This old painting of mine was my first thought when the topic of "Sky" came up for Illustration Friday.


 This was during my painting period, something I plan to come back to eventually. The black-shouldered kite was a familiar sight, hovering in the late afternoon sky over the backblocks of Aspendale, where we were living then. I had an absolute concept of how I wanted this to look, with the shoulder bars working as an outline against the sky. The framing was part of how I conceived it should look.

Originally, I planned to paint in clouds in a linear style, but the kite looked so good against a plain background that I left it this way. What surprised me was how brown the white paint appeared when applied to blue underpainting. The only solution was to add blue to the white paint before applying it, although I made the wings using a series of transparent washes, one feather at a time.

The main reason I don't paint more is that I don't have enough spare time during daylight, which it needs to work right. The picture here isn't very good, as it was taken with a flash (which I've left in on the frame), but here's an even worse attempt, taken outside on the deck tonight. I have no idea how to photograph my paintings, which is why you don't see many of them here.

Labels: Australian wildlife, Painting

The stellar new issue of Going Down Swinging is available now, featuring sixty contributors - of prose, poetry, art (plus music and spoken word works on the CD included) - so much to enjoy it's a little overwhelming! It's also issue number 33, which is a remarkable achievement in itself.

Lurking inside you'll find "Coelacanth," a poem/comic that I'm particularly proud of, as I think it makes good use of the form.  I've done a few poem/comics now, but they've tended mostly to be illustrated stories, rather than images and art working to weave complementary, sometimes even contradictory, threads into a cohesive whole.

When I drew this I was feeling at a loose end, and went to my lyrics book searching for something that I could possibly illustrate as a comic (this one hadn't been set to music, and still hasn't).  The best tales want to tell themselves, and this one emerged rapidly from the creative darkness.

There's so much to discover in GDS #33 - for me, so many favourites, old and new.  You can find it to purchase here.

Labels: Miscellaneous comic pieces