...like too much chocolate

I think I just needed a break from everything. I was a bit surprised myself. After I finished my submissions for my art course, got healthy again, no visitors, no major commitments, I thought I'd be drawing and blogging up a storm. But no. It does feel a bit like when you eat too much chocolate. You know, it was sooooo good and you didn't want to stop, but you really just had to. The end result for me is this little break in my blogging output. It won't be for long though. I promise.

And speaking of sweet things - how sweet is this! This fine artwork has actually been drawn by someone who I would never have guessed would dabble with a pen. The keyboard is firmly his friend. But here it is. And furthermore, he did it to brighten our day at work. What a lovely surprise. And regulars to my blog may almost recognise him. He visits here from time to time leaving strange comments. His cybername is something indecipherable and starts with "A". Maybe he'll leave a comment this time.

Do you know 'Notebookism?'

If you don't know of the great site Notebookism, you should definitely check it out, and not just because it is such an interesting site where stationery lust is paramount, but because they have been nice enough to feature my 'Tidarithms' artist's book. This is the fourth time Armand has been nice enough to post about one of my books. If you missed seeing my book before click here or here to see the Notebookism article about my book. If you would like to see more images of my book (on Flickr) click here. And if you missed the other rebound books click here and scroll down, and artist's books click here and scroll down..

Drawing up a storm

These two drawings were done as part of my drawing course. This one, "Warming to Warming" is a satirical look at the issue of climate change. I was thinking about how ridiculous some of the politicians 'solutions' seem; the 'solution' you have when you're not having a solution. I began to extrapolate that ridiculousness. I came up with the idea that if we could get used to the problem, and even work with the pollution to create a new kind of beauty - decorative smog - that would be a 'solution' too."Grey Greenhouse" is a work with similar inspiration. I found a recent quote from Prime Minister John Howard - "...economic growth should take precedence over emissions cuts". I silhouetted key words from this quote with smog coloured paint and added some of the 'decoration' I had included in the above drawing. These images were then cut up and shuffled in an effort to emulate political process.

Both of these drawings were done on pages removed from an old book from the "Teach Yourself Building" series, JE MacFarlane's 1945 "Electricity in the House".

In the news yesterday, John Howard promised to commit to greenhouse gas targets - after the election! Seems my artistic motivation wasn't too far from some kind of twisted reality.

Rebound Artist's Book

Another artist's book. This one made by rebinding the reworked pages of an old library book "Logarithms". The artist's book is titled "Tidarithms".



The theme of the book is the mangrove near my home. (If you missed my previous post on working with these mangroves click here.)

This book looks at the tidal level at 3pm each day for two weeks in April/May this year. I chose the Logarithms book because I felt it was appropriate. The maths behind the tides escapes me. (And what I may have once known about logarithms has left me.) I know the tides are governed by forces that are understood, but they seem strangely random to me.

I used a date stamp to 'draw' the mangroves aerial roots. The rest is pencil, acrylic and collage.

The original pages have been rebound in a Japanese fold block that is detachable from the covers. Click here to see more images of this book on Flickr.

Reading

Roly