Back to basics...

Drawing with a 6B pencil. It's only a small sketch, but a good challenge to get all of the varying light shades on this tube of paint.

Here is my entry for the Walker St Gallery's 9 x 5 exhibition. It's a great little gallery in Dandenong.

''The original 9 x 5 Exhibition of Impressions was displayed at Buxton’s of Swanston Street, Melbourne in 1889, where the dimensions of a majority of the paintings were nine inches by five inches. Many of the paintings were painted on cigar box lids collected from tobacconists, but just as many were painted on board.''  - Walker St Gallery website.

9 x 5 boards are a much smaller scale than what I usually work on and I wasn't quite sure what to paint originally. In my house I have a few Japanese Kokeshi dolls which are hand carved out of wood and painted. They are super cute and I thought this size would suit my format. It almost felt like a formal portrait... as they watched me while I painted them. Not sure if that makes it cute or just creepy.

I used acrylic paint on a primed board.

This is a self portrait I started a while ago and just haven't got around to finishing it. It's quite a big canvas; around 1.5m high. I forgot I painted it and when I found it I decided to put it out, hoping I might be inspired to finish it.

Me and my dog have definitely aged since I started it....

Little sketch of an Australian native bird.

Colour pencil on pastel paper.

My dog, Jazz, makes another appearance.

Colour pencil on paper