Smart Alex

I get my hair done at Smart Alex. Well. it's really been Smart Brian for a long time now. Alex died about the same time as Diana. Like her, he was English, blond, and liked a bit of drama. I picture them up there, blond heads together... Diana is filling in Alex about life with the royal family. In this image, Diana has just told Alex a story. His response, which you can see she appreciates, is "She what ? She NEVER!"

This image was put together for World Aids Day. I still miss Alex for his stories.

Note: No disrespect is meant to the Queen. It's just that this image always springs to mind when I think of Alex and how much he would have loved to have a gossip with Diana and know the inside story.

Wordpress is playing games with me so I'm back on Blogger.

This blog has moved....

Hi everyone.
I had to start up a blog on wordpress for a course I was doing. I've moved over there, for a while at least, to see which one suits me best. Come & visit http://quirkyartist.wordpress.com

Blogging course

Hi everyone,
I'm currently doing a blogging course at lvsonline. Click on the logo to see! You can see the details of the blogging class here. I've done a squillion courses with them - well, OK, not a squillion, but HTML (2) Photoshop (6), Illustrator (2), Flash, Fireworks (2), Bryce, KPT, Painter, Digital Artists Studio, to name a few. I'm currently doing TWO courses (which is madness). At the moment I'm working on some web development, and although I know Dreamweaver, I'm learning it again from them. It's for two reasons. One is that I need to get up to speed with Dreamweaver CS3 and the other is that when you learn from them, you get a thorough knowledge. Ask my friends about my Photoshop skills - all from lvs.

They are all 6-week courses. You load down a pdf file with each new lesson on a Saturday, then you do the lesson throughout the week. There's a class message board where you can ask questions and meet with other students. You post any queries there and the tutor replies. The pdf files alone are worth far more than the price of the course. You know how much computer books cost - well the notes you get from lvs are the equal of any book. The price is right too - even for Australians. The first course is $US25 and any subsequent ones are $US20.

There's a lot of cameraderie happening on the blogging course. We start very simple, and learning as we go. I've set up a blog on Wordpress as part of the course. That's why I haven't been very active here. If you want to check my progress, go to http://quirkyartist.wordpress.com

Finally - bookmarks with credit card paper

I promised to put these online a week or more ago. A lot has been happening in my life. I'm working about three days a week now and as well as that I'm going to a tutors-only life drawing class at Sydney Community College on a Monday morning. I've just got back from that. I teach Painting in Acrylics there, both on Wednesday night and Wednesday morning.

Now we're ramping up for some more book/paper art classes at Artwise the Amazing paper shop. Hope to finalise all the dates today. These will be a two-hour Saturday morning class. First we make the credit card paper (which I learnt from Kelsey's blog). - then we make the bookmarks. There will also be a flag book class. You can see some of the flag books in previous posts on my blog - here.

As well as that I'll be doing the star tunnel book class again.This link is to a little variation of it we learn the skills for if we've got time. We have some new classes that haven't been offered before - art books and decorative papers. Watch the Artwise website or give them a call. Dates should be finalised today.

An iconic flag book...

This is my latest student sample flag book. I've had the images cut out for a long time but it's been on the backburner due to my other deadlines. You might remember that I taught a photograph flag book late last year and used free postcards for the images. The original instructions came from the "Bonefolder" newsletter here.

In that article, there is a flag book using images of Elvis. It said to make the photographs recognisable in a flag book, one must use iconic images. I wanted to do one of my own. Got books from the library and had to make the choice between Audrey and James Dean. Audrey won. I printed the images onto cheap watercolour paper. The endpages are credit card paper made using Matisse Silver and Carbon Black. Instructions for credit card paper can be found on Kelsey's blog in this post.The front cover has four square diamantes glued onto four consecutive dots. (Breakfast at Tiffany's).

It's not spag bol......

No, it's not spag bol ! This is the page spread that illustrates Bologna as 'la grassa' - the fat - meaning it's a great place to eat. This is a type of tagliatelle called 'paglia e fieno' from the Emilia-Romagna area. The cutaway at the top of the page is from a famous Bologna roofline.

The date-and-time page spread is the date and time of the strage di Bologna. The station clock is always left set at that time. I suppose you'll think I'm weird that I'd do a book about this massacre so long after the time, and from the other side of the world. The family I lived with in Rome were communist intellectuals. They said I must go to Bologna, and I just adored it. The thing I remember though, in my first visit in 1975, everyone's luggage was searched at the train station. Such a thing was unheard of, and it stuck in my mind. It took me thirty years to get back, and I loved it just as much.

This third page is to illustrate the massacre at the railway station and the collage is Italian words to do with murder and terrorism. It is sooo hard to find Italian magazines for collage in Sydney. Leichhardt, the Italian area, which is near where I live has not one op shop.

Playing with Bologna bits and pieces

Glad you liked my Bologna book. Yes, it has been submitted for the AGNSW exhibition - that's not to say it will be accepted. I'll post more pages when I've had time to crop them & so forth.

This is something I did to let off steam when the book was finally finished and all the deadlines met. I had all sorts of little bits and pieces left over. I have been selling some art books on ebay, and I quite often put in a handmade bookmark and I was running out. I've also used some credit card paper and a piece of itajime paper. The second set is what you see through the window when you pull up the red blind.

This artist comes from Bologna.

Who is he? Alison, from scribblesadagio has been using him for inspiration.

I also did some bookmarks with credit card papers glued onto matt board I bought at Reverse Garbage. I'll show you them soon.