High School and early Art School

Bones
I'm pretty sure I painted this in high school.
Probably gouache on cardboard.



Galadriel
Painted in high school.
One of my first air-brush works (in those days "spray gun").
Painted on plywood for my brother's boat.
Based I think on a painting of Vampirella.



Pegasus 1
An early spaceship design.
Pen and colour pencil on photocopy paper.



Spaceships
Pencil and acrylic on green cardboard.



HSC 1
Painted for the Higher School Certificate (HSC).
Gouache on canvas.

I didn't get a good mark for it. The Cold War was still a thing in the early 1980s when this was painted. Not sure if it represents an end to war or an end to the human race. The sprouting twig is presumably a renewal of nature. The bird some kind of liberation of the spirit. The clouds on the horizon are a departing storm. These were genuine concerns for me at the time, so in that sense it is not contrived. I depended rather too heavily on dry brushing in those days. I never liked canvas as a surface.

I did two other canvas paintings for art class in school (acrylic in those cases). One was of a swarm of bees. The other a woman sitting on a hill with a hydrogen bomb explosion in the background.

I think the first painting I ever did was at home, in oils. It was a copy of a woman from a painting by Peter Jones, the cover of the novel "Chalk Giants" by Keith Roberts. The background was simpler, just a kind of blue lunar landscape. It was painted on a square cut from an old white cotton sheet and pinned to a piece of chip-board with thumb tacks.



HSC 2
A drawing of our tractor.
Also for the HSC. It was part of a series,
of which other highlights were a drawing of a spanner and a drawing of an oil drum.
Ink on cardboard.

These works I did for the HSC got me into art school. Which was a good thing. I didn't have a long-standing dream to enter art school. In fact I made the decision at the end of Year 12 when they said we all had to go to the library and fill in a form saying what we intended to do. I made the decision as I walked to the library, mostly to avoid entering the workforce. But I was very glad of it later.

I recall for a time I had a small business in high school selling tracings of a gym boot I had drawn, when some of the other kids asked me to do a copy for them. I haven't retained a copy. I think I charged 20 cents a copy. I think that is the only time to date that I have sold a piece of fine art.



Charlie Thorn
Black pen and colour pencil on photocopy paper.

Not sure if I drew this in high school or early art school. But it depicts a scene from one of the "stories" I wrote in high school. I bought a typewriter in high school and wrote a bunch of little space opera stories with two-finger typing. A damaged fighter limps back to the carrier. The hero of the stories was Charlie Thorn. I haven't retained any of the "stories", and no great loss.



Vagina
Acrylic on Masonite.

One of the first things I did in art school. I don't remember if it originally had a title. I've decided to call it "Vagina". No particular reason. One of the very few real paintings I did in art school. I can remember one other. A view of Newcastle by night.

In "Painting" they wanted us to work big, on canvas, big sheets of paper or such like. "Graphics" was a different module. I quickly gravitated away from painting into graphics where I worked small on illustration board and became interested in comic books and airbrush. While graphics was offered as a module, it was not offered as a major because it was illustration, not art. So I didn't actually graduate from art school.



Detour
Gouache on illustration board.

Another early painting from art school. In art school I got to use a real air-brush. Not the spray gun I'd used in high school. And before long I'd bought one of my own. Here I'd painted in the hairs on the animal, and the pebbles in the dirt. But all that was lost in the air-brushing overkill. The image depicts a small animal that had been running in a landscape, then ducks into a small cave to avoid something that was chasing it. But the small cave opens up unexpectedly into a large artificial cavern.



Mascot
Gouache on illustration board.

Another early piece from art school, with some more cautious air-brushing. "Mascot" is the name of the pink creature.



Flight
Ink on illustration board.

Another early piece from art school. Inspired by a dream. Ink is a nice way to quickly throw together a scene with vivid colour as long as you don't want to get too painterly or have too much control. The dream was about riding a kind of hovercycle. I was struggling to get it off the ground.



Pegasus 1 with background
Black ink and colour pencil
on photocopy paper.

Many years later (post Newanda period) I put the Pegasus 1 against a background.



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