Injalak Inaugral Internal Photographic Competition 2014 LAUNCH

Flick has set our team a challenge, take a photo everyday and post it somewhere.

I have decided to start sharing my sunrise/sunset obsession….I have been photographing Nimbabeer (a sandstone outlier surrounded by floodplain) and various atmospheric conditions since October 2012 when I started at Injalak Arts In Gunbalanya, NT. This pic was taken around 6.20am this morning, absolutely love the colours and the drama of these clouds.

Thanks to all the beautiful people who came along to our opening last Friday (26th April) – it was a huge success! Our show is on until the 12th May so please come long and check it out, we will be looking after the gallery on the weekends so come in and say hello!

exhibition flyer for Sister-Mother-Daughter 2013

My sister has requested that I put some photos on here about a recent workshop I attended where we got to play around with Cyanotypes. The technique has been around for a few hundred years and I believe was the first ever form of photography. It is a fascinating process, I was keen to try using different objects and techniques for my exposures.

Our workshop tent

Some work by people in my workshop.

Some more examples, I really loved the one with the wave pattern on it.

Washing the image post exposure in the water bath.

My final developed pieces from the three hour workshop. The acetate sheet was added to gradually and each stage exposed onto a new photo sensitive sheet.

I have recently gotten back from an amazing holiday down to south east Queensland camping at the Woodford Folk Festival. My best friend from Brissie gave me her guest ticket which meant I was free to be a lady of leisure, as a result I was able to book in for loads of art workshops at Artisania and The Parlour. My favourite sessions were Dr Sketchy’s Anti Art School, each drawing workshop went for around an hour. Dr Sketchy’s is life drawing with a twist – instead of the models being nude they were wearing cabaret and burlesque outfits, similar in style to the types of models favoured by the Impressionists in Paris. I absolutely loved these sessions, the outfits were fabulous and the models were girly and fun to draw!

These are the drawings from the first day, the longest of these poses was ten minutes. The model with the feather fans had the most amazing flower mask around one eye.

The following sketches are from day two. I loved the mermaids! I don’t know how the models kept the plastic shells on but the costumes were beautiful. The shower puffes were comical, the tiny bath tubs made me think of Degas…

The costumes on the final day were more burlesque/bondage inspired with a little bit of bunny thrown in…

I really do wish that these sessions could have gone for longer, after the first hour I am usually getting my drawing groove on and am in the “zone”. All in all Dr Sketchy’s Woodford was an awesome experience and it was great to be drawing with so many other people (there was room for 40 artists in the venue, it was great having so much space to move around too). I am already looking forward to Dr Sketchy’s at the next Woodford Folk Fest, maybe I will go to Dr Sketchy’s in New York, need to do some net research soon!

While I was chillaxing in front of a movie I whipped out my sketchpad and captured these drawings of the three dogs, they were very tired and so kept still MOST of the time…..I love drawing dogs because they have such great angles and forms, it’s a nice change to drawing people!

Today we had a different model, lots more people came along too which was awesome! Most of these are five, ten and fifteen minutes sketches. I bought a block of cartridge paper and drew on that instead of butcher’s paper, the charcoal was much harder to smudge/remove. Hence some of the drawings are quite grey as I couldn’t remove as much tone as I would have liked. I may need to try a smooth watercolour paper instead.

For the link to my website please visit: http://www.elizabethmartin.com.au

During my time in Katherine I had the pleasure to design, paint and mosaic on the wall of a private residence. The client picked the colours and wanted a design inspired by Nitmiluk (Katherine Gorge). I came up with a handful of ideas and had five days to create this piece….

These are the quick thumbnail sketches, my client chose a design and then we went to choose the paint colours and get them mixed up.

This is the scale painting on paper to get an idea about the colours, mixing and positioning of the mosiac pieces. Because of the time frame the design was kept quite simple but the mural was to be viewed up close and from a distance so this style of design provided detail but boldness at the same time.

Getting the sketch painting ready, mixing up colours…

To transfer the design onto the wall I measured up the middle and then into quarters to make a grid and used the grid on the sketch painting to redraw it to scale using charcoal…

It’s always a good idea to start from the top of the mural so you can cover the drips later!!

The lighter colours were painted first so that any wobbly lines could be covered by the midnight blue…

The midnight blue helps to pull togther the composition and creates a strong contrast to the warm oranges and pinks…

Getting ready to start glueing on the tiles with the tile adhesive…

Detail of the first part of the mosiac, the blue and grey tones formed the river and reflect light like water…

Detail showing the combination of painted surface and shaped mosaics to help create rhythm and movement…

Getting ready to finish the mosaic river and about to begin the grouting process….This was such a fun project, quite therapeutic and a work-out for the brain with tesselation arrangements! My client was thrilled with the final piece, their house is the only one on that street to have a mural!

I can’t help wanting to draw our two tenterfield terriers, they are such gorgeous creatures!