A while back I did a few cast studies and I thought I'd add them here for something to do.

Progress shots- Crossroads. Chalk Urban Art Festival 2010.

The Blues- Chalk Urban Art Festival 2010

This week I am taking part in the Chalk Urban Art Festival in Parramatta. It's the second time I've taken part in the Festival and we started today.

Over 3 and a half days, 30 artists will be competing to win the title of Champion Chalk Artist. We are working on canvases of about 2m x 2.4m.

The theme is The Blues.

Working on that scale, and on the ground has plenty of challenges and already I have seen the benefit of experience showing in the first day's work, compared to last years efforts.

Here are a couple of preparatory sketches that I did in Photoshop to work out some of the details. I'll post some progress shots of the chalk piece as well.

Recent works in progress & sketches from the studio. All of these are part of my experiments in Memory Painting, where I use no reference material to paint from apart from my memory of past experiences.

The Longneck Drinker

Another new addition to the blog- an oil painting I've been working on recently from imagination.

It can probably use a little more work but its mostly there.

Libby

Here's one of Libby. It looked ok cropped when I was working on it, now it just looks like i've missed the top of her head.

For some reason, although I can picture Libby's face in my memory, I was completely unable to get it to look right.

Sorry Libby!

Drawing from Memory

These three digital images are all painted purely from memory. Working only from memory completely changes my approach to creating images in a way that, at the moment I find exciting.

By painting from memory I am forced to move away from an analytical approach and into an area of expression where the outcome is unknown.

On top of that, the painting becomes worked out as I work through it, not through planning.

Hopefully you will see more works along these lines very soon!

Here's a study I've been working on for a new painting. Today I'll go stretch up a canvas for it and it should get going during the week.

Portrait of my niece.

An initial sketch for an upcoming painting. Might do some more sketches to push the cute factor up a little more...

The pose is based on a Gil Elvgren painting but I worked from my own photo reference.

Pin Ups for the People!

Well, for anyone that has visited this page before, I've changed the look of this blog a bit and spent some

time trying to get it looking a little nicer- I think the black was bringing me down a little! Hopefully it looks a little cleaner, more inviting and not so dingy now.

In addition to the updated look of the blog I've got a new painting- a quick little pin-up and some even quicker sketches for my new friends at the Pole Dance Academy in Bondi Junction. Check them out at www.poledanceacademy.com.au.

I'll be working with the girls at Pole Dance Academy doing quick live portraits of girls for their hen's nights and parties- I was at the studio today and it was great!

The painting was done in about 2.5 hrs and the sketches are 5 minutes each, using photo reference. Dunno why the blog wants to cascade the images but I can't fix it!

As promised, I did some extra work on the BB's painting- it's interesting comparing it against the photo I posted at the start of the week, you can see some of the changes I made.

Live Painting @ BB's in Bondi

I cranked this out in around 3 hrs for the 'Oscar Wilde Party' at BB's last night. Needs more work but people dug it. I'll polish it up in the studio and post a finished image soon, along with some other finished paintings. The quality of this photo is pretty bad too, I'll try to get a better photo and post that. If you were out at BB's and saw me painting, drop me a comment and say hi!