Robertson Studios

Sketchy Details is finally here!

Michelle George — Wed, 02 May 2012 03:46:49 +0000

It has taken me six months of drawing, writing, designing and tweaking, and finally my first book is ready to roll of the press! I am so excited to share it with you!

Sketchy Details by Michelle M George | Make Your Own Book

Click the little shopping cart icon if you’d like to purchase a copy. (if that doesn’t work, click here)

New Zealand sketchbook!

Michelle George — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 11:31:50 +0000

We just spent a week mountain biking and adventuring in New Zealand. It definitely wasn’t long enough and I definitely want to go back again…..but in the meantime I had a blast riding, adventuring and recording our adventures in my sketchbook. Take a peek…:)

Good Friday Meditation

Michelle George — Fri, 06 Apr 2012 12:02:29 +0000

I love to use art as a worship tool…as a way to bring focus as I meditate.

I am not a part of an organised church at the moment, so today I celebrated Good Friday by preparing a Eucharist meal for myself, lighting a candle, and meditating on scripture as I painted.

This is a picture I saw in my half awake, half asleep state this morning.

The colours move from black to red to orange to yellow, symbolising our move from sin through redemption, rebirth and restoration.

I found that the collection of sensory elements was incredibly powerful. A way to engage and focus. An incredibly powerful mode of worship.

Scenes of France Greeting Cards now available for purchase

Michelle George — Mon, 26 Mar 2012 11:04:31 +0000

Last night I launched my Scenes of France greeting cards range. There are two packs available with four different cards in each. Click the picture to go to the store.

And the winners are….

Michelle George — Sun, 25 Mar 2012 08:30:21 +0000

Chris:

I love Tokyo. Japan is such a culture shock in many ways. Even the Japanese take on many familiar western cultural institutions has its own peculiar stance. In Tokyo there are many different areas. Every time you pop out of a metro station, you could be in a different city. Shopping, electronics, nightclubs – anything you could imagine.

and

Nic:

In 4 weeks, it may be Beijing & Hong Kong with a 15 month old toddler, but right now it’s any park with a slide.

These two resonated with me! Chris’ because I am fascinated by Japanese culture, and Nic’s because I’ve travelled to a park with a slide many many times

Congratulations! Please send me your addresses via the contacts page and I’ll get these cards in the post this week.

WIN! Tell me about your favourite travel destination for a chance to win a set of greeting cards

Michelle George — Sat, 24 Mar 2012 02:16:35 +0000

I am so excited! This week I received my very first shipment of professionally printed greeting cards featuring some of my favourite paintings from my trip to France last year.

To celebrate their release I am giving away two packs of cards (one of each pack) to two of my lovely readers. All you have to do is to leave a comment below telling me about your favourite holiday destination in 50 words or less. I will choose my two favourite comments at the end of the weekend! (end of the weekend is 7pm Sunday 25 March AEDST)

Pack 1

Featuring (clockwise from top left):

Autumn morning on the River Seine
Parisienne
Gramat doorway
Chenonceau tower

Pack 2

Featuring (clockwise from top left):

Chartres gardens
Doors in decay
Montvalent
Monet’s bumblebee

The cards are blank inside, perfect for sending a note to someone special.

These beautiful cards will be available for purchase from my Etsy store in packs of four as pictured above for AU$17.50 per pack from tomorrow!

Comment away! I can’t wait to hear about your travels!

PS… the travel could be to your favourite coffee shop down the street ;P

Take these broken wings

Michelle George — Mon, 12 Mar 2012 06:36:45 +0000

This morning I found a dead butterfly when I was out for my walk. I thought it might be fun to try a new style of painting and compare it to my usual style. My usual style involves inking the outline and then filling with watercolour. I have never done a watercolour without ink lines before, so I decided to give it a go. I penciled in a very light outline and then went for it. I found that the ink-less drawing took much longer, although I’m not entirely sure why…I think perhaps I left the layers to dry longer, to make sure nothing bled together. I am thinking I like my usual style better….it feels more like me…

The top one is the experiment…the bottom one is my usual style… which do you prefer?

Lovely Legs – ACEOS

Michelle George — Sat, 10 Mar 2012 04:51:21 +0000

I think I’m addicted!

I love socks…almost as much as I like shoes. I wear thigh-high rainbow socks when I mountain bike in winter…just because I like to be a bit kooky…and I love that mountain biking is kooky enough for me to get away with it

These tiny little pieces of art the size of a playing card the are ultimate in being able to carry them around in my bag and create something wonderful in not a lot of time. What fun! Art Card Editions and Originals (ACEOs) are 2.5 x 3.5″ and can be traded or sold. They can be displayed singly or as a collage. An affordable and versatile way to start your original art collection.

I have just listed these beauties in my freshly launched Etsy shop. There are some prints of these on the way too.

Interstitial artfullness

Michelle George — Tue, 28 Feb 2012 06:45:25 +0000

Now that I’m back at work full-time after a good long Christmas break, my available time for creating anything has been reduced to stealing snippets of time between housework tasks and taxi runs. As it turns out water colour lends itself perfectly to his kind of approach. It doesn’t do much for getting into a state of flow and deep engagement, but it means that I can still create something that makes me smile at the end of a weekend.

This past weekend I wanted to play with large format ink and watercolour after the fun I have been having with the France sketchbooks, so I completed this *ahem* masterpiece in grabs of time that were anywhere from 30 seconds to 15 minutes in length.

I give you….Astro – Le defenseur de Paris!

After wetting the paper and let tin it dry I sketched out the rough design

Started to ink the drawing using Noodlers black loaded in my Lamy Safari (so smooth!)

The colours were layer in one by one…played with some sea salt on the background just to see what effects I could create

The finished piece (not sure why the end cut off…silly phone photo)

Camping at Gillard’s Beach, Mimosa Rocks NP,NSW

Michelle George — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 10:14:43 +0000

This past weekend we had the unexpected pleasure of camping with a family that have been friends of ours since before we were married. We have been through a lot together, but of late, life’s stages have meant that we haven’t seen a lot of each other. So…we jumped at the chance to spend some time together roughing it by the ocean.

On Saturday morning one of our friend’s little girls came screaming down to the beach in tears after making a trip to the primitive bathroom facilities. She said that she had seen a dragon. We didn’t think much of it…and chalked it up to the furtile imagination of a seven-year-old girl…until we went back up to the tents and came face to face with a family of lace monitors.

They are BIG lizards … as long as a medium sized dog, but with short stubby legs. She HAD seen a dragon! The family of dragons, so far as we could tell, consisted of two adults and a juvenile, and they wandered lazily past our campsite a couple of times a day in search of the sunny spots on the cliffs.

As a child my mum used to read me may Gibbs’ Snugglepot and Cuddlepie stories and for a long time I have wanted to have a go at drawing a banksia pod. Here’s what I came up with:

I had hoped for some time early this morning to draw a family of blue wrens that I observed as I wrote my morning pages, but instead I was visited by the sweet Miss Emily who scared the birds away, but who was so interested in my paints and pens that I simply couldn’t resist her charms. Here’s the drawing that we created together.

I love the excitement of little minds playing with pretty colours and seeing how paints mix and swirl together. Perhaps she was a reminder to nurture my own inner child artist.