I’m delighted to say that I won the Silver award in the Masters category at the third annual International Society of Scratchboard Artists exhibition in Cary, North Carolina. That’s a big win and a nice boost. I only wish I was there to see the whole show. The piece that won this award is my “Grazing” zebra.
In the past I’ve done my emus, called the “Birdy Bunch”
and my kangaroos called the “Kanga Crew”.
Well, now I have my Meerkat Montage which, like the others, is an image made up of nine different scratchboards of meerkats. I’ve really enjoyed creating these as meerkats are such marvellous creatures, and I’ve learnt a lot about how different they are in both personality and looks. First image is how they will look when I’ve framed them and then the individual scratchboards follow.
I recently entered the Cardinia Grand Art Exhibition. This was the first time a show has had a dedicated scratchboard section in Australia I believe. Obviously I had to send some work over and I came away with the following award. I thought it may be for a specific piece, namely the Himba Maiden which has won awards before but on re-reading the award, the plural seems to indicate that I had been recognised across all my entries which is a very nice feeling indeed. The pieces I sent are shown underneath the award.
Himba Maiden
Ochre
Chimp Eye
Demure Joy
Life has been very interesting for me recently to say the least. Firstly I have a show on at the moment called “The Art of Conservation”. It is a collaboration between myself and Kerryn Hocking who is a wonderful pastel artist. I have 18 pieces up for sale, all but two of them are scratchboards (my two pastels and a large scratchboard below have already sold) and she has 16 lovely pastels – all wildlife and much of the money raised will go to the Adelaide Zoo’s conservation programs. The gallery is located at the entrance to the zoo and is called the Santos Conservation Centre. Exhibition open until the end of March, 9.30 am – 4.45 pm
I will also be writing an entire magazine (normally I write magazine articles but this will be the whole lot). More information to follow as it develops.
Finally, for the last few weeks I have had the pleasure of hosting one of the world’s greatest scratchboard artists in my home, the awesome Rod Leisure aka RodMan. This guy lives and breathes art and has done some plein air pieces as well as studio and demo work while he has been here. Below is a selection of his work while he’s been here. None of these pieces have more than about three hours on them so he works fast. He might take them home to Colorado and tighten them up but to be quite honest, he’s all about the fun he has doing it in the first place. It’s all about the process, even more than the result. I often impress this upon people – if you don’t enjoy the process why are you doing it. This man has lots of fun creating art.
Firstly, this is RodMan at our ‘famous’ Adelaide Balls.
And now on site working on some working fishing industry boats at North Arm
This is the piece that came out of that visit
He spent a few days at Victor Harbor and painted the tram which takes tourists over to Granite Island
A couple of trips to the Railway Museum in Port Adelaide saw these two pieces done on site
Now, let’s have some serious fun. The afore-mentioned Kerryn Hocking organised two demonstrations (which RodMan did for free) and these pieces came from those demos
If things could get any better, well, they did. My 18 year old son who is a good artist in his own right did a collaboration piece with RodMan and they came up with this Mad Scientist. It’s still to be finished but I’m sure you get the idea.
Finally, RodMan came to my exhibition opening and saw some of my orangutan pieces there so we decided to do a collaboration image as well and came up with this fun piece – again it’s only two and a half hours work drawn freehand on clayboard with ink added with an airbrush and a couple of small bristle brushes, removed with a fibreglass brush and a blade and fun had by all. I’m pretty certain my style has come through quite well.
Occasionally I write articles for different Australian art magazines. A couple of years ago I wrote one for “Artist’s Back to Basics” magazine. The quality of the printing was excellent. Woodlands Publishing seems to be an organisation that does things properly. Anyway, they mustn’t have had enough material for their sister magazine’s current issue and they reprinted this article in Issue 11 of “Artist’s Drawing and Inspiration”. I had no idea but it became pretty obvious when I was wandering through my local supermarket and saw my art all over the cover. This is my first full cover on any magazine! I’d included in the article a section on the formation of The International Society of Scratchboard Artists which talked about how we were organising our first annual show in Glen Ellen, California in 2012. Of course, that’s old news now since that was a roaring success and we’ve since had our second annual show in Vancouver and are setting up our third annual show in Cary, North Carolina for 2014. However, it’s still great to see my work printed again and good to see that they do such an excellent printing job in all their associated magazines. Anyway, here is the cover. It’s not my normal wildlife or portrait art but a commission of gorgeous dogs.
Patrick Hedges 