CheckMate

CheckMate

A4

Coloured pencil, watercolour pencils and Pan Pastels on wood

Another artwork featuring Muhali, a lovely baby gorilla we photographed at Taronga Zoo a few years ago - by now he is probably a fully fledged teenager (poor parents), but he was very cute at the time! My son has informed me that I have the chess board facing the wrong way (to the front, instead of to the baby gorilla) - he set the board up for me, but I moved it to take the photo. We long ago gave up playing chess with this son, because he beats us every time - I don't have the patience anyway!!!

Back to doing some illustration work this week, so for now the pencils are put aside for some digital work.

Losing My Marbles

Losing My Marbles

29cm x 19cm

Coloured pencil and Pan Pastels on wood

What fun I had doing this artwork and it is a reflection of all the things I love - animals, colour and a touch of humour. For those of you who like the background in this artwork, and if you have not already done so, please have a look at the beautiful animal paintings on

Sam Dolmain's Blog. His inspirational art has taught me that it is Ok to be fearless with colour and to put down the colours you love, and not just the colours you see. This is the direction I would like to take with my art, combining realism with bright colours.

Just a note about pencils - those of you who follow my blog would know that I have always been a fan of the oil based pencils such as the Polychromos, but I have found when working on the Gesso on wood, that my old Derwent Studio pencils work best. The Polychromos tend to sit on top of the gesso more and will powder off, whereas it is easier to achieve better colour saturation with the Derwents. This is just my experience and it also depends on your techniques when working with coloured pencils - I tend to push the pencil into the surface with short stabbing strokes, rather than sweeping it across the surface.

OSWOA - Muhali, Baby Gorilla

Muhali, Baby Gorilla

4 x 6 inches

Acrylic on Colourfix paper

On Monday, we took our youngest to Sydney's Taronga Zoo, and one of our highlights was this eight month old gorilla, who stole our hearts. It was fascinating to watch the gorilla's behaviour and the parrallel's between them and we humans. With four sons, and three of them in their teens, I was amused to watch two adolescent gorillas wrestling with each other and struggling for dominance, whilst their silverback father looked on with mild interest. I lost track years ago of the number of times we have asked our boys to stop wrestling in the loungeroom (usually just as the news started!!!)