Earlier this year I uncovered some of my old art from primary school and high school.  There wasn’t much, but I’m so glad to have kept what I did. 

Have a look at these…

Mackaw (above) and Parrot ( below)

I drew these birds when I was ten years old.  I had a great love of birds and bird watching thanks to my dad and all our family holidays ‘out bush’.  To this day, I still love looking out for and identifying birds…

These are various images from high school art classes.  The one below was made on an art camp.  I remember the teacher instructing us to create a picture using only what we coudl find in our environment.  i think we were allowed to use ink?  Anyway, I still remember quite vividly sitting in the bush snapping off twigs to draw with, rubbing dirt in for colour, using thin reeds for fine brush strokes… It was awesome.

Until I saw these next few drawings, I’d forgotten how much I loved drawing faces!  Then I remembered how all of my uni notes would have part-faces sketched all down my margins – I couldn’t help myself!  How I wish I’d kept some of those lecture notes!

This morning I was sitting in the sun reading Misty Mawn’s book “unfurling’ (cool title eh and looking at all the cool faces she’s paintined and IT dawned on me.  (Bueller… Bueller)  ‘IT’ being that it’s no wonder I was so drawn to Kelly Rae Roberts in the first place because of the faces!  And why I’ve loved Misty’s work for a while now too – because of the faces.  And why I can’t shake the desire to go back to… painting faces!

AND… When I looked at my sketch of these Hibsicus flowers (which I have always been really proud of) it also dawned on me why I have loved Danny Gregory for a while too – why I was so drawn to his art in the first place.  Because I do so love me a black pen and blank paper, and a little wash of colour here and there…

It feels as if some of the numbers in the dot-to-dot have just been connected!  And I think I might just have me some inspiration for some new paintings!  ( I couldn’t find any of my lino cuts/prints from high school which is also a long lost love of mine, but that’s a whole other blog post…)

I’ll leave you there for now.  What’s inspiring you lately?  Please share!

X D <3