Christmas image available Royalty Free at ImageZoo

Just wanted to wish you a very Merry Christmas and a safe & happy New Year! Am missing the snow here in sunny Australia… but we’ll just have to make some sand-angels on the beach instead, as we’re having a bbq on Christmas day with family and friends! I’ll be taking a bit of a blog break over the holidays… but in the mean time here’s a sneak peak (left) at a sketch from the children’s book I’m currently working on, Riley’s Lost Tooth by Diane Cantrell.

Hee hee, today’s Wondermark is a great reflection of what it’s like working on a children’s book! David Malki cracks me up ;)

While in Sydney, neither rain nor wind could keep me away from visiting Nutcote, home of Australia’s famous children’s book illustrator & writer, May Gibbs.

After a 15 minute ferry ride from Circular Quay to Neutral Bay, and a short walk round the bend, we found Nutcote. We arrived well before the house opened for guests so Hera & I enjoyed exploring the beautiful gardens (especially the caterpillar hedge) full of the native flora that inspired May Gibb’s gumnut characters.

It’s always exciting seeing another children’s book illustrator’s studio, so it was fun getting a tour of her home which she helped design.

What was a little disappointing was that a lot of May’s belongings were auctioned off years ago, so the tour guide had to point out the few things in the home that actually belonged to her… most of it was from her era, but not hers. So seeing her studio was a bit of an anticlimax, as the dirty old paintbrushes weren’t her dirty old paintbrushes. Not to mention that the artwork on show in her home were all replicas, as all her artwork has been sold and spread across Australia!

I didn’t grow up with May Gibbs, but (ahem, nerd alert) had some stamps with her artwork on it from her gumnut baby stories which I thought were marvelous and certainly influenced my illustrations.

While in Sydney I made a special trip to the Art Gallery of NSW specifically to see some of Claude Monet’s work on exhibit there (Monet and the Impressionists, $18 Admission). As a kid I grew up familiar with his work, and as Monet prints were in vogue in the 1980’s his work most influenced my traditional oil painting style of any artist.

The exhibit was great… and in a way encouraging to me as an artist, as up close & personal with the paintings Monet’s paint strokes themselves are very normal, and not unattainable!  I was also a little disappointed with the showing as some of my favourite pieces weren’t with this group (i.e. the water lily series.) But several of his paintings were amazing to see in person, including the Haystacks (1890-91) shown above, Water Lilys (1905) and Rouen Cathedral (shown below.)

I just returned from a 9 day trip to Sydney, where I had the chance to see some wonderful artwork, including the work of Yinka Shonibare MBE showing at The Museum of Contemporary Art until Feb 2009. (BTW, the MCA is free to visit!) Yinka’s work was extremely striking, and lucky for me Hera was sound asleep in her stroller so I could take my time to appreciate the sculptures in particular.

For those not familiar, the MCA writes “From his eye-catching headless mannequins to engaging photographic narratives, Shonibare explores ideas about contemporary African identity, the legacy of European colonialism, class structures and social justice.”

Shonibare’s beautiful colonial style costumes sewn with African fabrics were extremely striking, and a little eerie since the manaquins didn’t have heads… but really, it was much more effective that way as once you add a head to something, the face & expression can distract from the pose & costume of each manaquin. It’s hard to put into words how the sculptures make you feel, but for me the scenes illustrated by the sculptures were compelling and brilliantly mock the indulgence of upper class society from that era.