hoot hoot....what's that I hear?

wow I can't believe it's been so long since I've posted.  Things have been super busy for me and the family at the moment. I've been working on some new artworks, and one of them is almost finished - I hope to post this soon...

new things coming...

A new year and new work... I've got a bunch of things that I'm working on at the moment, some which I can show now and some that will take a bit more time to develop.  I'm really excited about my recent artworks and I hope you like them :-)  Here's my latest, and it's been a long time coming but I'm pretty happy with the result.

It's got some movement, texture and simplicity, all things I was looking for.  I hoped to create something that would appeal to a wider age group of children.

Hopefully soon, I'll have some more cool news to share.

And the winner is...........................

So aside from drawing my own sister's name out twice (no, I'm not giving her the prize - I will get her something a little special later on for being ridiculously lucky!)... the (real) winners are:

1st - Shelley
2nd - Jess
3rd - Kellie

Congrats ladies, I will be in contact with all three of you to organise who gets which prize!

Thanks to everyone for participating, stay tuned for Giuseppe's next exciting release, and watch out for more giveaways over the next few weeks - it is almost Christmas after all!

katie :)

It's treasure hunt time!!!!

Ok lovelies… here’s the deal.  Work your way through these clues… email me (Katie) the answers by Wednesday 5pm and I’ll do a random draw for our prize winners!  We’ll have three winners –a 50% off voucher for Giuseppe’s next big release (coming VERY soon - most exciting but still a secret!), a 5”x7” print, or a pack of 4 greeting cards of your choice.  First place getter can choose whichever prize they want, second and third can then follow, iykwim?!  Rightio, here goes:

1.  How many spots on the “Jolly Giraffe”?  (this includes half spots, and spots on the face!)

2.  What colour is the icing on the blue butterfly’s cupcake?

3.  How many hedgehogs are there in the Alice in Wonderland croquet game?

4.  I come in 3 colours with 3 different images, and I happen to be Oscar’s (Katie and Giuseppe’s son) favourite set of illustrations… I am the ______ series!

5.  How many prints are currently available as greeting cards?

6.  What name is on the “Spaceboy” image in the “Personalised Artwork” album?

7.  Finally, which of Giuseppe’s current range would you like to see on a greeting card (that we haven’t got already)?

8.  You can score a second entry by suggesting Giuseppe’s facebook page to friends… tell your friends to pop a note on the wall to let us know you sent them, or post a link to Giuseppe’s page on your business page – make sure you tag  “@Giuseppe Poli – Artist” to ensure it appears on our news feed.

All answers can be found at:   http://www.facebook.com/giuseppe.poli.artist  (check the ‘photo albums’ tab)

Email your answers to katie.poli@gmail.com by Wednesday 5pm (Qld time) and we’ll draw the winners Wednesday night!  Yay!  Happy hunting gorgeous people!

NB  Email addresses will be immediately discarded and NOT be used for any other marketing purpose.

angels

Someone asked me a little while ago for Angels.... and it's been sitting in my mind since then.  I've finally been able to spend some time on them and at first I found it a little tricky to design something that was a little different and captured what I felt I wanted to convey.  Well, they came pretty quickly, probably because it brewed in my head for a little while :-)

and I'm super excited about them :-)  I'm really looking forward to painting these....got a great feeling about them.

I love the little Angel and little girl swinging....it's such a beautiful place to be.

hope you like them! :-)

Shop online

We've been looking at online stores for a little while now and are now more openly publishing our Madeit store.

Katie has done a great job at setting this up, and I'm so excited to share it with you all.

Just follow this link  http://www.madeit.com.au/giuseppepoliart/   or click on the image to the right of this blog.

Enjoy! :-)

my trip to Wonderland with Alice

Well, I'm so excited with the work that I've produced with Alice in Wonderland!  I didn't know much about the story and it took a bit of time to get familiar with it.  I made loads of designs/compositions, tried new/old techniques and it was the typical artwork story of gradual victories, discovery, wins and loses.  It's funny, but it's not often that myself (and I'm sure other artists) start a project with a clear vision of the end result. We try this, see how it works, nah don't like that, like that bit, let's explore this.... what a ride :-) and as always with art didn't realise just how close I was to the final product, felt like I was a little lost and then a few strokes of colour here and there and it all started to come together.

What I love about these pictures is the gorgeous detail that resulted.  Here's a closeup.... got watercolour, pencil, and computer strokes in this - just makes it delicious :-)

I've been wondering what to post and so I thought some behind the scenes stuff and ideas would be fun.  I really enjoy reading about how others create so hopefully someone out there will enjoy this.

Here's a layout sketch from the pile of work produced in the process.  I've finally arrived at this angle, where we get a good closeup of the cat and see Alice's face as well. You don't want to know the number of angles and layouts I experimented with :-)  So now in this pic, I'm working on establishing the tone, trying to make it look interesting in B/W before we start with colour.  This is important in composition, because the eye travels around the painting bouncing around dark areas and light areas.  It also makes the pictures look so much more enticing if they still look clear in B/W.

 

Below, I'm still playing with layout and composition of the Croquet game. Here I'm tackling layout by solely focusing on silhouettes - a technique that Animation masters use. If the silhouette of a character is clear, then the viewer instantly realises the action/moment/identity of the character and doesn't have to ponder too much - the image works and captures the attention quickly.  The Croquet game was so full of these little moments and I wanted to capture it all, so I had to cheat a little and put in some fun moments from different time slots - Alice laughing at the absurdity of her flamingo, the white rabbit which comes in later in the scene is added, the Queen of Hearts gets into her tirade later into the scene as well but by this time Alice is not happy.  I wanted to capture the chaos, the Queen's anger, the King keeping the peace, the hedgehogs walking off, the white rabbit, the small time when Alice is happy and the guests all playing for themselves without care for taking turns, the crazy unlevel Croquet playing pitch.  There's also a little bit from the very beginning of the chapter, one of the gardeners has forgotten to paint a white rose red.  Imagine it. Imagine if the Queen saw that. What chaos :-) and it's actually quite a troubling scene for Alice - how do you make a happy image out of that :-)

Well I'm glad I've posted this.... it's been fun.  Looking forward to sharing more soon.  May see you at the Handmade Expo this Saturday or on Facebook. 

Enjoy :-)