on ancient structures in back and white.

Reading : Pen & Ink Drawing : A Simple Guide by Alphonso Dunn

Watching : The Ashes, ODI Cricket

Listening : Soundtrack to Dunkirk by Hans Zimmer

Eating : all the wonderful variations of Dahl.