My name is Dave Rowley and I’m originally from Sydney, Australia. I’m currently living in Seattle with my wife Tina and our son Finn (we also have another little fella on the way).
// December 16th, 2011 // 10 Comments » // illustration friday
I’m writing a few guest posts this week and went to revisit a draft I’m working on, but felt very uninspired. So, after dithering in Gmail for a while I noticed that the Illustration Friday topic for this week is: Sink.
Which made it easy to justify skipping my morning writing session and make art instead.
It’s Friday. Illustration Friday. Must paint. Maybe tomorrow will be ‘Guest Post Saturday’.
// October 8th, 2010 // 11 Comments » // illustration friday
Bit of a Steam-punk flavour for this week’s Illustration Friday offering.
// September 10th, 2010 // 7 Comments » // illustration friday, painting, process
This week’s Illustration Friday theme is: Proverbs.
I was going to do a piece for IF this afternoon after I’d done some tidying up of my Gypsy Fire painting. But as I was finishing up the bird, the phrase ‘bird in the hand is worth two in the bush’ kept going through my mind, and I thought this painting was like a little twist on the proverb: A bird in the hand is worth two in the fire.
Is that true? I’m not sure. It may not really stand as a proverb, but it’s related. And it means I don’t have to do another illustration for today’s theme. Score!
*****
This painting has been a tough one to complete, I kept messing it up, then getting it back. But it’s finally done.What a relief to sign off on it.
I think I’ve learned more from this painting than any other piece I’ve done since I started the blog, and as a bonus, I’m pretty happy with the final result. I think it’s pretty much as good as I can make it, given where I’m a with my painting right now.
*****
News: I’m putting together an Etsy shop. This one should go up today, hopefully (It took me over two hours to work out how to list a painting the other day). I’m pretty excited to get all my completed pictures in there, and I’m looking at getting some prints made as soon as possible, too.
Other news: The RSS subscription button in the sidebar has fallen off. But you can click on the question mark and it will still sign you up as a subscriber to the blog. You should try it out–don’t worry, you can’t break it any more than it already is.
Fun Fact: If you click on the image then zoom in, you can see that the stars came out like tiny fried eggs floating in space.
// August 23rd, 2010 // 7 Comments » // creativity, illustration friday
This is my latest Muse piece, my painting style is swinging around like crazy at the moment. I’m experimenting a lot with trying to make my art more enjoyable to make and to look at.
I thought this would make a great Illustration Friday picture–the theme this week is ‘Atmosphere’. When I was painting this, the qualities I wanted the Muse to represent were air and lightness.
I’m preparing for a big art project that involves lots of Muse paintings–this is not quite the look I’m going for but I felt good after finishing this one, I feel like I’m progressing and getting closer to the look I want.
It’s very different from the Gypsy Fire painting, and also from the earlier Muse painting I posted. I’ve only recently switched from Goauche paints on paper to doing acrylic paintings–it feels like a whole new world is opening up for me. My studio is starting to fill up with paintings, some surpisingly good and some total crash-and-burn efforts. I’m learning some great things from the failures though, and they can always be painted over.
I’m doing a lot of thinking, and writing about the creative process and how we get inspiration. When I’m not writing I’m painting, and a part of my mind is tracking what’s going on there as well. The more I keep the idea of muses in my mind, the more real they seem to me. It’s like having a koan ripening inside me, I’m just waiting for all the pieces to come together.
// August 14th, 2010 // 8 Comments » // illustration friday
Hi Illustration Fridayers!
When I saw this week’s theme I remembered an old sketch I had done, and knew I had to do a colour version just to have another shot at it. I love the idea behind this–that there are galaxies outside of us, but also within. I really want to develop it a bit more and make a painting from it one day.
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