about blogging

I've been tagged by the lovely Melanie from Kimono Reincarnate.

1. Why did you start your blog?


That’s simple; to participate in Illustration Friday of course. I think I participated in IF for 18 months straight at the beginning, and in that time only missed 3 or 4.

I was a chronic lurker, addicted to many many blogs for a long time before I mustered enough courage to start one of my own. I was really unhappy with work/life at the time, it was all consuming. Starting a blog was a way for me to start re-connecting with my creative side, which I had previously banished for years. I was terrified about starting art again, and knew I’d be very rusty and not very good at all, but I had to start somewhere. I created a space where no-one knew what I was doing, I was just another face in the crowd, and I could allow myself the time/space to be bad at painting for a while without worrying about people I knew judging me (which I knew would cripple any progress I hoped to make).


2. How did you come up with your blog name?
Because I wanted to hide my identity I needed a name that was personal to me without using my own name at all. I thought back through nick-names I’d been given, and this one is one I never really ever mentioned to anybody, but one I never forgot. If you want I have more of an explanation here.


3. Do your friends and family know about your blog? What do they think about it?

No. Not at all. Sensitive topic this one… As I mentioned I needed a place of healing to rebuild, and hiding away has always been my best defense mechanism. I didn’t tell anyone, I didn’t even tell Mr You for the first couple of days. I loved it! I loved having a place of my own to escape to.
Nowadays it’s a different story. I’m in an awkward position where I’ve been doing it so long it almost feels like I’m betraying my friends and family by not telling them. Every now and then I consider outing myself because I’d love them to share it now that I’ve moved away from them all, but I worry that I would sensor my posts, or become self conscious of my illustrations.
I did tell one of my closest friends about a year ago (test case), at first she thought I was mad having a blog, but now I think she’s gotten used to the idea, and I know she visits from time to time, although I forget that she does. She thinks it’s no big deal and I’ve no need to hide it so much.
I’ll have to out myself eventually. I just don’t know how to go about it. I absolutely dread the day, but know I’ll feel great relief once it’s done and out, and the dust has settled.


4. How do you write posts?

Early on, when I had to make up for the bad illustrations I used to write a lot more. Everything in my “real life” day was liable to be snatched and snuck back to my secret blog life. I remember seeing things and immediately starting to write an introduction in my head. My daily commute on the train was a treasure-trove of inspiration. It was more humourous back then too. Since leaving work and working from home I don’t get out as much, and I’ve noticed my blog reflecting that, now it’s all about my creative obsession.
Although “I’m going to blog that” is still an invaluable weapon to threaten Mr You with. Hehehe.


5. Have you ever had a troll or had to delete unkind comments?

Yes, early on I got some comments disputing some of my opinions and facts. One even called me a fool if I remember correctly. Mind you I researched their point and I'm still sure I was right. I never deleted their comments.


6. Do you check your stats? Do you care how many people read your blog? If you do care, how to you increase traffic?
Are you kidding? I check my stats every week. I love stats! I love seeing where people are visiting from, and I can even see when people have “borrowed” my whole page code and are looking at the code from their desktops.
I was able to see that a forum of Turkish folk were discussing my illustrations at one point (not that I knew what they were saying). And I LOVE seeing what search phrases people have used to stumbled on my sites: “oh won't you be our house guest flossie unicorn” Why, sure!

I don’t really mind about how many people visit, it goes up and down. Comments always mean more to me than hits.


7. What kind of blogs/posts interest you?

Obviously I love beautiful art/illustration blogs. I love finding like minded people. And creative types. I love people who write beautifully, or are funny. Now… does that leave any untouched? I’m not big on nerdy techy ones, that’s too much like work to me.


8. What do you like and dislike about blogging?
The best thing about blogging is of course the people/friends you find. I treasure the strong sense of community, I think it’s changing our world.
I dislike… um, how much time I spend doing it; either posting, or reading others. I love it, but it eats up my time in volumes that shame me.


I tag:
I'm not sure how many people I'm suppose to tag for this one. I'll choose 3.
3 relatively new visitors to this blog, who all seem mighty nice, and who I'd like to get to know better...
- Jacinta of One Little Acorn
- Bec of The Small Stuff
- Michelle of Leni & Rose

favourite book

This is: my unconditional, passionately loved and favourite BOOK!"

How could I choose just one? C'mon. You'll notice there aren't a whole stack of fiction novels in there. I enjoy reading, but I always seem to choose dud books, the ones I've loved have been loaned to me, so I don't own many novels. Pretty hardcovers on the other hand, well we have shelves and shelves of those.

So my shortlist includes:
- Taking Things Seriously; a collection of short writings by various people explaining why odd inanimate objects they own have special meaning to them. Actually this book deserves a post of it's own... I'll do that soon.
- A Slice of Snow; short verses with tiny illustrations. This is very dear to me as was my Grandma's copy, she saw how much I loved it when I was younger and gave it to me. It is delightfully vintage and smells that way too (yum).
- The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy by Tim Burton; Illustrations and ditties in the style and mood only Tim Burton can do.
- The Alchemist; the only novel in my bunch, actually this is a fable really. I've loaned it to so many people, and I try to re-read it every few years.
- The Artists Way; I don't think I need to even explain this one. I really should read/do this once a year.
- The Arrival by Shaun Tan; It's an illustrated novel, with not a single word. It's breathtaking, and I've already done a post about it here.

But, (and this is where I got stuck) "unconditional, passionately loved and favourite" is a BIG call, so... if my house was on fire and I could only grab one book, it would be the photo album my sister put together for me as a gift for my 30th birthday. It's filled entirely with photo's of her and I from close to the moment we became sisters, up to very recently.
To me it is priceless.

(Thank-you to Daisy in Lala Land, for selecting this weeks topic)

nasty business

I was half way through my fine art course at university when a new government was elected in, the arts funding was cut and quite literally over a month we lost enormous amounts of staff and resources (while still paying the same fees). We were left with not much more than our own devises to make art. And although artists are excellent at adapting, we were left unsupported and somewhat quashed.

When I heard about Orphan Works legislation that is before US Congress, it really caught my attention, and in a flash I was signing a petition to oppose it. Up till now even if everything else has been taken from our grasp, the one thing we do still have is our art.
In a nutshell, as an artist you currently own a copyright as soon as you create something. International law also supports this. But the Orphan work legislation means that you will have to register and pay fees for every work you create with a registry to keep your rights to it. It’s apparently being considered in the US and Europe.

So if you’re interested you can read more here or here, and sign the petition here.

Honestly, who comes up with this stuff?

It makes me wonder, as gallery fees and access to funding has become unreasonably expensive and difficult, more and more art has taken to the streets. Made in back alleys and on public walls, under the cover of darkness with hidden identities, street art has surged ahead. So much so that works by Banksy (for example) are now auctioned at Christies and owned by the Angelina Jollies of the world.

It shows me that you can’t kill art, art making is an essential part of humanity, but it makes me wonder what would happen if it was supported.


Meanwhile last weekend 1000 of Australia's "best and brightest brains" were invited to gather for the 2020 Summit. Basically a huge democratic workshop for the new government to listen to the ideas of “the people” for their ideal society in the year 2020. The people invited represented different streams of society.

Most of it was telecast, and I watched with bated breath as Cate Blanchett addressed the arts group during the introduction. Here are some of my favourite parts of her speech:

… not as an adjunct to, but as a fundamental aspect of society. Now we’re not wrong in claiming this fundamentality, what the human race does is create, and what makes our species unique is its ingenuity…

...They cause trouble without doing damage. They fix broken things where glue just won’t do. They spring from the very thing that binds us, and they goad us on to being so much more than we ever thought.

Now there’s this ridiculous notion out there, and has been there for a long time, that you’re either a science person or an arts person, and I hope that this summit refuses to countenance such inane and counterproductive social divisions… Science and art are siblings. Science and art are different outcomes of the same primal urge in us all to engage with, to detail, and to affect narratives and patterns.

Now a few years ago I had the pleasure of meeting President Clinton… he liked talking to artists… he said because they existed just a fraction ahead of culture… he said he always read the latest airport novels, spy thrillers, unpublished manuscripts, unpublished screenplays because writers were often right on the money where the technology and ideology, a lethal combination, were heading. He listened assiduously to music coming up from the streets, because he knew that those people knew their audience’s needs and wants.

…We’re here today to think beyond our current practices, and beyond our current needs. We’re here to imagine the best possible society in 2020, and then reverse engineer our way back from there to some broad sustainable policy recommendations that can help those visions be realized. Now I believe much can simply be done by imagining the arts where they rightly belong, at the very heart of our society... we will all believe something today, we will all want something out of today, but it’s important to remember the bigger picture, the future…

Her full speech is well worth watching (it’s only 6 mins). It’s a feel-good one.

tribesmen

Red Faces; including members of the Kims tribe.

Still on the theme of the "beautiful primitive", I've been completely inspired by the amazing photographs of the Mount Hagen festival in Papua New Guinea by Eric Lafforgue.


Yellow faces; including Huli wigman from Tari in the Southern Highlands.

I was focusing on the vibrancy of the face painting and didn't even attempt the incredible headdresses, some of which include whole bird wings! Those are paintings in themselves.


Old tribesmen; including Chimbu tribe.

I'm inspired just by the photo's (as excellent as they are), imagine what it would be like to actually be there.

primitive

My Illustration Friday attempt for primitive.

There's something I find incredibly reassuring about the fact there are tribes of communities still living traditional primitive lives, in this fast, modern, complex world. Whenever you see photo's or footage of them, they always seem joyful.

This is a woman from a tribe in Papua New Guinea.

getting on with it

Mr You has pointed out that I should stop moping on about myself... I didn't realise I was, but after reviewing my last few posts I think he's right. I apologise for being such a sook. I think I "de-railed" after the exhibition opening (where my Rosa painting was), and have had trouble getting back on since then.

...but that happens from time to time.

Thank-you all for your kind words. It's amazing to have such great support from distant friends.

Now I shall shut-up and get on with it.

Much love,
flossy-p .xx.

latest discovery

This is: "my latest discovery"

Each week I discover new artists that make me weep, both with the beauty of their art, and also with envy and feelings of my own inadequacy that comes with it. Every now and then I'll discover one that blows me away! My latest of these discoveries is Bailey Saliwanchik from NY.

I ADORE all of her work. All of it! I wish I was her.

a plea for advice

Hi, we've had friends visiting! :) It's been so fun; we had lots of beach time, swimming, playing cricket on the beach, going for long walks, racing our sunglasses as they sailed along the sand in strong wind, picnics, and even a trip to the circus! Have I mentioned how fun it was?

Now my office/studio room has morphed back to it's old self after doubling as a guest room. I'm catching up, and thinking about what's next...


For a while now my Etsy store has been a dark cave of inactivity. There's just nothing happening there, and it's so disheartening watching my items expire, my cupboards are filling with unwanted stuff. So I'm asking your advice:

Do you have an Etsy store? What have you learnt? How do you make it work? What do people like buying? Are you an Etsy shopper? What do you look for? How do you find the items you buy? Do you have a budget when you set out to shop?

I've tried listing one item a day or week to try and keep further up in the listings, but eventually I run out of things to list, and sink further and further down the lists. I'm about to have some new prints made to freshen things up a bit, and am also thinking of cards maybe???

I don't know... What advice would you give me?
If you were me, what would you do?

6 for dinner

This is: "my perfect dinner party guest list"
You are of course hosting this dinner party with your significant other and you can invite 6 other guests.. All we would love to see is your choice (images please) and your reason why you chose that particular person.
This week's "this is" meme theme was thought up by Lily and Agathe.

This one is hard, like one of those scary job interview questions that reveal more about your psyche than you realise. Oh, it's hard, I don't know...

I can't just list my friends from Sydney can I? I really miss them all, and each weekend all I really want to do is to be able to sit around a table with them all, laughing and hanging out.

Oh! What about blog friends I've never met before? That'd be fun...

No? Okay... Um...

Alright, here we go...



Starting from the left:
1. An attentive Johnny Depp. Notice my seat is empty at the head of the table as I'm taking the photo, but quite clearly I'd be sitting next to him.
2. David Bowie would be invited because I've always loved his music, I think he's an innovator, he's constantly pushing his artistic boundaries even now, and he seems down to earth with a good sense of humour, and likes to laugh.
3. Another Johnny Depp. Hey! It's my party I can invite who I like! Okay!? I was going to invite him all 6 times, but decided that would be too telling.
4. Frida Kahlo (standing up at the back). She's coming because she's awsome. I'd like to pick her brain about her art processes, oh, and also borrow her clothes :)
5. Elvis is there for Mr You (who's currently popped inside to get some more glasses). We like him because he's cheeky, funny, and sounds nice.
6. Karen O from the Yeah Yeah Yeah's... um, well I just think she can turn any situation into the best fun time ever. So obviously she'd be a great dinner guest to keep the vibe fun and entertaining.

And you'll notice we're having bread and cheese and olives and salad with red wine and maybe some rosé too... We have to, that's just what you do when you're dining outside under a grape vine at a villa in Tuscany!

swap surprise

So we went along to the exhibition opening last night, and today I am feeling embarrassed. I am ashamed to say I underestimated the quality of work that would be in the show... basically it was excellent. I assumed being a local open submission show I'd be fine, but the quality of the other works put me to SHAME. So today I'm feeling pretty low.

Tossing up whether to crawl back into bed, or lock myself away in a room with art materials until I come up with something good...


Fortunately a lovely surprise package arrived to lift my spirits! Last year I put on a little ATC swap. I got some wonderful things from some talented folk in return for my tiny ladies. Meanwhile I had completely forgotten about it, and then, out of the blue, THIS arrives!
It's a postponed swap from Johanna of Just Johanna fame! It had a sweet card, a cheery picnic-bird ATC, and a bonus prize set of her self-designed stamps! There's a few birds to match my blog header :), the cutest owl, a hot air balloon, and a stamp that says "friend". How cool are they?!

Thanks SO much Johanna. This is a great package, and it was soooo nice getting it as such a surprise.
(And thankfully we have a mail redirection, and she knows my real name, otherwise it would have gone to our old house in Sydney - phew)

I love surprises! :D

rosa

It may seem, from the lack of illustrations on this blog for the past few weeks, that I haven't been doing any. In fact that's pretty much all I've been doing. I have been working on a new commission (will show you that after it has arrived to it's new owner). This week marked the end of some courses I've been taking; a portrait class, and also going on with my life drawing classes... Getting back to the fundamentals. It's good practice, and no matter how much of it I do, it's always challenging.

I find when I focus on classic drawing skills, my work naturally sways that way for a while.

Some of you may recall when I started this painting. Every now and then I get a big urge to paint a canvas. I started this, and then before it was completed I signed up to enter it into a local art show. The show opens tonight, and I only just finished the painting in time. (Those hands had me beat!). I entered it into the show in a hope that someone would buy it (because I don't have enough space to start keeping canvases like this).

It's called Rosa. I named it that because the inspiration for the painting was Picasso's rose period works. (PLEASE don't even try to compare them). I love the way he uses black outline on his figures (something you're often told NOT to do), and the bold background colours. Sadly, no matter how often I try I always overwork my paintings and lose that beautiful rough, simplified quality he has in his figures and paint application. I need to practice deconstructing the figure a bit more... and setting a time limit of the work so that I speed up the process and keep a roughness to it.

So while it's clear that I'm certainly no Picasso, it's been a good exercise. I look forward to the day when one of my paintings comes out the way I'd intended it to in the beginning... though I've got a fair way to go yet.

save

My Illustration Friday attempt for save.

It was around this time last year we started our search to find ourselves a kitty-cat. It was a long and painful search, but it ended very well with the introduction of Tilli into our family. When we told people she was a stray and we got her from an animal shelter (which is a nice word for "pound" these days), they said "oh, so you saved her life". I never thought oh it like that. I couldn't... because of all the other cats we left behind... (I wanted to believe that they'd all find loving new homes). But you know it's probably true.
I want to believe we can save her from everything.

It's a been months since my last IF, and this one is quick and sketchy... with Del Kathryn Barton inspired contour lines.

where they end up

It's so so nice for me to see where my illustrations end up, I always love getting photo's of them in their new homes. So I was chuffed when Anastasia sent me a photo of my my works, all framed nice and hung on her boy's bedroom wall. One is her thanksgiving illo, and the other was a bonus-prize red whale mono-print. They look so nice, thanks Anastasia!

Another really cool thing happened last week. A friendly fellow called Nic emailed me after reading my article in MixTape Zine 2. He wanted to buy my work. However, if you recall my name was on Beth's work, and hers on mine, so he actually wanted to buy Beth's work (which is great!).

I replied explaining the situation, and sent him a link to where that print of Beth's is for sale. He wrote back thanking me, and telling me that thanks to the internet he had just bought Beth's work AND mine! So now, after me writing an article about making connections across the globe, with an illustration each, they will now both be going to live in the same house together.
How cool is that!? Kind of serendipitous really. Like a perfect circle. Ahhh.

(Okay I'll stop now. I'm spinning out a bit as I've just lacquered a painting and the fumes are making me high and happy)

randomation

I used a random number generator calculator tool thingy (on the internet) to select the random blogger who will be getting an extra pay it forward package thingy from me.

And the winner is... Chair!!!!
Yayness. :)

how to party like you're 5 years old

Yesterday was Mr You's birthday, and now that we live and hour and a half drive away from his family, we were able to invite them for a party. It was a beautiful sunny day, despite the predictions of rain, which was great for our garden party plans. We had a BBQ in the back yard with chairs for the adults, and a big rug of toys for all of Mr You's nephews and niece. We played pass the parcel, and musical chairs. There were balloons and party blowers, along with waaay too much sugar. It was FUN!

This was my first attempt at a real birthday cake, isn't it cute? I got the idea here. And as we passed out the slices, I issued a warning that I was to be held in no way responsible for any seizures caused by the colouring. I think everyone escaped unharmed... Although today we got a text message from Mr You's sister letting us know that his niece has just done her very first smurf-blue poo! I'm so proud. :) I can't wait till his Nan passes the yellow block!

jewellery box

This is: "my knack knick/jewellery box."

It's a plain rectangular shape, it's all wooden, and it's pretty understated... apart from the Morris-like carving that is.
It was a gift from my friend Elle back when I was a teenager. I've kept it on my dresser as my jewellery box ever since...
I still love it.

paying it to...

Thanks for playing along with the "pay it forward" game. The three peeps I'll be sending packages to are; Faun, Sandra and Rayne! As my 19 year old cousin would say, "yayness!"

(I'll contact you shortly to get your addresses).

So far there are also 4 kind commenters in the draw for the random bonus prize (that makes it sound fun, eh?). Next week I'll do a random draw, and let you know who the chosen one is.

Yayness, seeya's.

pay it forward

Well, I've been dying to get in on this "pay it forward" thing that's been making it's way around, but I just miss it each and every time... it slips by me like I've just missed the bus by 30 seconds... and all I can see is it disappearing around the corner. That is, until now!!!

I finally caught the "pay it forward" bus. I'm on, I've paid for my ticket, and I'm sitting comfortably, eagerly awaiting my stop.

What does it all mean?

Pay It Forward....Sometime in the next 365 days, I'll be receiving a Pay It Forward gift from Kyla at Two Peas in a Pod. Now it's my turn to pay it forward to three more people.


So, it works like this:

The first three people to comment on this post will receive a gift from me, sometime within the next 365 days. Who knows when it will turn up, or what it will be, but rest assured, it will arrive. All you have to do is promise to make the same declaration on your blog, and send out gifts to three of your lovely readers.

I'll also choose a random blogger to send a gift to, so leave a comment, even if you're not in the first three!  Make sure I can contact you in some way, either via blog or email.

I like this one, because even though I'm completely snowed under with sooooo much stuff to do in the next month, it doesn't matter, I've got 365 days to do this one... phew. What a relief to have such a generous schedule.

So how 'bout it. Anyone want to catch the flossy-p-bus? All aboard! :)