Butterflies

I have been sick from the flu for over a week. And tired. Sleepy all the time from working too late.

My thoughts scatter away beyond reach …

Fireworks

Igor Stravinsky’s ‘The Firebird Suite’, Decca Gold Label Series, 1958 This record cover of Stravinsky’s The Firebird on my July calendar page immediately makes me think of fireworks and Fourth of July celebrations, even though I’m not American.

Stravinsky wrote the music for Diaghilev’s Ballet Russes in 1910, and the ballet is based on a Russian folk tale of a magical glowing bird that is both blessing and curse to its captor. I don’t know the full story or the music, but Steinweiss’ graphic illustration seems to capture the glory of this mystical bird. The other cover is such a contrast, monumental and weighty to suit Beethoven’s symphony.

Whether you’re in for wintry blasts or a blaze of glory this month, happy July to you!

Ludwig van Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, Columbia Masterworks, 1946

What is the Red Ball?

RedBall Project, BarcelonaImagine strolling along a city street, turning a corner to walk down the subway steps you expect to find there, only to be confronted by a giant red ball blocking your path. It’s the surreal stuff of dreams, a segue down the highway of The Matrix, but here it is in the real world.

The RedBall Project began life as a public piece for Arts & Transit St Louis, which commissioned the artist Kurt Perschke. As an artist whose work encompasses video, sculpture, drawing, prints and public projects, Perschke is interested in architectural space, and how people inhabit space.

In the initial project, Perschke was offered three spaces for his work: two pretty parks, and a rather ugly bridge descending into the earth. He found himself drawn to the latter, to the sheer mass of the bridge and negative space beneath it – that which he terms the ‘armpit’ space. He wanted to show it smashing something, and whimsically drew a red ball beneath it. Suspecting it was ‘too easy’, he nevertheless showed it to the curator, who laughed, and they decided it was perfect.

RedBall Project, NorwichThe ball is 15 feet high, weighs 250 pounds with or without air, and is inflated in situ, a process which takes 40 minutes. There is only one red ball.

It was Perschke himself who spent his commission fee to take the red ball to Barcelona, where it captured the public’s imagination; people actively threw themselves at it, leaned, pushed, posed. The Project garnered a lot of media attention; then a curator in Sydney brought it to Australia. Since then it has crossed cultures as well as continents, from Taipei to Abu Dhabi.

He says, “people approach me on the street with excited suggestions about where to put it in their city. In that moment the person is not a spectator but a participant in the act of imagination. … That invitation to engage, to collectively imagine, is the true essence of the RedBall Project.”

RedBall Project, Abu DhabiRead more at The RedBall website, watch a video interview with Kurt Perschke and eyeball some galleries of cities the Project has toured.

Shadowplay

Reflections / DottyI love to photograph textures. Whenever I am out and about with my camera, I’m zooming in close on interesting surfaces, from lichen and rockpools to shadows and swimming pools. Here’s a little collection I snapped in the Dandenong Mountains one sunny Saturday while celebrating a forthcoming wedding at a girlfriend’s hen’s party. 

Click for detailed images.

(Clockwise) Lichen / Lace / Silver / Pool

Yucky Adventures

Our hero Yucky, (on the left), is joined by his ‘beasties’After more than a year in the making (which is pretty quick, I’m told, in the digital book publishing world), the Yucky Adventure series has been launched into the world!

The Yuckies, horrid, dirty creatures that live in rubbish piles and fart and burp a lot, and get up to all sorts of mischief, nevertheless have an environmental tale to tell.

It gave me great pleasure to bring Bridget Cull’s words into technicolour – or rather, Windsor & Newton – life. One of the most fun aspects of illustrating these little beasties was creating their scaly, warty skin, using salt dropped into puddles of watercolour. Salt crystals have a magical effect on the paint, soaking up the liquid and concentrating the pigment to form misshapen lumps and bumps. It was a perfect technique to capture the crusty Yuckies. As for creating the animation out of traditional watercolour illustrations – well, that’s a tale for another time.

There are five stories in the series, and the first two are out now as apps (for iPad) with iPhone versions coming soon. Visit the iTunes App Store and search ‘The Yuckies’. And check out our video on YouTube now – I absolutely adore the cheeky music! 

And PS, they might be gross and live in rubbish dumps, but they’re totally tech-savvy – find them on Facebook too.

This cheeky Yucky resides amongst the garbage pile, and loves his morning mud pieOne of my favourite scenes from Book 1: the Yuckies’ late night revels in the local park raises all sorts of dust and rumpus!There is a way to stop them – can YOU figure out how?