blog
a drawing a day ::: may 2018 ::: day 16
#adrawingaday #wallpaperasart
Floral designs dominate wallpaper designs. A pop of colour on one wall or more can really lift a room. I love this design and I think it would look great in any room. I have no idea of the origins of this pattern as it appeared on flickr and its origins are a mystery ♥
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a drawing a day ::: may 2018 ::: day 15
#adrawingaday #wallpaperasart
The 1970’s was an era filled with brown on brown on brown. I can see this pattern on a mini dress or skirt but you just know that someone had it on their living room wall LOL
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a drawing a day ::: may 2018 ::: day 14
#adrawingaday #wallpaperasart
Unlike the 1970’s, the 1950’s was bright + bold + colourful ♥ Geometric shapes and simple designs dominated the domestic landscape. Beautiful flowers and simple motifs adorned wallpaper + crockery + furnishings + crockery = colour bliss.
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a drawing a day ::: may 2018 ::: day 13
#adrawingaday #wallpaperasart
Another damask design with a contemporary colour twist… there are so many damask designs, there seems to be no limit ♥
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a drawing a day ::: may 2018 ::: day 12
#adrawingaday #wallpaperasart
Blue and green should never be seen… unless there are berries in between LOL. I can see this pattern is a shabby chic house filled with white furniture and colourful cushions ♥
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a drawing a day ::: may 2018 ::: day 11
#adrawingaday #wallpaperasart
Orange + Brown + Yellow = the 1970’s LOL. I wonder why all of those hippies were so obsessed with variations on brown… however, some of the repeated patterns could be happily revied with newer, more modern colour schemes ♥
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a drawing a day ::: may 2018 ::: day 10
#adrawingaday #wallpaperasart
Art Deco was an amazing time for wallpaper. Symmetric geometric designs with strong clean lines and vivid colours with high contrast and simplified forms are the essence of Art Deco. You can just tell when something is influenced by the great era of Art Deco design. It is somehow of its time and timeless ♥ 
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a drawing a day ::: may 2018 ::: day 9
#adrawingaday #wallpaperasart
I don’t know anything about this pattern, it’s just something I found googling the world looking for interesting designs. It seems a bit Germanic to me… perhaps that’s why it appeals to me. So sweet and simple ♥
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a drawing a day ::: may 2018 ::: day 8
#adrawingaday #wallpaperasart
Damask is not just for tablecloths and bedspreads. I imagine walls in castles having demask wallpaper… you know, the kind that reinforces the pattern with velvet flocking. I always have to run my hand over these kinds of wallpapers and I’m sure other people do too… hmmmm velvet ♥
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a drawing a day ::: may 2018 ::: day 7
#adrawingaday #wallpaperasart
Dame Vivienne Isabel Westwood is a British punk designer & businesswoman. She brought about the modern mainstream punk movement and is a dictator of style in many realms. Vivienne made the jump from designing for fashion to designing for walls and has brought colour, light and graphic lines to the walls of the wealthy elite. This design, Squiggle is one of her most popular ♥
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a drawing a day ::: may 2018 ::: day 6
#adrawingaday #wallpaperasart
Florence Broadhurst was an Australian designer and businesswoman who was murdered in 1977. She had a successful career designing wallpaper and fabrics that are still highly desirable and popular today. Her designs were bold and colourful and very modern for their time. The murder of Florence has never been solved, she was 78 years old ♥
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a drawing a day ::: may 2018 ::: day 5
#adrawingaday #wallpaperasart
Davie Hicks was an English designer and interior decorator who was known for his bright geometric wallpaper patterns. His designs are still sold today and have stood the test of trends and time ♥ 
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a drawing a day ::: may 2018 ::: day 4
#adrawingaday #wallpaperasart
This is a detail of Birds in a Holly Tree, a wallpaper design by Charles Voysey in the 1890’s. He was a designer of furniture and textiles as well as an architect ♥ It’s so simple, I feel like making an Australian version of this with magpies and cockatoos in gum trees.
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a drawing a day ::: may 2018 ::: day 3
#adrawingaday #wallpaperasart
The Brits love their wallpaper… it seems to be a national obsession. Old English houses suit heavily patterned wallpapered walls. I love the old designs in closeup as artworks. So pretty ♥
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a drawing a day ::: may 2018 ::: day 2
#adrawingaday #wallpaperasart
Japanese and works on paper are synonymous. Japanese papers are luscious to touch and their application of patterns is masterful. Japanese wallpaper can be highly geometric and would look good in almost any room ♥
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a drawing a day ::: may 2018 ::: day 1
#adrawingaday #wallpaperasart
Wallpaper is such a wonderful and creative means of adding colour + design + flair ♥ This pattern is typical of the 1970’s sense of colour + floral design + whimsy. I think it would look just as lovely today (you can’t say that about too many designs from the 70’s) 😛
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a drawing a day ::: april 2018 ::: day 30
#adrawingaday #artelements
David Hockney is an English artist who is best known for his painting but he also prints and dabbles in photography. David was involved with the pop art movement in the 1960’s and he went on to become an influential British artist. He has been tremendously prolific throughout his long and successful career including paintings, digital drawings, photography and video works. His works are incredibly clean and bright. He paints domestic landscapes and portraits and he has a pension for chairs. He often places his sitters in colourful chairs but I chose to draw one of his paintings of a chair. I too love chairs. In 1888 Gauguin’s Chair was painted by Vincent van Gogh and in 1988 David Hockney took his turn. What a beautiful and colourful chair ♥
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a drawing a day ::: april 2018 ::: day 29
#adrawingaday #artelements
Jeff Koons is an American artist who is best known for his large modern sculptures that sell for millions of dollars. His works are of simple things like balloon figures, flowering large-scale animals and inflatables. The art world is in two minds about Koons… on the one hand, he is seen as a visionary creative who is pushing the commercial boundaries of popular art while others view his work as superficial and cynical. I fell in love with Koons work when his gigantic Puppy sculpture was on display at the MCA in 1995 and then I got to see it again in Bilbao in 1999. Why can’t we make sculptures of puppies and balloon animals that mean something too? More art… less judgement. I adore Koons’s balloon animals and if I had millions of dollars, I would have one in my house/garden ♥ 
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a drawing a day ::: april 2018 ::: day 28
#adrawingaday #artelements
Joy Hester is an Australian artist who played an important role in the development of Australian modernism. The Penguins was an Australian avant-garde movement in the 1940’s that was stimulated by the modernist magazine of the same name. Joy’s work was highly expressionistic and loose. They were very modern for their time. She worked mainly with ink and brush and endeavoured to explore the extremes of human emotion. Her work was made rapidly and feels very instinctive. A lot of her work is either stored or on display at the Heide Museum of Modern Art and well look a peruse if you’re in Melbourne ♥
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a drawing a day ::: april 2018 ::: day 27
#adrawingaday #artelements
Chuck Close is an American artist – painter, photographer and printmaker – who creates large-scale photorealistic portraits that a shown and collected all over the world. He is very prolific. His stunning portraits are so clear from a distance but when you get up close you see that they are made up of fingerprints, dots of paints or blobs of pigments. Chuck will often paint the same model over and over and one that I really like is Kara Walker. She is also an artist and has sat for Chuck for many paintings and photographs. In 2017 a large scale mosaic portrait of Kara by Chuck was installed in a Manhattan subway station. Small fragments of mosaic tiles come together to make a beautiful and luminous portrait. Chuck Close is inspirational in another way, he has managed to continue making extraordinary artwork and push the boundaries of modern art despite being severely paralyzed in 1988 due to a spinal artery collapse. His work is breathtaking in real life and I got back into art – in a big way – after I saw his last major exhibition in Sydney’s MCA ♥ 
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a drawing a day ::: april 2018 ::: day 26
#adrawingaday #artelements
Arturo Pacheco Altamirano is one of Chile’s most recognised painters of the 20th century. The title of this painting translates to “Posing for the photographer”. His work is bright with clean colours and simple landscapes featuring humble people. He had a pension for painting ports and marinas and his bright boats and colourful buildings are instantly recognisable as his. Arturo’s father was a naval engineer – which might explain his love of ports – yet he was encouraged to study architecture. He did not finish his studies, quitting after 2 years to devote himself to painting. He travelled and exhibited in South and North America and he eventually ended up in Paris as the cultural attaché in the Chilean Embassy ♥ 
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a drawing a day ::: april 2018 ::: day 25
#adrawingaday #artelements
Ai Weiwei is a contemporary Chinese artist and political activist. While his artwork captured the world’s imagination, his criticism of the Chinese Government ended up with him being arrested in 2011. He spent 81 days in prison without any official charges being filed against him and the government alluded to economic crimes. Ai Weiwei has spent time in the US but now lives in Beijing. He continues to make work that. This work displays a Coca Cola logo painted on a Han Dynasty vase highlighting how much China has changed and what is considered iconic now compared to in the past ♥
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a drawing a day ::: april 2018 ::: day 24
#adrawingaday #artelements
Maud Lewis was a Canadian folk artist who lived in a tiny little house with her beloved husband. They were very poor and Maud had limited mobility due to juvenile arthritis. Her mother introduced her to watercolour painting when she was young and got her to make Christmas cards for sale. This was the beginning of a long art career for Maud. When she got married and moved in with her husband she started making paintings and selling them from out the front of her house. She also painted her house… the walls, furniture and cupboards. It seemed no surface was safe from Maud’s paint ♥ Maud achieved national recognition in her later years and since her death her works and her restored house are on permanent display at the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia. Folk artists often don’t get as much recognition but they should and Muad’s work is innocent, colourful and fabulous.
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a drawing a day ::: april 2018 ::: day 23
#adrawingaday #artelements
Greyson Perry is a wonderfully creative, expressive and very English contemporary artist. He paints, creates and decorates ceramic vases, produces massive intricate tapestries and treats himself as a blank canvas as he cross-dresses in elaborate dresses as his alter-ego Claire. His artwork is a cross section between the traditional and the new. His works have a strong autobiographical bent to them and an element that often pops up is his childhood teddy bear Alan Measles. Alan became Greyson’s protector, a demi-god and a substitute father. His love for this teddy bear shows up in his work again and again. I too love Alan Measles ♥
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a drawing a day ::: april 2018 ::: day 22
#adrawingaday #artelements
Yayoi Kusama is much more than the sum of her pumpkins and polka dots! She is a contemporary Japanese artist who is 89 years old. She creates the most modern and colourful sculptures, installations, paintings, fashion, poetry and film art. Her work is largely conceptual and while it can be minimalistic, there are intriguing elements of feminism, fantasy and surrealism. She uses the polka dot a lot in her work. Big bold dots on their own or on the surfaces of sculptures. She also has a strong affinity for pumpkins, creating colourful sculptures and paintings of pumpkins of many sizes. She is considered the most important living artist in Japan and her work brings a childish whimsy that is refreshing and enchanting. I love her work ♥ 
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a drawing a day ::: april 2018 ::: day 21
#adrawingaday #artelements
Mitjili Napurrula is an Australian Aboriginal artist born into the Pintupi Tribe in 1945. She comes from an artistic family with her mother and brother being well-known artists. She also married an artist so it seems she is surrounded by art more than most of us. Mitjili started painting in the early 1990’s and quickly developed her own unique style. Her strong stylised leaf motif in strong colours has become her signature and is instantly recognisable as her work. I would love to own one of her works but they are way waaayyy out of my league ♥
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a drawing a day ::: april 2018 ::: day 20
#adrawingaday #artelements
Although he is most known for his soup cans, there is a lot more to Andy Warhol’s work than meets the eye. One day while looking through a magazine titled Modern Photography, Andy saw a photo of flowers by the photographer Patricia Caulfield. This inspired Andy to make the Flowers series of paintings and he made the flowers much brighter and more vibrant than the background, making them really pop (see what I did there LOL). While these were originally paintings he went on to do screen prints of flowers in later years. Despite his constant controversy and debaucherous lifestyle, Andy Warhol challenged modern art and it is something that should always be challenged. I wonder what he would have gone on to do had he not died from medical neglect. ♥
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a drawing a day ::: april 2018 ::: day 19
#adrawingaday #artelements
Balloon Girl is a stencil graffiti done by the mysterious street artist Banksy. The young girl losing her red balloon means different things to different people. It’s an image of innocence and loss and was used in a 2014 campaign supporting Syrian refugees. A 2017 poll ranked Balloon Girl as the UK’s favourite artwork. In 2015 the mural was removed from an east London shop and sold for half a million pounds. Banksy’s anonymity has added to his mystique and his distinctive stencilling style has been adopted by many. The acceptance of his work as fine art has done a lot for street art and has played an important role in street artists becoming accepted as mainstream artists ♥ More art, more art, more art…
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a drawing a day ::: april 2018 ::: day 18
#adrawingaday #artelements
Thea Proctor is an Australian artist who lived to the age of 86, dying in Sydney’s Potts Point in 1966. She was a visionary for her time, a promoter of modernism and simple design. Her work as a painter, printmaker, designer and teacher helped propel Sydney into modernism in the 1920’s. Thea was a big supporter of women and she championed their beauty and strength, focusing on their interests at the time. Her bold lines and bright colours reflect the artists love ofJapanese prints and this woodcut print, The Rose is one of her most famous works. I remember studying it in high school and I now wonder if this has something to do with my love of strong dark outlines and bright colours ♥ 
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a drawing a day ::: april 2018 ::: day 17
#adrawingaday #artelements
Two weeks after Senator Robert F. Kennedy was fatally shot in 1968 in a hotel in Los Angeles, Time magazine published this image that they commissioned Roy Lichtenstein to make. The original cover is now highly collectable. I remember studying it in early high school and it was the beginning of my love for pop art. It’s amazing and incredibly sad that this image still holds so much meaning… maybe even more than it did in the 60’s. In a way it’s a masterpiece… so few lines and an extremely limited palette yet it can convey so much meaning ♥
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a drawing a day ::: april 2018 ::: day 16
#adrawingaday #artelements
Damien Hirst is an English artist and entrepreneur and was huge in the 1990’s. He is most famous for his preserved animals in formaldehyde – sheep + shark + cow preserved and dissected in a clear display case. He is well off centre and more than a little strange. He is obsessed with death. In recent years he has focused on colour and spot paintings. He aligns spots that have the same distance between them as the width of the circle. These etchings are very simple but the clean white background with these gorgeous jewelled pills are bright and appealing. Interestingly, Ellipticine is the name of the anticancer drug ♥
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a drawing a day ::: april 2018 ::: day 15
#adrawingaday #artelements
Tim Maguire is British born Australian artist who studied in Sydney and Düsseldorf. He creates large-scale floral and botanical paintings that are heavily influenced by photography and photographic techniques. Tim has a unique approach to painting. His large-scale botanical images are created by using a colour separation technique. He applies layers of yellow, magenta and cyan in thin sequential layers. Each layer is treated with solvents and then dried before the next colour layer is applied. This lends an incredible transparency and vibrancy to his work. His paintings are large and the subject matter is usually small and scaled up, challenging the viewer as they are enveloped by his beautiful work. Tim lives between London and Sydney and his work can be seen in the Art Gallery of NSW and the National Gallery in Canberra ♥ 
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a drawing a day ::: april 2018 ::: day 14
#adrawingaday #artelements
Frida Kahlo is so well known for her self-portraits and surrealism but she also did a lot of landscapes. These have been largely forgotten in popular culture. After her bus accident and hospital stay, she painted this rooftop scene… she has moved away from her more naive style and is trying to show Mexico moving into a more industrial era. Even though it’s a nicely painted painting, I get the impression she does not like the inevitable urbanisation. While we love artists for their well-known work and we hold their favourites in the font of our busy minds, it is important to remember that they are or were a complete person. They experimented with different styles, made works that they did or did not like and were much more than a machine punching out the greatest hits. I love how simple and desolate this scene is and it speaks to the complexity that was Frida Kahlo ♥ 
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