Here are the first stages....
bringing the wild to life

Saturday, March 1, 2008
Dingo Spirit - New major work in progress
Here are the first stages....
Friday, February 29, 2008
Wild @ Art Twilight demonstrations
This February I have had the opportunity to showcase my work as part of these concerts, both as my second solo show and a series of demonstrations in front of nearly 4000 visitors at last count. The results of the these demonstrations are below.
Friday Feb 4th was the first demonstration done in conjunction with the first Tiger Taskforce Foundation fundraising concert. The Foundation has been formed by Zoos Victoria along with the Melbourne Tigers basketball club and Richmond Tigers football club to raise awareness for the plight of tigers around the world. The Richmond Tigers were on hand to sign autographs and captain Troy Simmonds gave an empassioned speech to the crowd highlighting the importance of protecting the tiger in the wild.
The performers for the night were Joe Camilleri & the Black Sorrows, followed by
My subject for the demonstration was a Sumatran tiger to stay with the theme for the night. I worked on a foamcore support prepared with colourfix primer using soft pastel.
"The Hunter"
Pastel on primed board by Leigh Rust
Sunday 6th was a much larger event with more than 2500 people flocking to the grounds for the ever entertaining Babba. The demonstration for the night was a gorilla in pastel. Crowd reaction was wonderful with many people showing their passion for wildlife conservation and great interest in my work. I recorded the demonstration and now have the videos showing on my website.
Pastel on primed board by Leigh Rust
Sunday 10th was demo 3. The crowd was very laid back and the music supplied by the Moovin and Groovin Orchestra was the epitome of cool. This time we'd set up a multimedia display allowing visitors to access my website and watch my new DVD: From concept to completion. As a personal challenge I aimed to complete 2 demonstrations for the night. The first on the easel was a pygmy hippopotamus. This girl was a great deal of fun to work on as I got to merge two of my favourite subjects in one work: animals and water. The big challenge with this was to get life into the grey hide. To do this I employed my arsenal of warm and cool browns, greens and blues as substitutes. These colours were played into the environment around her for harmony.
Gloria
Pastel on primed board by Leigh Rust
The second demonstration subject was a giraffe but unfortunately the dying light made it difficult to get too far. In the lead up to the final demonstration I completed the piece. I'm very proud of the way it came up.
Pastel on primed board by Leigh Rust
Sunday 24th Feb was the final demonstration and I gave it my all. The subject was a meerkat, one of my favourite animals. The design was very simple but allowed me to create a dynamic composition. They key element to the work's success was always going to be the light and I attacked the scene rapidly laying down the various tones to create the suggestion of backlit foliage. Once the background had come together so well it was time to let texture do it's job and bring the meerkat to life. The meerkat was built using subtle tones of greys and browns to emulate the animal's coat.
On the lookout
Pastel on primed board by Leigh Rust
Public support has been really good and many people have expressed interest in the workshops at the zoo which I'm taking names for at the moment. I'm hoping to give dates on the workshops in the next week or so.
New DVD available: From concept to completion
This disc shows the unusual jigsaw puzzle process I use to create my works. Watch as the animals come to life before your eyes! With an atmospheric soundtrack by the Emulaterz and downloadable wallpapers for your PC this is going to be a popular item!
Special offer for Untamed art classes!
For a limited time I'm offering a startup discount on my popular online art classes! If you ever wanted to learn how to paint in pastel then this is a deal you don't want to miss.
Don't have enough time to commit to hours of weekly classes? No worries. I've designed these classes for real people who have other commitments. With this you can do as little or as much as you like. This is your chance to learn in your own space at your own pace.
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Tuesday, December 26, 2006
Brotherly Love part 3: Bringing Tonji to life!

For Tonji's jaw and snout I used my white substitutes; pale violets, ultramarine blue, australian grey and warm white. The darkest tones were a combination of flinders blue and red violets along with pilbara red for zing. The subtle highlight on his lip was done using a mid blue grey lightly applied to blend with the base tone.
The modelling on tombo's leg was started using my light sienna and umber tones, both raw and burnt. I applied the pastel using the broad side of the stick very lightliy to allow the paper to play its part in achieving the look I wanted. Many more layers would follow on from this but i gave me a solid base to build on.

With the first layer of Tombo's leg completed I used the same collection of tones to build his body, working loosely at this stage to lay in the wrinkles.
Saturday, December 23, 2006
Brotherly Love part 2: Building the mane

Painting a lion's mane is a very arduos task taking many layers and tones to create a worthwhile effect. With Tonji's mane I worked with a limited palette and many fine strokes layed lightly one over the other to build depth. When working in pastel I find that a soft touch is very beneficial as it allows me a great scope for detail.
In the following photo you can see how i've used those strokes to build the textures and work with the strong light.

Lets get started! Brotherly Love part 1: laying out and establishing the lights

Hi folks, I'm going to kick off this blog with a demonstration of a pair of lions I photographed while at Werribee Open Range Zoo. Lions are known to be prodigious sleepers, spending most their days napping. These boys were just waking up in preparation of being fed at 12 noon. What I loved about this scene was the counterplay between them.
The size of the work is 470mm x 670mm on Colourfix paper by Art Spectrum. The pastels that I use are a variety of brands including Art Spectrum, Winsor & Newton and Rembrandt. My collection contains over 600 pastels. Most pastellists tend to have huge collections as different brands offer slighlty different qualities in softess and tones.

Coloured pencil and graphite on bristol board

In the next installment I will take you through the first stages of building the lions.
If you'd like to see the finished work go to wildatart.mosaicglobe and look in the gallery.