Art in Music....welcome to the 80s....

Well I'm back, so how fitting, that I devote my latest challenge to Calypso Moon Artist Movement to the song 'Here I am Baby' by UB40 UB40 take there name from the unemployment benefit (UB) form 40 in the UK, so as I am also unemployed, and back in Australia this seemed to fit. That and we were having an 80s music theme in the house. So this is what I produced! I think I known all the words now to all UB40 songs haha.

Traffic light box....my first stencil!

Well I've been busy since I got back to the Gold Coast, my confirmed home! Our local council has started up a project for painting traffic light signal boxes (or TSBs), and I was one of the lucky ones to take on one of the 13 offered. This box located Marine Pde/Gold Coast Highway, next to a boatramp and what use to be a fish shop called Holy Mackeral. I haven't finished it, but I'm pretty happy with the result, not bad for my first stencil effort! I had to paint it rather than use spray cans, not exactly sure how the pro street artists get the accuracy for so little time....this took me the best part of a day to complete. This is my second box I've painted, my first one I painted many moons ago in Brisbane - http://svc169.wic021v.server-web.com/artforce/rating.asp?id=675 gosh I've come a long way since then!

Back to the painting board....

Well I've finally unpacked my paints and brushes! Having travelled for over 3 months, I had a lot of bottled up inspriation! And glass is one of them. I find it really difficult to paint from real still life, usually having to take a photo first and then working from that. So I've set myself up a challenge, to paint bottles and nick-nacky things from my mum's house. And believe me there are lots of interesting things to paint! These bottles are from my mum's old bottle collection actually, obviously they're a bit rough, perhaps I'll go back over with another layer once I work out what is missing.

Once I've mastered them I've got a new challenge, to paint 20 paintings in 20 weeks, and auction them for charity. I'm sure people will want to buy them? I thought perhaps painting everyday scenes from my city would be a good theme, any other ideas?