Featuring the artwork, musings and sketches of Brisbane-based artist Kat Johnston, who is also known as Sanura Sakai or Sanu in Second Life.
This sketchbook, I have just been randomly doing a little something on each page… and throwing a couple of the results of it up here. Its nice. I haven’t been giving it much structure or continuity, just… whatever comes to mind. I think my little ‘fooling myself’ experiment is doing rather well then.
I really don’t have a huge amount of anything to write about today… so I’ll leave it at that!
Delicious fresh cherries are just the most fantastic thing in the world to behold, are they not? For lack of ‘little’ drawing today, I threw that together as I ate my lunch: a whole little baggie of cherries.
I finally started sketching out something on a canvas, to paint in later. Its taken me a while to start up on that track again, buuuuut… it had to happen sooner or later. I won’t take a picture of my rough sketching for the start of that yet – it is hardly worth a mention (and I can’t be bothered to pick up a camera). That said… if I actually get my butt into my studio and get my hands all messy with paint, you might actually see it done some time this year. Here’s a hint though, to get you thinking… it may or may not include a certain owl.
How’s that for an evocative post title! It is connected, I swear. You see, while staying in Sydney I had a wonderful warm (and, uhh, steamy) shower. Now, I’m pretty sure this happens to everybody – but I see things. When little streamlets of water pool together, or the folds of a shirt sit just right, they’ll give me little pictures – something leaps out from it that says ‘nope, I’m not random, I swear’. Kinda like jesus popping out on a piece of toast, really. This is what the image I’ve put up today was – while I was having my wonderfully warm and steamy shower, this little picture popped up. After I was done, uhh, showering, I raced to my room, grabbed my sketchbook (one of about 6 I had on my trip) and scribbled it down just before the steam evaporated quite away.
I am so incredibly glad to be home again. It was bliss sleeping in my own bed last night, even if Penny was still giving me the cold shoulder until part-way through this morning. It was adorable. I got home, called out for her, and she raced to the bedroom door and peeked through, seemingly excited to see that I was back. She then put her nose quite haughtily up in the air and walked right past me, refusing entirely to be snuggled all evening.
Penny is a momma’s girl (she’s a cat, by the way) and was not exactly pleased that I had abandoned her for days and days on end. I think that she might have forgiven me now… I’m not quite sure, but the mewling and the ‘snuuuugggggggles, I need snuuuuuugggles’ (rough translation) is the hint to me that I might just be back in the ‘perhaps you are useful for something, human’ books with my Pen-Pen. I knew it wouldn’t take long until she caved. Ahh, tis good to be home.
Oh, finally getting around to sorting out some more pictures to go up onto my flickr account… so check it out sometime soon! Link in the side-bar to take you right there.
Some may remember a previous post I did a little while back: The Unwise Owl, complete with a little story to tell his tale. A friend of mine liked the image rather much and I needed to draw something more substantial than a two minute sketch last night, so I took pen to paper in one of my sketchbooks; an ‘actual’ sketchbook, mind you, not a spiral-bound cheapie. It comes after this page in the same book, in case you were curious. I decided to give the unwise owl a second chance to redeem himself.
If you click on the picture for today, it should link to a rather larger picture (800px wide rather than 500) because I just wasn’t happy leaving it so small. Generally it links to a 600px wide picture, so slightly larger, but I love the detailing in this one just so much that I had to share it properly. Lins and I have been talking about Atelodemiourgiopapyrophobia (a fear or phobia of messing up a perfectly nice piece of paper) a fair amount recently, as you can probably tell from my posting, since it has been mentioning it so often. So this seemed appropriate.
A book unwritten remains unread. An artwork which stays in the imagination is only ever partially realized. It takes writing it down or roughing it out for things to truly take form. I can start drawing what is in my mind, but it isn’t until it gets to paper, canvas or whatever other medium I am using for it to really come to life. We all have a vision of perfection in our minds when it comes to what we do, but when it gets to the point of actually being realized, I think it is possible to stun even ourselves.
I am with this image: I was a little concerned that I couldn’t do something to accentuate the owl properly whilst merging into another level of delicacy with the branches there, but to me, it works. The little books are flapping and floating, they’ve taken flight around him; perhaps he sits in awe of them. I don’t know why he isn’t flying with them… perhaps he is scared? Perhaps if he leaps from his branch he won’t float, but will fall? Who is to know. Perhaps I will write another ‘Unwise Owl’ story to accompany this picture later.
I did slip up majorly once, although it probably doesn’t seem major to anyone else but me. As I drew my pen away from the page, I slipped and accidentally drew a line in the bottom right of the page. I turned it into the pen of the artist – what better way to transform those mistakes than to make them a part of the image? That’s all for today, hope you like it!
Yet another little sketch-book post with a weird name I didn’t exactly decide on. These little guys are nuts… they seem to only be further proof that something upstairs just isn’t quite connected properly *sighs*. The Goombah Mystic indeed…
I know that I posted the survey earlier, but it just doesn’t seem right not to post a sketch as well, so I threw this together a few minutes ago. They are fun little creatures, even if I don’t fully understand them myself. Ah well – perhaps cute and odd are just a good enough reason for them to ‘be’. I think so, anyway.
Thanks in advance to anyone who fills out the survey for me – you have no idea how much it helps!
Thank you everyone who participated in Extend a Helping Hand. We were able to raise a grand total of AU$8,337.03 to assist the Premier's Relief Appeal!
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