Dingo Spirit - New major work in progress

Hi all, I wanted to share my latest WIP with you. This is the first piece in my new Australian wildlife series. I've chosen a dingo in the Australian outback because I love the play of colour in their coats.

Here are the first stages....

I am aiming to have this completed for the opening of the Yakkerboo Art Show on Friday March 28th, 2008.

The work is now complete and waiting for a mat to be cut so it can go on display at the end of the month.

Wild @ Art Twilight demonstrations

I thought I'd share with everyone some recent works created at Melbourne Zoo for my Twilight series of demonstrations. Each year Melbourne Zoo holds a series of concerts through summer where people can come to the park and not only see the animals at later times than usual but also listen to live music well into the night.

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.

"Dignity"

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.

Tall Timber

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!

(Disc running time approx 14 mins)

If you'd like a copy just click the link below

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.

Here's the deal:  Start up with my class today and pay only $25(AU) for the first fortnight!

That's just 12.50 a week! What have you got to lose?

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Brotherly Love part 3: Bringing Tonji to life!

Hi folks, today's installment will focus on the process of bringing Tonji to life. One of the elements that attracted me to paint this scene was the juxtaposition of Tonji's laziness to Tombo's patience with his brother. The challenge that Tonji presented was that he had his eyes closed. One of my specialties is bringing my subject to life through the eyes so without that element to work with I had to come up with other means.

I started with the lightest sections of his brow, paying close attention to the textures and highlighting the wrinkles around his closed eyes. at the same time I began the job of modelling Tombo's rear leg.

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.

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.

With Tonji's mane under control fot the time being I moved back over to Tombo and began sculpting his paw. The thing I learned while working on these boys was that if I left one of them for too long they got impatient.

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.

When starting a work like this I will normally do a few layout sketches in pencil to get a feel for composition and to help me better understand my subject. For this piece I did a finished pencil study of one of the lions to establish his personality.

Here is the study..."Tombo"
Coloured pencil and graphite on bristol board

With the study completed I then moved onto the colourfix, producing the layout using pastel pencil. At the layout stage I put in a grid which allows me to place focal points at the optimum positions.

Being left handed I work from right to left to avoid smudging my work. Therefore I started with the background first. By establishing the background this gives me a tonal key to base the rest of the work on. once i had blocked in the first section I moved onto the body of Tonji, the rear lion and placed the highlights for his mane and back. While using my light tone I also layed in the forelegs of Tombo, the front lion.

Once the lights are blocked in I use flinders red violet (darkest tone) to establish contrast. I very rarely use black in any of my work preferring instead to use coloured darks.
I also lay in the first layer of the foreground grasses.

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.