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.