I am getting ready for an exhibition at Gallery M, marion called Storylines. It is a group exhibition of picture book illustrators with a few artworks by children's authors as well. I have been collaborating with a couple of writers to create poems to be written on the floor and walls. I will be exhibiting some illustrations from picture books along with my sketches and clay models I use. The opening is in a couple of weeks on friday the 6th of August and the exhibition goes until the 29th. 

I created these termite mounds while driving through the Kimberly in Western Australia and across the Northern Territory. Don't worry I was in the passenger seat. I was inspired by the shapes that the ants had built with lots of little actions like the knitting process. I would not normally post this artwork here because it isn't illustration but these little critters won an art prize. The Youthscape Sculpture Prize at the Royal South Australian Society of Art.

This is a sketch I am working on for an illustration. I enjoy all the mistakes and rouge lines. The next step is to trace it onto watercolour paper with my light box. It will look a quite different once I have painted it. I will post some of the final pictures of this project at the end of the year.

I exhibited this painting last year.  I mixed the paint with a granulation medium that makes the colours go all blotchy. After a few disagreements with the ink I conceded and let it blob all over the place. To make some of the lines more jumpy I sometimes used my left.  This may look like a bee but it is actually a butterfly with hairy legs.  

It has taken me a few years to get used drawing on the computer.  I use a graphics tablet not a mouse so it's almost like drawing with ink. I found some digital brushes that suit the ideas I have in my head, like these people with mushroom hats.   I miss the surprise splodges but not getting ink smudged all up my arms and on my nose.

 You know how it is. Someone puts a mushroom on their head and then everyone has too have one on their head.   The little guy on the end was the one who suggested adding antennas.

This is what I have been painting of late. A pair of portraits for two sisters with pigtails.  I enjoyed painting the colours on their skirts.  The dog ended up looking surprisingly like a cartoon character I used to draw in the school holidays. I made a magazine for my grandparents and it had a comic strip about a dog called 'scruffy'. I had been reading a lot of Peanuts and Snoopy cartoons.

The little one on the right is Sherbet. He is asking questions of his Uncle Herbert.  Like 'Are you my Uncle or my Great Great Uncle?' and 'Why don't rabbits have pouches?'.  Herb tells long and windy stories that are interesting but usually don't answer Sherbets' questions. 

I was reminded of this painting because I saw rabbits in the sand hills at the beach today.  Last year I had a creative season of everything in my paintings were being blown around by the wind.  I was playing around with thin layers of watercolour.