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).
// November 8th, 2011 // 7 Comments » // painting
Welcome to Copenhagen for todays Art Every Day Month (AEDM) painting. Copenhagen is about a thousand years old and a thriving green city-it’s one of the most bicycle friendly cities in the world AND the harbour is clean enough to swim in, just ask the Little Mermaid statue. Of course we wouldn’t expect anything less from a city founded by awesome Viking guy Sweyn I Forkbeard.
// November 2nd, 2011 // 8 Comments » // creativity
So, Napoli. It’s Italian for Naples and the city has been around since 600BC. Also: pizza! Napoli / Naples is the destination for todays Art Every Day Month offering.
I was originally drawing my planes in with a micron pen, but after some smudging problems with the ink sitting on top of the glossy acrylic paints, I switched to black fluid acrylic and a fine lettering brush to do the plane outlines.
My lines aren’t where I’d like them yet, but AEDM is a good opportunity to practice with the brush. I always feel more confident drawing than painting, so it feels like a good opportunity to move past that and get more confidence.
I’m doing lots of practice drawings and I think tomorrows art will feature a different mode of transportation.
// November 22nd, 2010 // 5 Comments » // labyrinth picture, Labyrinths, metaphor
I used to belong to a writing group a few years ago, and our main focus was on exploring emotional issues through metaphor, story, and poetry.
One day in response to the writing prompt I wrote a piece about an experience I had with a dragonfly.
I found out later that some cultures saw dragonflies as messengers between worlds.
That dragonfly quality seems to be a nice fit with the labyrinth, which also serves as a conduit between worlds: the inner and outer worlds, intuitive and rational, prehistoric and modern.
Or maybe it’s the walker who takes on the dragonfly quality of being the messenger between worlds, and the labyrinth is the field in which this occurs.
Hhmmm.
// August 9th, 2010 // 6 Comments » // work in progress
This is a painting I’m working on for the Creative Every Day challenge. The theme for the month is ‘Fire’.
I’m enjoying this one, I’m really trying to play with vibrant colours and more movement in the figures. This one started with a beautiful fiery orange underpainting and then I layered that buttery blue all over.
I could paint blue and orange paintings every day for my whole life and not get bored–it’s my favourite colour combination. So this one is a pleasure to work on.
I’ve had it out all afternoon thinking it over and just letting the painting speak to me. I’m getting very fond of this couple, having loads of fun imagining their history together.
At this stage, I think there are a couple of elements that I want to add in tomorrow, I have something in mind. I’m nervous to shove in what I think needs to go there, but I’m sure it’ll work out. We’ll see how things go when I wake up.
*****
// July 27th, 2010 // 3 Comments » // process, scribble to Image
I’m an obsessive filler of notebooks. One of the great things about this is that I have a great store of quick scraps and sketches to draw on for inspiration whenever I need it.
I’m kind of a Moleskine nut too. I know they’re overpriced, but the main difference for me is that little pocket at the back–I fill mine with images from postcards, flyers, magazines, and use them as inspiration or starting points for filling the pages up.
It turns the moleskine from a mere jotting pad into a mini art reference library–add a good pen and I have an instant pocket-sized art studio.
Once I start a notebook I feel like I’ve embarked on a real project. I love the way seemingly random scribbles talk to each other across the pages, as different themes and images start to repeat and clarify.
The image on the left is a small character that appeared in a sketch I was doing back in 2005. The woman on the right is a preparing for a small circus act that was performing in Pioneer Square in Seattle.
Somehow I sketched the small cartoon clowny figure in response to her. It was just jotted in there, maybe took a minute or so. I know I spent about 10-15 minutes sketching the woman and the tent structure and speakers and wires that were going up around her.
But this small cartoon figure ended up being the more important thing to come out of this drawing. He appears again in that moleskine a number of times, the next time he appears without the hat. In later drawings the little door in his torso opens up and small symbols start to appear in there.
Eventually the heart disappears and the hinged door moves up to take its place.
*****
A while back I was participating in the Creative Every Day challenge and the theme was intuition.
I was mostly just playing with textured backgrounds. I’d got a few backgrounds done and began searching for images that might be suitable to play around with, and came across the moleskine with the clown guy and his heart-door.
I played with that idea a little on a torn off piece of sketch paper and this is what came out of that. The door opens to to reveal an eye which is the symbol that arose in response to the theme of ‘Intuition’.
While the clown hat is gone the beginnings are here of a new, almost clown-suit with the stripey sleeves. The unicycle, too, brings back that circus theme.
This was pretty quickly scribbled down too, (with a rainbow coloured pencil!) I think the version at the top original had eyes, but I whited them out because the expression was wrong.
Something about that white smeared over the eyes felt right and the second vesion below it incorporated that as a blindfold which fit perfectly with the eye symbol peering out from his ‘heart-door’.
*****
Here’s the image that finally appeared on the blog.
I used the rainbow pencil to sketch the figure onto the background (I love the randomness of it, the colours keep changing as you draw), and you can still see it here and there though it was mostly painted over.
It was great to see Heart-Door Guy (that’s what I call him in my head) a bit more fleshed out and finished. One of the reasons I like to use a cartoon style of drawing is that the characters I create are expressive and feel like real beings to me.
The way he kept repeating in my sketches makes me think Heart-Door Guy is alive in some way, and wanted to make his way out into the world. He’s appeared on the blog three times now (here, here, and over there!) and I’m still working on him. He continues to shift and grow, and is becoming more real all the time.
*****
I’d love to hear about your creative process. How do you store your images, ideas, melodies? Do you mine small throw-away bits and scribbles and use them to create more substantial pieces?
Do you love Moleskine notebooks, or do your eyes involuntarily roll whenever they’re mentioned? (I won’t be offended if you think they’re silly, I think it’s great that some people love Moleskines and some people hate them.)
// May 6th, 2010 // 7 Comments » // creativity, curiosity, illustration
I’m excited by this month’s theme over at Creative Every Day it’s ‘Intuition’. I look forward to a month of giving my inner control freak a rest, as I relax into pushing paint around and letting images arrive as they see fit!
Keep up with the going-ons of Creative Chai
