Art is just frozen music

On Saturday I took my friend Alex and her little sister to the Out of the Box children’s Festival in Brisbane! We went are sore a live version of Lemony Snicket’s The Composer is Dead. Which was totally fabulous! I have the book at home, and to see / hear it live played by the Queensland Symphony Orchestra was just divine!

We also went in the AMAZING Amococo which is an inflatable luminarium built by the Architects of Air.

We waiting for (no kidding) almost two hours in the line. But man it was worth every second in the sun.

Here are some of my photos. I took all three of my cameras, and took a whole roll of canon and holga film. Here are my digital ones, some of these were taken my me, but most my Alex and her sister. But be sure to click on the link above, because honestly, the photos just amazing. This place really has to be seen, nay experienced, to be believed. WARNING POST IS SERIOUSLY IMAGE HEAVY! But when you see you’ll understand my ned for so many photos. Please click to full view.

A snap of me, taking a snap. I love that you can see my piano belt in this photo. Yes I really am that rad.

This one is probably my favourite.

Gabrielle chillin out.

This place sent my synesthesic brain into over drive. It was like walking through a rainbow, you can almost feel the colours inside you and taste them in your mouth.

I hope you all have a magical day. Especially all my fellow Aussies, enjoy your day off! Yay public holidays!

<3 Carla

YAY! I finally got my film from my Canon AE-1! I’ve been dying to see what kind of photos it takes, and Oh My they have exceeded my expectations.

Here are some of the best ones:

This is a rose from out garden, it’s actually called the “Carla” rose. No kidding.

Sunset from the end of our street.

Some leaves from our grape vine.

My little boy.

On an outing at the park across the road from my house.

What a poser. At least he’s smiling.

My daggiest shoes. The sole is held on with earth tape.

I’m thinking of making a print set of these last three. Maybe in a frame? What do you think?

I’ve officially sold two originals and three prints! Now that I’ve done that, and now that I have my painting in an exhibition, I’ve officially accomplished two of my goals for this year.

What are your plans for the weekend? Mine include seeing a kids show, taking lots of photos, family lunch, then dinner with friends. Then a relaxing Sunday!

I hope your weekend is delightful!

Hey fabulous darlings!

I’m this weeks featured photographer over at Four Corners Dark a fabulous website about film and toy cameras and “other photographic curiousities”.

Check out the interview here: Tea Time with Carla Thursday!

How fun!

Holy toast Batman! It’s finally the weekend. FINALLY. After two weeks of teaching all day then going to work at night, I am ready to rock and relax.

So far today, I’ve slept in til 9.30. Then I had some breakfast and coffee and put on / hung out two loads of washing.

I’ve put on a pair of track pants, and my absolutely favourite jumper:

I know. I know. Coolest jumper you’ve ever seen right?

Now, I’m dreaming of painting my fingernails. Sadly, the one thing that annoys me about prac is that I can’t paint my nails, or wear excess piercings. I have 3 piercings in each ear, plus I wear a cuff on each ear, all of those but one in each lobe, have had to go away and I have to have my nails clear. Which is TOTALLY BORING.

To make me a little happy, I painted my toes nails, which I don’t often do, because I don’t have the most attractive feet, and I feel drawing attention to them doesn’t help!

Anyway, here are my newly painted toes.

Grass green anyone? This is my newest colour! Here are some inspiration shots of my whole collection, so you can fully gauge my nail-painting obsession.

Who indeed?

Now, that I’ve gotten that out of my system. It’s time to go finish a painting (:D) and watch Tess of the d’Urbervilles that I taped a few weeks ago. Then tonight, I get to go and baby sit (though they prefer it if I call it young man sit) two boys that live down the street. We shall watch movies, discuss batman comic books, play lego and eat timtams and pizza. RELAXATION ABOUND!

I’ll update with my finished painting, hopefully this afternoon!

What are you doing on your lazy Saturday?

In the theme of mother’s day. Here are two photos of the three most important ladies in my life.

Here I am with my Mum. This photo is about 20 years old, it was taken on my dad’s old Canon Ae-1. I hope that one day I’ll be able to take photos as lovely as this!

And here I am again with my two lovely Grandmas. Grandma Irene has sadly gone to a better place, and has left a huge hole in my life.

I hope you all had a lovely mother’s day and spoilt the beautiful women in your life!

Well this certainly has been a week of lovely goodies! Yesterday I arrived home from a busy day of teaching to find my BEAUTIFUL camera had arrived from American! God bless you ebay!

I haven’t taken any photos yet, though I did buy some film today. I’m too busy trying to work out what all the knobs and buttons do! Give me time, I’m used to point and click with the Holga so this is complicated for my limited understanding.

Today I went out to get mothers day all sorted, but I came back with some presents for myself. I bought a pair of shoes for school, and received an awesome yellow watch that I would never have bought otherwise for ten dollars!

Here it is in it’s glory:

So now I have a classy school/work watch (though the numbers are all swiggly and fun) and a funky yellow hanging out watch.

I also finally got my pink dymo labeler and here it is in action!

Nothing like labeling obvious things no?

When I got home from shopping there was a parcel for me! UNEXPECTED MAIL?! It was from my bestie Ryan in Melbourne, who had sent me an surprise zine package!

They were all from the Sticky Institute in Melbourne. The package contained:

Photographing Children – Just the right amount of awkward
The disturbing adventures of the person with no face by Mar Bucknell
Leave Britney Alone
Plastic Knife #1 (AWESOME)
Dealing with Post-Human Abilities

This brings my zine collection to a total of seventeen and does not fit in the little shelf at my desk. Time for a relocation I think.

I’m excited to wear my new watch, take some pictures and read my zines!

In painting news. I bought some thread today to finish of the detail on her hair, I should have it finished in the next couple of days, and she will be MAILED! Exciting.

I hope you are all having a lovely Thursday, I know I am.

Well you can tell it’s a public holiday. After my blogging hiatus I’m finally back!

I’ve spent my morning on my new painting, and I thought I’d document where I’m up to. I find it really interested (and helpful) to look back on the progress. Maybe you do too.

Well here is the line art transfered onto some really nice 200 gsm watercolour card.

Here she is coloured in with watercolour pencil. Originally I was going to leave the pencil dry, but it was little too “liney” so I painted it in. The painting is in shadow in the photo, so the colours look a lot more saturated than they really are.

And a little close up of her left eye. You can see where I smudged the ink in her eye. But I dealt with that later.

As the paint was drying I experimented with some eye colours.

And then filled in her eyes with straight green watercolour.

I know how messy that little circle of white reflection in her eye looks, so I waited for this to dry and tidied up her eyes with some white gouche. I’ll be going over the pen later, because I’ve accidentally painted over it a little bit.

Put some gouche highlights on her mouth.

Then I started on her hair! This was the hardest bit! Unlike my Wednesday painting this time I painted her face and then put the collaged background around her, which was really hard because I didn’t use scissors at all. Tearing the pieces to fit was pretty time consuming but over all I think it’s a nicer effect that the hard lines scissors would have created.

Here is the finished outline.

And here is the finished hair.

Now all I have to do is paint her hair in the same colour as her eyes, stitch in the details of her hair in white… or maybe pale blue, and re-do the ink lines. Here is the mess that was on my desk at the beginning. Imagine this x 50 all over my floor.

Altogether a rather productive morning I think. Now it’s time for lunch! Then I’m going to go see a movie with my parents.

Happy Monday!

Well darlings, here is the first peak at the painting I’m doing for the drawgasmic exhibition.

She’s going to have dictionary-paper-collage hair in green, and green eyes, with stitching details.

What do you think of her so far? I’m looking for thoughts! Click to zoom in!

In other news I spent my afternoon with my best friend Chiki, buying a WHOLE new wardrobe for my prac teaching that is starting on Tuesday. We went to DFO and I got two pairs of new pants, a pair of shoes, three button down shirts, two tees, four singlets, two pairs of colourful tights, two head bands, green nail-polish, a funky new watch and a new bra for around $250. CRAZY NO? Bargain shopper of the day!

So I will spend tomorrow painting and decided what to wear!

Is there no greater feeling than hanging up new clothes?

xoxo

Hooray for long weekends! (For all us Aussies)

Though I do have to work today, (I did get my hair cut though, yay!) I am going to spend my long weekend organizing my life a little and then attacking it with a dust buster.

I’m also going to do some painting! 1, 2, 3 … YAY! Now that my assignments are finally finished (for now) I am giving myself a little 3 day holiday to get to work on my Drawgasmic entry. I’ll keep you updated on the progress, I’m thinking female portrait made with dictionary paper and stitching. Exciting no?

On Sunday I need to do SOME SERIOUS clothes shopping.

I’m also going to head into Officeworks to see if I can find myself one of these babies:

No kidding! A PINK dymo labeler! Photo courtesy of Good Night Little Spoon

In other news last Sunday night (I know a week ago, slack) two of my friends and I went to see the divine Regina Spektor in concert.

Heres a snap from that.

Have a specktacular long weekend, what are you planning on?

Caaarla

About a week ago I received an email from the Drawgasmic team asking me to submit to their exhibition.

It looks like a wicked cool exhibition, and there is also a coffee table book being printed.

Anyway, I submitted, and never received a reply. Feeling saddened, I almost gave up, but I contact them to see if my application had gone through. It seemed odd that they would ask me to submit but then not accept me.

But today I got a reply and they’ve accepted my portfolio!

I’ll be creating a custom 11 x 8.5 inch painting and mailing it away any day now. It’ll also be printed into their coffee table book, exciting no?

Anyway, you should check out the website, and if you know any up-and-coming artists, you should totally get them to submit!

Excitedly,

Carla