Wild

 

 

Holly came from Miami, Florida
Hitch-hiked her way across the U.S.A.
Plucked her eyebrows on the way
Shaved her legs and then he was a she
She says, "Hey, babe
Take a walk on the wild side"
She said, "Hey, honey
Take a walk on the wild side"

Walk On The Wild Side

Lou Reed, 1972

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Remember those "halcyon" days of our youth?

 

No, me neither.

 

 

 

 

 

The first time I heard the word 'Halcyon", was the same day that I heard the word "Luddite".

They came from the mouth of the same man, a friend of a friend.

  

I was a naive 29 year old. He was a worldly man with too much money and a world weariness that hung around him like the smell of a freshly boiled onion. We were on our friend's boat out on the harbour, drinking almost French Champagne and watching  the world go by.

 

Our mutual friend was newly very rich and enjoying his wealth by acquiring paintings, toys - (Sports Cars, Ocean Cruisers etc)  - and houses over looking the water. Even with all that, he was a "good bloke" - and very generous. We met when we were studying English Lit together.

 

 

 

 

 

Of course I had to ask what both words meant - and I've never forgotten what a Luddite was - because as I grow older, I feel like I am becoming one.

 

But Halcyon? I never quite grasped the meaning. 

 

So let me google it.

 

 

Ah, here it is. Halcyon:

 

A fabled bird, identified with the kingfisher, that was supposed to have had the power to calm the wind and the waves while it nested on the sea during the winter solstice.
 

Well I never knew that.

 

So the Halcyon days of our youth translates as: "those particular days of our youth that we used a fabled bird to calm the waves so we could nest on the sea."

 



And by some dogmatic coincidence, that is exactly what my illustration is about......

 

 

 

 

 

 

Verdaccio
 

Do you know the word Verdaccio?

 

Well, it's something the old master's used to use occasionally (not the word but the technique). It's where you paint a green monotone under painting - a dead painting) then glaze over it with translucent colours. The idea is that the green under painting glows through the warmer layers and gives that nice harmonious glow that suggests depth in human flesh.

 

I've been invited to a show with "Nightmares" as the theme - so I've been working up this painting.
for a few weeks. It's 90 by 120 cms on linen.

And in  that time I've spent a lot of time looking at anatomy drawings as well as Greek statues. It's all very interesting what they were doing a few thousand years ago. I've also been looking at Da Vinci's working methods and his sketches. How smart was he, eh? What a mind....

In verdaccio  you are supposed to paint two tones lighter than the finished painting is meant to be.
So I still have a lot of work :)

The big advantage is that, in taking out the colour parameters, you just need to be making tonal decisions for the underpainting stage. It's a learning curve -  but not very steep. I'm also changing the characters as I go, slimming them down, changing hand positions etc.
 

Above and below are pics of  it as a work in progress in situ in the studio. If you look very closely you may recognise some of the characters.... :)

PS: Whoever invented the saxophone obviously thought no one in their right mind would ever try to paint one.

 

 

 

 

And finally, below, a self portrait (the big guy, not the rat).

 

 

 

 

 

Thanks for looking. Hope you are well!

 

 



Tree

 

A.Finnie. "Birdie Park" (detail) 2011, acrylic on canvas 40x50cm

Well, guess what I've been doing? 

Yes, I haven't been visiting blogs, I haven't been surfing. Instead I've been ringing up news papers, designing posters, thinking up wonderful things to say about myself that slightly resembled the truth, I've been trying to buy bottles of wine for less than three dollars that don't have the distinct aroma of Eau de Chat Derrier, I've been addressing envelopes, googling addresses, licking stamps (some of them taste like strawberries) and , above all, trying to find a pair of trousers to fit me on opening night that doesn't make me look like an upside down version of one of those people who blow up a washing glove and stick it on their head so they look like a chook on steroids (chook is Australian for chicken eg Hey Bruce! Get aload of that old chook over there sitting near the bill a bong)

This for Illustration Friday's "Tree". (So wasn't the Tree of Life half tempting, aye?)

I hope you forgive me for not visiting :( Life is due to return to normal any year now....

Hugs from Oz!

PS we even scored a segment in the Trevisan International Art newsletter :)

A.Finnie. "Yellow Chrsyanthemum"  2012, acrylic on canvas 40x50cm

Jennifer.Finnie. "Lazy Summer" 2012, acrylic on linen 30X25cm

 

 

 

 

Robert.Birch "Baraka 1" acrylic on canvas 40.5x40.5cm

Practicing one wall of the "hang" in the studio.

Ménage à Quatre

A few years ago I  was blessed to take part in a show with my good friends Siggy and Bob, a husband and wife team, both painters, both internationally renown, both extraordinary people who breath art almost every moment of their waking life.

Siggy, a delightful German who spends a lot of time in Tuscany doing Tuscan things, came up with the title for that show.

It was called Ménage à Trois - a title I thought quite innocent until I noticed a visiting French artistes' sudden shortness of breath as she explained the title to one of her less worldly Australian counterparts.

Hmm I thought, I wonder what she thinks Siggy and Bob and Andrew get up to!

So this year in mid-November, my wife and I will be showing with Bob and Siggy at the same gallery.

Of course the show is Ménage à Quatre... :)

These are a few of the paintings I have been working up for the show. Acrylic on canvas.

You can read about Sieglinde Battley here if you like. And also here
And Robert Birch has his site here. I'd highly recommend taking a look at Bob's sketchbook!

Bob was my painting teacher when I studied Fine Art at college. I am blessed to be his friend.

I made another post featuring Bob and Siggy a while back. It has the Newspaper reviews of Ménage à Trois. The post is here if you would like to read it.

I am so sorry I had my comments turned off. I didn't realise what a frustrating pain it was until I visited a friend's blog today and I had to hunt around to leave a comment.

Thank you for coming to my blog.

Suspendering My Disbelief.

I've been reading The Voyage of the Dawn Treader  (C.S. Lewis) for a few days .. well actually I have been reading it for the last few nights. 

Specifically, very late at night.

You know that time of night when, tucked away  in bed, you tend to fall asleep with a book suspended by one stiff arm above your face. Regardless of whether your eyes are open or closed, the book hangs like an executioner's axe, threatening to fall and dent your nose or, at the very least, give you a bloody set of lips, should you release your grip for a moment.

It all goes to prove, without a shadow of a doubt, that it is a dangerous thing to be a reader of books.

I can only thank my lucky stars (read: Bank Manager) that I cannot afford an e-reader - because I fall asleep while reading so often that my nose, already bent like the beak of  the South Australian Yellow Breasted Nosy Noodletwit (genus: eripydies), would have been plastered all over my face by now.

Still, back to the subject at hand, what ever that was... 


..... ah yes, C.S. Lewis. 


The greatest thing about The Voyage of The Dawn Treader is its first paragraph. As a 'hook', as an entre, as a 'warmer-upperer', as a piquant sorbet, this paragraph is without equal. 

For example, the first line is: 

"There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it."

Unfortunately C.S. Lewis must have had an apocolypitic attack of epiliopithy after he wrote the first paragraph, because, without so much as a deeply bated breath, the book soon sinks into the depths of of authorial narrative intervention. (eg: Dear reader, you should not worry yourselves about Eustace, our erstwhile hero, because he is nought but a scoundrel who never changes his socks, even on Sundays.) 

Lewis's clumsy interventions are clumsy enough to make us certain that he (Lewis)  is clumsy keen for his  readers not to be hung up by their clumsy suspenders of disbelief.

And the fact that it is written for twelve-year-olds is no excuse for these lapses.

Mind  you, I am older than 12 and I am still reading it, suspenders or not.

So, the cover of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader is the genesis for this image. 

It's also a bow, not only to the cover of Shaun Tan's book The Arrival, but to the techniques of my wonderful artist friends Janne and Mita.

Oh, I almost forgot: this Illustration is for IF's prompt "Separated", a word that I have only recently learnt to misspell. Thank you for looking. 

One more thing. Do you need a good laugh? Check out Penspaper Studio. :). Elizabeth has a great sense of humour. 

A Book of Paintings

Oh dear, sorry to be away so long.

I've been getting ready for our next show here in Newcastle (painting framing getting invites done blahblah :) ) and part of the preparations have been to get this book of my paintings organised.

It's 196 pages approx and I had to go through all my old computers and notes to track down images and find out who bought the paintings for the providence and the sizes and the.... so my brain is swollen :)

Just like Newcastle, the place where I do most of my paintings. Swollen in a bad way, we're busy pulling down our history so we can build as many apartment blocks as possible. But hey, that's progress.

Andrew Finnie: Newcastle Painter by Andrew Finnie |

And in a way, that's what the book is about. Recording the place as it once was, before the 'swell' of development overwhelmed the town.

I have no idea how it will print out as I'm still waiting for the 'galleys'. I'd be honoured if you have a look if you have the time. There's even some pics of my ugly head in it. I will photoshop someone else's head on for a later edition. I'll be catching up soon, promise.

I have designed it for people who collect my work here in Newcastle.

Below is a double page spread from the book (note the gutter you have to fiddle with the image at the gutter!) and some invites to the show.

thank you for looking :)

Saving Myself

Hey hey, after that last post with the semi naked man I thought I'd better redeam myself.

I forgot that I was a painter for a while there :) so thought I'd better stick some of my real life paintings up.

That said, the top picture is of a photograph of a rose I saw in Canberra a few months ago when I went down for the post impressionists' show.  When I looked it through the viewfinder this is what I saw.

It wasn't till I got home that I realised that my breath had been fogging up the image in the viewfinder. So for the final image I cheated and photoshopped it.

The rest of the images bar one are paintings.

The toy boat one is my reaction to those sparkles that I put in my illustrations. One of the people who collect my work was kind enough to buy it.

The second one is a landscape down the road from where my old painting professor lives. This one now lives in the collection of another optometrist who has great style and taste :)

The next three are recent paintings (last two weeks) and haven't been exhibited. Though I used the same dark linen glazed background I tried to bring a bit more colour into them. It makes people think that I am happy!

But seriously, the dark ground helps you to tie the colours in. Theory is that with a limited tonal range you can use as many colours as you like - and the whole will be harmonious. It works most of the time. All these paintings are about 55 by 42 cm?

The one of the beach with houses in the foreground is a segment of a painting I did a few years ago. I like to simplify work by taking photographs of paintings I have done, isolating part of the painting that might make a good composition, then printing that out quite small, so that I have only the basic shapes with which to work up another painting.

Sometimes it works, sometimes it's too abstracted.

The last two images a are of a larger painting 1.2 metres by .9 metres, which is bigger than I like to work. It's a fun painting related to my digital collages I did of Humpty Dumpty a few months ago, and it's called Humpty Dumpty Double Amputee. It's an experiment in built up glazes - so it was quite hard to capture on film due to the reflection etc,

This painting caused me a great deal of stress recently, as I put it in a local prize hanging and the culling committee refused to hang it. When I picked it back up I was informed that there were 'just too many things wrong with it."

As budding novelist I was lucky enough to experience first hand what is called a rainbow of emotions. Disbelief, disgust, revenge, anger, dismay, nausea, destruction of ego, self doubt etc - culminating in  resignation and distrust of the local art community.

Nothing that a glass of good wine wouldn't fix!

The last picture is the painting in my part of the studio that I share with six other painters.

What's next? Well yesterday the huge Dell Laser Colour Printer I ordered arrived. It's so big I can't lift it without help. But the two prints I have done on it are just magic. It's only 1200 DPI by 1200 DPI but on A4 it still looks great. When I get a chance I'll be experimenting with digital transfer technique - so I will be finally able to get some of my illustrations out into the 'real' world.

If you are thinking of buying another inkjet, before you do, check out one of these. It won't do photo quality like a lab will - but I think it will keep me happy.

thanks again for looking at my work.