oriental parade

Oriental Parade - Oil on Canvas, 2005

Mt Victoria houses

This drawing was done during winter 2010.  I'm hoping to do some paintings based on this at some stage. 

Galway.

I really got into painting when I was living in Galway, Ireland.  This is my favourite painting from when I was living there in 2003/2004.  I sold this one and two other paintings of Galway to a local man. This was approx 900mm x 300mm, acrylic on canvas. 

IdN magazine - International designers Network

This is one of my favourite design magazines in terms of inspiring me for ideas for my teaching.  This current issue has sparked an idea for my year 13 Graphics students first design project for the year which will be based on signage, mapping and wayfinding. 
An interesting quote on the cover from Robert Luis Stevenson that "it is better to travel hopefully than to arrive" 

Designers - links

I have started adding links to websites about Designers that interest me and that I use frequently in my teaching.  The intention is that I will keep adding to this so that my students can utilise the links to help inspire their project work and so that they can keep widening their design knowledge and appreciation.  A lot of the links are directly from the Design Museum website.  I loved visiting the Design Museum in London, where I saw Toord Boontje's work for the first time back in 2003, as well as all the iconic furniture they had on display at the time.

process, enjoy the journey

Looking through some of my stuff I found these 2 images, which i have never seen together previously.  Its interesting to see how the painting began, and how it ended up.  This process is what I really enjoy about painting.  Although unless you document this process, all you see is the finished product without appreciating how it all began.  Kind of like the design process in that students often want to get to the final design, without really documenting or indulging in the process enough. 

serif and sans serif

This image comes from the website http://ilovetypography.com  which was recommended in Just My Type by Simon Garfield.  Any typography lessons I have done in the past seem to start with serif vs sans serif, so I love this image.  This website goes onto explain things in a fun and easy to follow way, so take a look budding typographers....
As an aside, this also relates nicely to Deadwood and Paul Newman DVDs I have watched lately....excellent!

background image

The image I have used as the blog background is a painting of Oriental Parade in Wellington.  It is acrylic on canvas and is approx 500mm x 1500mm.  I enjoy painting aspects and perspectives of Wellington, especially its buildings and surrounding landscape.

Typography

The library at my school is so great, that one of the Librarians hands this to me and suggests it as summer reading.  Although I haven't quite finished it, I have to say it has been really entertaining for a design geek like me and it really makes you think about typography.