Shopping Bustle

Merry Christmas to all of you who celebrate Christmas and with only 15 days to go it is total madness out there on the roads and in the shops, so be safe and have fun.

This picture was created this week and based on a city street scene from Melbourne. I wanted the hustle and bustle of the city street, combined with the darkness from the city lane ways. The bright lights and reflections in the shadows were another aim of the picture. Darks and lights, along with interesting shapes captured my imagination when painting this picture. I also enjoyed the colors that I picked to depict the scene.

This week had some good and bad. My heart goes out to my cousin Michael and his wife Belinda and their daughter Holly after their little son Nicholas passed away last Sunday with the funeral being today. He had a brave fight against cancer. Too young to die at the age of 21 months.

I hope everyone enjoys the festive season with their loved ones. Merry Christmas again and take it easy. Oh and next Saturday is my 40th birthday in which I am celebrating with a party. I am looking forward to this and catching up with family and friends.

St. Mark's Square

This picture was taken from a photo reference from a friend who has recently spent time travelling Europe. It is of St. Mark's Square in Venice. I was interested in the many pigeons and people all going about their business. My friend is in the foreground feeding the pigeons, which is apparently the thing one does in St. Mark's Square. I have used creams and blues. The light appears very bright. I had fun depicting the buildings in the background and was tempted to keep adding detail but I wanted the viewer to look at the pigeons and my friend in the foreground.

I have become part of a group of artists called INNOVISION who plan to exhibit together. We have a small exhibit at a cafe called Lakeside Cafe, Ringwood commencing this Saturday the 6th of December. It is going for a month or two. Then in the beginning of March we are exhibiting up the Dandenong Mountains at Lady Hawke Cafe. This will be a much larger exhibition. There are about ten of us participating in these exhibitions. We hope to continue to have further exhibits together.

My other news is that I won a first for the overall General MEC Awards for The Pastel Society of Victoria. Each month at the meetings you can bring a picture a long and during the break all members of the society can look at the work and vote on the work that they like the best. At the end of the year the votes are totalled for the year and I happened to win the first for the general section. Unfortunately I was unable to be at the meeting, but my friend Wendi was able to accept my award for me.