Author Archives: patrickhedges

A couple of unexpected surprises

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I entered four artworks into the Royal Adelaide Show’s art exhibition this year. I’ve been very lucky with this show in the past. I entered it in 1995, 2007 and 2010 and I won a category each time. This year I entered two works in the ‘pastel’ category and two in the ‘drawing’ category. It would have been nice to keep up my record of 100% success. Last night was the opening with a few big wigs doing speeches. In the past I’ve been rung up and informed I’d won so I would be there at the presentation. This year, no such phone call. I never expect to win so it wasn’t a disappointment but I did consider it my best showing ever. Anyway, Gaynor and I arrived and of course the first thing is we looked for my work among the 350 pieces and to confirm that, while there were ribbons on others, there were none on mine. Then we looked at the rest of the work and saw that the standard was incredibly high, which it usually is but this year, really awesome.

The funny thing was they had already put second place ribbons up but were holding first place ones back since they had a celebrity there doing the presentations. Hence, not seeing anything on mine, I settled back to enjoy the show thinking I hadn’t won anything. Then they announced me as a winner of one category which was amazing, so off I go to shake hands and get my award and then they ushered me off to get photographed for their website, but before I had even got to the photographer, blow me down I hear my name again in the next category and have to go back to shake hands again. So not only did I win the drawing category, I also won “pastels” which is huge for me since there is a massive pastel society which I’m not even in.

Check out the grin!

2012 Winner Drawing category Royal Adelaide Show

2012 Winner Pastels category Royal Adelaide Show

Some trips are pure gold for art

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I was recently looking through my art (which is all carefully catalogued on my computer and in various other safe havens) and it struck me that my trip to Africa in 2009 was amazingly successful in generating ideas and references for my work. It was my sixth trip back home since I left at the age of fourteen but for some reason, this one made such an amazing impression that all this art poured out of me. One thing that definitely contributed was that this was the first time I had taken a really good digital SLR so not only could I keep clicking away, but I could also get in really close. I have compiled all of the pieces I’ve done from that one trip into the image below. It really is quite incredible how some travels affect you more than others and that trip was a corker!! It was through six different southern African Countries, seeing the most incredible sights. So here is a pictorial record of hundreds of hours at the desk or easel. The montage was thrown together pretty much willy-nilly but it gives an idea of how good that trip was. The scale of each image is not relative, some are much bigger than others in real life. There are three different mediums represented – scratchboard, pastels and oils.

Zebra published in Burke’s Backyard magazine

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I find this quite odd, and nice. I’ll certainly take it. Our wonderful Kris Peter of the Wildlife Art Society of Australasia managed to get a bit of publicity in one of our famous Australian magazines, Burke’s Backyard (which is a spin off from a hugely successful garden TV show). It advertises WASA’s “Wild Awards”, our biennial (once every two years) major show. It’s all sorts of wildlife art but it’s in support of the “Birds in Backyards” program. Kris sent them lots of paintings of birds for them to choose from (to keep it relevant to the theme), and they chose one of my zebras!! Admittedly they also chose a gorgeous piece by Vida Pearson of genuine birds. By the way, if you click the link to Kris Peter’s site you will see that her bird paintings are absolutely delightful.

I have to admit it’s nice to be published in such a magazine. Here’s the segment with my “Water Baby”

Scratchboard Show and Workshop Photos

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I promised I’d put up a few photos up of the International Society of Scratchboard Artists‘ 2012 exhibition in Glen Ellen, Ca. and also some of the workshops we held in Sebastopol.
This is me with my zebra piece “Lifeblood of Etosha”. This piece won “People’s Choice” and is now winging its way to its new owners in Florida.

In the same photo you can see a piece by Lorna Hannett of a Himba maiden and another of hers of buttons and lace. My little kangaroo is there and also Cathy Sheeter’s “Moment of Reflection” (the dog’s eyes). If you click this ISSA link you will be able to see all the pieces that were in the show.

My family also enjoyed the show and get-togethers and here my two sons are loving Master Scratchboard Artist Rod-Man and his magic show

Due to my work with chimpanzees in the past, and the belief by some of my fellow artists that I look like one, Cathy Sheeter bought me this shirt and here I am trying to look like the handsome fellow on the front of the shirt. He’s definitely better looking!

To the workshops and demonstrations, I’ll start with mine. I showed how I do my unusual skin techniques and also the way I’ve been creating zebras by using the airbrush and the fibreglass brush.

I’m really not sure what’s going on here

We only had just over and hour each so I’ll finish this piece later and show you all what it turns out like.

Lorna Hannett showed us how she creates skin in her meticulous way. She can put up to 300 hours into a small piece, something that simply boggles my mind. I love her work!

Diana Lee using tattoo needles to achieve incredibly smooth textures to create a light bulb.

I had the honour of being shown through Diana’s home and managed to get a few snaps of some of her amazing work. Here are a couple of those

Heather Lara taught us about her colour techniques.

She sure produces amazing work

Allan “Ace” Adams, the character among the group, showed us how he creates bark and rocks

Here he is living that brilliant Crocodile Dundee line “That’s not a knife, this is a knife!!” Allan did that for my Australian benefit.

Ann Ranlett creates some very unusual backgrounds and we all wanted to know how she does them. Here she is at work and with one of her gorgeous pieces (the dog with the bone) in the exhibition

Cathy Sheeter is someone who I’ve admired for years now and she taught us some of her fur and eye techniques

The medium of Scratchboard can produce amazing detail and so many of us invest hours and hours in our work. As such, the demonstrators all started pieces before the workshops that we could continue with so viewers could get an idea of what we were doing by seeing what we had already done.

All of us except for the next bloke. Rod-Man is an amazing artist. Well, he’s an amazing person. I’ve already mentioned his magic tricks which had me bamboozled and in stitches. Among other things he’s a diver, a veteran of 1,700 parachute jumps and a tattoo artist, and he created a work of art, from scratch (pun intended), right before our eyes. In one and a half hours he went from white board to almost completed masterpiece.

His initial concept was based on the fact that we were near San Francisco with its hilly streets, so he envisioned a skateboarder zooming down the road.

Concept sketch

Then he realised that most of his audience were definitely not skateboard age so he went with a wheelchair bound crazy guy doing the same thing (with a peg leg)

Concept sketch

And then he started. Airbrush, scratch, airbrush, scratch, etc  until he achieved what he wanted.

He finished it a day or two later. Absolutely amazing.

Do you reckon we learnt anything? You betcha we did!! And had a blast into the bargain!