Scratchboard fun and The Nightmare Paintings

Holocaust in Utopia

Created as a Scratchboard etching

I love this medium, Scratchboard/Clayboard/Scraperboard. It can be effective in works of strong light and shadow contrast obviously and with some skill one could doe work to the level of Dore and his engravers. This was my first attempt at it, but i will be coming back to this more and more. Currently I am working on a image based on Emily Bronte's tragic and tormented story Wuthering Heights. This is the right medium for such a work, though one must prepare thoroughly as mistakes are difficult, if not impossible, to reverse in scratchboard.

On another more marvellous note, I have been invited to have works showing in an exhibition of Aleister Crowley's Nightmare Paintings. Myself, and several other artists, including Barry Hale, Nathan Hopkins and Corinne MacIain have created works based on some of the designs from the Nightmare and Heaven rooms from the Abbey of Thelema in Cefalu. The Abbey no longer exists as anything more than ruins, but Crowley had produced a beautiful and quite visionary tourist guide giving descriptions and deeper insights into the wall paintings there.

The exhibition is at Buratti Fine Art in North Fremantle, Western Australia and is running until late February 2013 if i recall correctly.

Love is the law, love under will.

Womb of Night

The Womb of Nox - in the Nightside Garden

Created from a mix of photoshop CS6 and black paper that i found which i had burnt incense and dropped wax on - in the marks I saw many things, this was just one image from that

June pictures

The work never ceases, forgive me for my lateness, though i am sure that nobody is reading this, I guess i am just holding a mirror to myself - perhaps with blogspots one can indulge in pretending they have an audience. This aside, my work to better my skills with digital art takes no end. This month i have finished a portrait of Vlad the Impaler and a work that is inspired by the myth of Inanna in the Underworld as well as the paintings of artists like Rubens and Jordaens - i enjoy much the challenge to do an artwork with a something reminiscent of older masters and academic painting. This is my hope any how and perhaps have many years of practise before me! The Bonds of Ereshkigal will be featuring also in the Illustrators Australia A3 Show in Northcote on June 15

These works were done with Photoshop CS5, but i have now bought CS6 and find it fantastic to say the least - I make alot of use of the mixing brush which is found in CS5 and CS6.

The Bonds of Ereshkigal, 2012

Created with Photoshop CS5

Vlad the Impaler, 2012

Created with Photoshop CS5