THE LION AND THE DENTIST

Animal lovers, please be warned, this post may contain distressing images.

For the past few years my boyfriend and I have assembled various gory matching outfits for Hallowe'en: last year we were fifties movie-star zombies, then there was the well-dressed-dripping-with-blood dead couple, and before that it was Sailor Moon plus Clown (perhaps that one was not so well thought out). 

In the spirit of Being Horrible People, this year things got a little bit... topical. 

Image: Wikipedia

Oh, Cecil. You were such a beautiful lion. You set the standards of majesty so high that no lion will ever hope to compare. With your glorious mane and steely demeanour and your face of fur...

To be fair I had never actually heard of Cecil the Lion until some rich wanky dentist shot him, but it turns out that a bunch of people really really liked him, and they got super upset.

The dentist in question (it had to be a dentist! It couldn't be a cobbler or a janitor or a candlestick maker. It had to be a dentist) was an American called Walter Palmer, just your average balding dude with obnoxiously white teeth. A quick google search for his dental practice would leave one wondering how Dr Palmer ever earned enough money for the plane ticked to Zimbabwe, let alone the $45,000 forked over for the privilege of shooting an arrow into a large and popular cat. 

Actually, Dr Palmer's alcohol problem seems to crop up a few times in his reviews.

Ouch. Zero or minus zero? Is that even a mathematical possibility? Well if it is I am sure Dr Palmer deserves it. If not for his shoddy dentistry, then for his wandering hands and penchant for laughing gas rape:

(Srsly though, abuse is not funny and if this actually happened you should probably speak to the police).

  

Say, you don't think any of these reviews could be in any way associated with that unfortunate lion killing episode, do you?

I LOVE YOU KEYBOARD WARRIORS.

It's not all doom and gloom though #zebralivesmatter #notalldentists

I digress.

As part of my lion-slayin', over-chargin', booze-swillin', dentist outfit I thought it would be fun to have a few of those cute "I Sat Still Whilst The Dentist Poked Shiny Objects Into My Mouth" stickers that they give to kids. Only... wouldn't it be great if those stickers were lion themed?

Behold...

(Personal favourite)

Safe to say the whole thing went down pretty well. Bring on next Hallowe'en.

BONUS IMAGE: Cecil the lion waiting for a bus.

ANIMALS IN GOUACHE

I don't clean my palette very often.

So over the past few months I've picked up some gouache paints and some faux squirrel hair brushes and I. Love. Them. Mostly I've been working on cards for my Etsy store (plug plug plug), and a lot of these have included animals. Here's a selection:

JOIN THE PENCIL PARTY!

My new Etsy store, PENCIL PARTY, is now LIVE!

Visit it now for unique cards and gifts.

PAPER FIFTY THREE

I've recently moved up in the technology world and have acquired an iPad! Other than playing Hanging With Friends and Facebooking in High Definition, I've really been drawn to (ha ha) the amazing app, Paper 53. After playing around with a few drawing and painting apps I settled for this one, two of the top features being the watercolour function and the way drawings are displayed in little moleskine notebooks. (Off-white pages- hooray!)

Although technology needs to come a little further to really make the images authentic (different sized paintbrushes would be a good start), it's been a fun few days testing out a new medium. I don't have a stylus so it's more like glorified finger painting at the moment, but I'm enjoying using the app to jot down ideas... and draw lots of cats.

And redesign my website... if only it were this simple!

And start work on this years Christmas cards.

And draw junk lying around the house.

Creativity - 1, Chores - 0.

WHERE THE STREETS ARE PAINTED BLUE (AND RED AND YELLOW AND BLACK)

I've recently started a new series of prints depicting the well loved rainbow coloured streets of Melbourne. Waiting for a friend in a trendy chocolate cafe I picked up a copy of the newspaper and began idly flicking through, when a huge ghostly image of the newly painted Rutledge Lane caught my eye. Coming from Bristol and having spent nearly a year in Melbourne now I've become somewhat desensitised to the art of the streets, and a little bored of the old 'is it art or mindless vandalism?' debate. But the new work by Adrian Doyle, entitled 'Empty Nursery Blue' really tries something different, and from the moment I saw the photograph I was itching to hop on the Metro and see it for myself.

 Attempted Panorama

Anyone who has been to Melbourne will know that the laneways are their own little worlds: kooky side steps from the tooting main streets. Empty Nursery Blue is like that but on steroids. It makes Hosier Lane look mainstream. This windy little laneway had been completely drenched in an ethereal blue, not a comforting kind like a well-loved blanket or your grandma's budgie, but an icy cold sort that takes you out of the heat of Melbourne and into some sinister snowy backalley somewhere in eastern Europe. It feels more like an installation from an art gallery than your average alleyway; I love that.

 Rutledge (#nofilter) and Entrance to Rutledge from Hosier Lane

What interests me about this venture is not only the bold playfulness, but also how it will transform over time. Street art changes its curation overnight, it's in a constant state of flux, and so what was once the main exhibit will soon morph into a moody backdrop for the next team to move in on. Indeed, even whilst I tried to tentatively photograph the walls inbetween the groups of schoolchildren smoking on pale blue kerbs, at least four or five artists had begun work on the great oceanic canvas. And so it will go on. 

Perhaps photography is the best way to capture street art, but in a world over saturated with square images in filters of Brannan and Rise, I felt compelled to document street art in a different way- as an artist. So I set to work. Every tag, every drop of paint, every wild eyed animal I painstakingly redrew, preserving the walls as they were on that day, like any aspiring Monet might try and recreate sunlight on a church or lilypads on a pond. By the time I had finished, the image was defunct, 'oh that's so last week', dated and at the bottom of the news feed. That's kind of what I love about the project. In our scrolling world it can be challenging to create something that's going to stick around and go on your wall (your real wall, not your Facebook one), especially since they have apps now that pretty much make you a photographer without having any clue about what an f stop might be. Street art is part of that ever-changing community, and I've really enjoyed trying to bring together the two worlds of art in some sort of wary friendship.

SOME PEOPLE I HAVE MET AND SOME THINGS THAT THEY HAVE SAID

Including the first words spoken to me after arriving in Australia:

And of course, my personal favourite: