Love You, Mum available now

Just in time for Mother's Day, Love You, Mum is now available in book shops within Australia (I found it up on counter at Dymocks) and retails for $9.99. If you are looking for a unique gift for the Mum to Be or want to give a mother or child you love something different, then you might find this little book is the answer. It features a range of realistic Australian Animal illustrations, each page with a Mum and Bub interacting in some way and giving each other a bit of love. :)

Exploring the art of Pyrography (Wood Burning)

The Patriarch
12x12 inches
Pyrography, Coloured pencil, Inktense pencils, biro and
a touch of white ink on Cradled Birch Ply

Wonderment
8x8 inches
Pyrography, coloured pencil and inktense pencils
on Cradled Birch Ply

As many of you know, I do love exploring new techniques and mediums and my latest experiments involve combining Pyrography (wood burning) with coloured pencils and inktense pencils to try to achieve a realistic look and I do warn you it can be very addictive. I am curious whether people think of pyrography as a from of craft, or a legitimate fine art medium? I feel it can definitely be used to create beautiful works of art that would hold up well against artworks created with any other media.

I have created a speed drawing of the Patriarch for anyone curious in watching the process for doing pyrography and this can be viewed on YouTube and I have also created a 22 page step by step tutorial showing my limited set up and guiding you through the process for creating this artwork. The tutorial is available from my Website

I bought most of my equipment from Sue Walters and anyone looking to explore this form of art should check out her website. She has a huge supply of equipment, kits and books and I also found her extremely helpful when I rang for information.

Who Stole my Ladder
12x12 inches
Coloured Pencil, Inktense pencil, black Promarker and
White ink highlights on Wooden Art Panel

Make a Wish
8x10 inches
Coloured pencil and Faber Castell Pitt Pens on
Watercolour canvas

A couple of more Trompe L'Oeil pieces and some big learning curves. After attempting and discarding Make a Wish 7 times, using a range of mediums, I finally decided that I had better complete at least one and move on. As you can see the black background is blotchy and whilst I had hoped that an application of varnish might resolve this issue, it actually made it worse. So what did I learn from all this trial and error and exasperation? I need to take a different approach and avoid doing large areas with black background, and this lead me to working on the wooden art panels, and this proved so much more satisfying and less frustrating, so I think this might be the start of a series. Hope these put a smile on your face :)