Musician Portrait

Last night I went to Michael's birthday party. Mike is a musician and almost everyone there was too. This is my music, a portrait of Alison at her keyboard.

Three new paintings readied for exhibition

Double dipping

To tonight's life drawing class I took two paintings I had been working on all day to ready for delivery to the Waikino Spring Art Exhibition tomorrow morning.
They are both unfinished and I had to ignore my class and do some work on them when I should have been mentoring....
The annual Waikino Labour Weekend exhibition is my favourite exhibition and I never miss it, it is the highlight of my year and heralds the start of Summer and the tourist season and stirs me to produce at least 3 new paintings for exhibition there every year.

The Art of Rolling Pastry

I was watching with bored detatchment a piece of a B grade American movie, a comedy, and a guy pretending to be a chef was in the kitchen of a mansion attempting to make chocolate surprise without the least idea what he was about. The camera panned right and there was a funky old wooken roller laundry mangle, the same as my funky tubular and coil spring model that I am converting to an etching press, there in the kitchen and the guy cranks chocolate and nuts through it to crush them..
I was thrilled and reached for the remote to go back and study this mangle - bugger! Broadcast television, can't go back!
So our hero serves chocolate surprise to the dinner guests and everyone is happy and I turn it off and put on a DVD.
Got me thinking though, I've a wooden roller mangle converted to an etching press out in the print studio, it's very clean with varnished rollers, food quality for sure, so tonight I am making a bacon and egg pie and take out the pastry and flour and put it through the press.
Works a treat although would be better with unvarnished rollers as the pastry sticks a little to the rollers as they are too smooth to hold flour.
Like some more ink with your pie? Perhaps a wee tad of turpentine sauce? No? O you sure are fussy, don't know what you're missing.

Sunday School of Art

I like to share the studio with other artists every Sunday. Sometimes nobody comes, no matter it's my day in the studio doing art stuff regardless of all other demands on my time, with company or not.
Today was a sunny spring day and Bill and Janice were here painting and my new flatmate Theresa was working on some ink designs. I worked on the painting below.