North East Fine Artists Exhibition

I can't believe how quickly May, June and July have flown by! Most of my art time was taken up with finishing off a large pencil drawing of a lion. As mentioned in an earlier blog, I like to set myself goals with one of them being a series of large format pencil drawings of African animals. I plan to do at least 12-15 of these so it will take me quite a few years. I had already begun the lion drawing as part of the series, then put it aside as other projects took over my time.

In the meantime, I had been approached by another artist to help coordinate an art exhibition for August in our local area. We decided each artist would hang their art as a body of work and therefore a theme would be ideal. I decided my lion would fit in with my other two African themed pencil drawings and so I worked to finish him off to be ready for early August.

Whilst working on him, much of the background admin foundation was being laid down for the exhibition. It is no mean feat to build an exhibition from the ground up and just some of the tasks were: securing the venue, sourcing the artists, naming the group, designing entry forms, timelines and then the infrastructure of the physical art show, panels for hanging, lights, eftpos, etc. Then organising and catering for an opening night... phew!

Even though my art time has been reduced, I have enjoyed this side of the art business as well. I look at all these experiences that help me grow as an artist and it has turned out, it has laid the foundation for other exciting opportunities that I will address in the near future.

Here are the progress shots of the lion in the making and the finished drawing. Such a handsome boy, my reference from a fabulous trip I did to Botswana a few years ago.