::otoshimono the blog::

I’ve been a little quiet on the posting front for a while, the reason for this is the flurry of activity that has surrounded the set up of a group exhibition I am in here in Melbourne.

“Maybe we have met before?” is a collection of recent illustrations and collaborations by recent illustrators and collaborators.; some of them had only met online, some have yet to meet at all. In most cases their art preceded themselves, like an avatar, floating in a virtual world.
We had met the art but who was the creator?
Come meet them….

I have some new works and some collaborative pieces, if you are in town head on down to Kick Gallery, 239 High St, Northcote
this coming Saturday the 10th of May, from 6 -9pm.

A collection of six collaborative works will also be shown featuring a string of characters that slowly multiplied as they were posted half way around the world and back to land at Kick. Four of the artists, including myself have done a mural in the back room of islands we inhabit in our minds…

Brooke Bobridge
Catherine Campbell
Coralie Kane
EvelineTarunadjaja
Sean Morris

A week of sleepless nights makes for a sleepy innocentgirl so I’ll shut up now and just let the pictures do the talking.
Here is a sneak peak…..

I am a huge fan of the Little Chimp Society and have been an avid reader since it’s very early days. So I was shocked to discover this…..

“Last week a British illustrator called Jonathan Edwards informed me that he had come across a book that contained his illustrations along with other illustrators work. He contacted me because the book titled Colorful Illustrations 93°C is also riddled with interviews that he recognized as being the interviews I conducted for the LCS”
Darren Di Lieto

…. on my last visit to the site.
Incredible to think someone would and DID plagiarize a website of it’s contents, interviews and images (apparently there is a CD of files with names matching those on the LCS site) and take it to a publisher, produce, print and sell it.

Darren is a huge supporter of illustration and has spent the last three years compiling, editing and publishing interviews and illustration inspiration online, he has sent out a plea to anyone who could help him remove this book from the shelves and/or with legal issues, see his blog here.
There is also a link to all the pages here. I did have some images on his site some time ago but it doesn’t look like I’ve I’m in there, Darren is now going through the painstaking process of contacting all the illustrators who have been published. The internet is certainly a ‘brave new world’ in terms of copyright and plagiarism.

And of course, whatever you do, don’t buy this book!

The brilliant work of Kondoh Akino “Densha kamo shirenai”

I have watched this video … ooh about…. thirty times. I just can’t get enough of it, so much so that I just blogged about it here. I was invited to be a contributor to Startdrawing.org some weeks back and have finally got around to making a contribution. I have been a Startdrawing fan from way back and am so happy to be able to share my ‘finds’ to an even larger audience now… check it;-)!

Just an entertaining video for you to marvel this Friday afternoon; BTW the Japanese refer to a balding man with a comb-over as a ‘bakoudo’ (barcode), pure brilliance!

This gives me an idea for an image that would work well as one of these:

Design company D-Barcode came up with these illustrative versions of the conventional bar code. The barcodes are fully functional and are being used on products as we speak, pure brilliance!

Meant to post way back early last week but ended up grabbing myself some tickets to Semi-permanent and heading on up to Sydney. After the crazy howling winds that caused the neighbours shed roof peel off like a sardine can lid and slice across our backyard before speeding off into the ether, I decided to chase said winds and head off Thursday afternoon to Sydney…. after much delay and an hour in a holding pattern I landed in the Emerald City.

Thursday night saw the opening of Curvy 5, jumping out of a cab with my friend Mick we were confronted with a very packed gallery and the alcohol was running out fast. Was very happy to see my Sketchel (was invited by Jeremyville to create one, thanksStephanie!) hanging near the front door and managed to grab myself a copy of the book. I’m on page 69 I share Curvy this year with Catherine Campbell, Fontaine Anderson, Katie McCormick and lots of other talented double X’s.

Curvy 5 will also be launching at Dont Come gallery in Melbourne on April 17th as well… come one come all!

After a sleepless night… thanks to Miss. Simba Kitten who has a fascination with human noses (see pic) I awoke bleary eyed but ready for the first day of Semi-permanent. This years line up included :
Lifelounge, Ben Frost, Debaser, The Directors Bureau, Sixty40, Spencer Platt, Alex Trochut, Anthony Lister, Superfad, Amy Sol, North Kingdom and Pixar.
Stand outs for me were Alex Trochut, The Directors Bureau, Amy Sol, Lifelounge, Ben Frost and Spencer Platt.
And to end please take some time to marvel at the wonder that is Cherry Blossom (Sakura) season in Japan… (do a search on Flickr for it there are some gems up there right now). This season is so highly scrutinized it features as a ‘front’ on the weather channel for weeks prior to the blossoms appearing travelling from west to east Japan and ending in Hokkaido… now thats a trip I’d love to take.
Illustration ‘Delicious Friends’ created for Calorielab website.

When making the bed or sitting in hours of traffic, something I have done way too much of this past week, I am acutely aware that I will not be getting those wasted minutes back. Hope you don’t feel the same way after watching ‘Cat’s Guy, parody and satirical comedy are worth something, sitting in a car and folding sheets neatly, in my opinion, aren’t.

Unfortunately the original title sequence of ‘Cat’s Eye’ is ‘no longer available’ on Youtube so you’ll just have to trust me that this is an excellent take off.

I used to love watching this show when I lived in Japan, I am pretty sure it was on every year over the New Year break. I shudder to think how many hours go into preparing for most of the performances but the winner gets a big novelty cheque at the end, so it must be worth it. Some of them are so incredibly ingenius… there are plenty more here too if you want to check them out!

Little Red Riding Hood - Anabuki Construction

The title of this post comes via the local newspaper in my area, one whole page of articles with that exact headline. Obviously they ran out of time before going to print…. as have I recently…..

::Kimono Hime::

My creative life of late has been eclectic, explorative, fickle, haphazard but most of all frustrating. Fear not dear reader, as I do know that some hidden progress is being made, but I seem to have lost my way somewhat due to an overall need to re-organize and evaluate. Seems I have also spread myself so very thinly professionally that nothing I produce has been given the right amount of ‘baking time’ … under and over-cooked images proliferate. The four works I have added here were all created this weekend. Haven’t even had time to evaluate them myself but am just happy I took the time to just sit and draw and think.

::Character Fever::

::A little Salaryman told me::

::Chinese Whispers::

Wish I could define the droolworthy goodness this film oozes and the effect it has on me everytime I see it… all I can link to the reason for my fascination with it is that it makes me want to watch, and leaves me with memories of, ‘Mononoke Hime’ every time I see it.

… but then I realized that doesn’t matter … just as the artist David O’Reilly himself points out in his blog;

“What matters to me is that the feeling excited by my films should be universal. An artistic image is capable of arousing identical feelings in viewers, while the thoughts that come later may be very different. If you try to search for a meaning during the film you will miss everything that happens. The ideal viewer is somone who watches a film like a traveler watching the country he is passing though: because the effect of an artistic image is an extra-mental type of communication. There are some artists who attach symbolic meaning to their images, but that is not possible for me. Zen poets have a good way of dealing with this: they work to eliminate the possiblity of interpretation, and in the process a parallel arises between the real world and what the artist creates in his work.”