Sunday 30 April 2017

New Website

I recently created http://leighhewitt.com.au/  
Please check it out to see my latest work in a slick, easy to navigate page.

I may close this blog down in the near future so that I have less things to update. If you are a fan of my work please bookmark my website or follow me on instagram to see what I'm up to (username leighhewittart) 

thanks!

Thursday 4 August 2016

An Animation and a Stereogram

Here are a couple of things I made earlier in the year. One, an apocalyptic stop animation using charcoal, the other a stereoscopic loop.





Monday 25 July 2016

Balkon Incubator Show

This post is more than a little late. In February I exhibited paintings and drawings at Balkon Incubator gallery, an artist run space in Preston. We had a great turnout for the opening night and a lot of fun. Many thanks to everyone that came and to Sarah and Monique of Balkon Incubator for making it possible.
Here are the works (those that haven't already appeared in previous posts) and a few shots of the gallery:

Versus
Oil on Canvas
75x100cm

What can I say? A wooden Thai elephant faces off a novelty pencil sharpener against green and pink.


Broken Song
Oil on Canvas
90x90cm

I grew up with this kitsch figurine in the house and was inspired to paint it when I saw it in front of one of my old stencil prints.


Me Me Me
Oil on Board
53x61cm

Me gesticulating wearing the Me Me Me T-shirt I made years ago. It's all about me.


The First 20 Days of 2016
Charcoal on Bamboo Paper
78x56cm

The title says it all. An exercise to make myself draw everyday with a subject at hand.



The Fish
Charcoal on Bamboo Paper
78x56cm

The gridded drawing needed a companion. The fish is another piece of kitsch from the old Heidelberg abode.


EXHIBIT PICS:








Sunday 6 December 2015

Portraits

Welcome! Here are a bunch of portraits of friends and fellow students, all painted with oil on board over the last five or six months.

Hope you enjoy them.



Eddy (after Edouard)
My homage to Edouard Manet and portrait of my good mate Eddy, based on Manet's portrait of his friend Zola.




Mid-afternoon Chicken-wing Manoeuvre
My good friend Adam sometimes demonstrates his new jujitsu moves on me and I thought this would make for an amusing portrait of two old friends goofing around.





Tim "Woodzy" Woods
What can I say.. Tim plays for the Rockdogs on occasion so I took the opportunity to take a nostalgic trip to the footy card collecting days of my childhood. I still need to get his autograph.

I made this gigantic piece of gum to go with it (Gum used to come with footy cards. Does it still?)








The following are a bunch of quicker and sketchier paintings I did after tiring of the more detailed style of the above works.



                                              Adam with Smartphone



    Harry



    Jacob



   Tristan



    Nick

Friday 26 June 2015

Paintings March - June 2015



The first semester of my painting degree has wrapped up. Here is some of what I've been up to in the studio since returning from Taiwan (the better stuff!). I'll add the sizes of the works when I get around to measuring them.



The Angels of Lanyu
Oil on two attached boards
I'm considering this painting to be the last of my Taiwanese series. It's based on my short time on Lanyu (also known as Orchid Island) and references the sometimes difficult relationship between the island and the mainland. The old mural in the lower half of the image is a government sponsored promotion of modern hygiene and health among the population using local imagery of traditional dress and fishing boat. The rental scooters in the foreground symbolise the burgeoning tourism trade on the island, towards which the population holds an ambivalent attitude. The aeroplane is the link between the mainland and the island - in winter it is the only link due to rough seas. The dancing girls in the sky are taken from a series of photographs documenting the local cultures in the 1960s.


Copy of Liu Xiaodong
Oil on board 
I made this small copy of a Liu Xiaodong for an assigned project. This painter is my Chinese namesake. Liu is the surname and Xiaodong means "Little East". In Taiwan I had to choose a name so I went for Li Xiaonan - "Leigh Little South", since I'm from the Southern hemisphere. Apparently in Chinese it sounds incredibly dopey. Needless to say I think Liu Xiadong is a great painter, and I was lucky enough to see one of his shows in Taipei. A nice segue to the next painting....



Taipei Tourist (Self Portrait)
Oil on Canvas
Me standing in front of an outdoor poster for a Vermeer show.  The old frame within a frame trick!



Cartoons on Glass
Oil on louver window slats
The idea behind these small figures was originally to create a series of caricatures or stereotypes - the businessman, the skater kid, the tough guy poser, the hipster, etc., but I got some requests to do other students so around half of these are tiny versions of fellow students. I had fun with it. That's me top right.



Retaining Wall and Cafe Still Life
Oil on Board
I like these two together as they share a colour family. It might not be all that apparent but I was taking inspiration from an American painter called Neil Welliver whose technique involved expressive painterly shapes and distinct tonal separation between them.  Hard to explain but well worth checking out his stuff. I was trying to model objects with lively colour relationships and tonal values and keeping blending to a minimum.



Skin #2, Skin #3, Skin #1
Oil on board
These are more abstract but continuing in the same vein as the previous paintings. I used close up photos of spotted gums on St Kilda Rd as inspiration for colour and shapes.These are all wet on wet one-session paintings.



Mirror
Oil on plastic aluminium composite
If I did this one again I would buy acrylics for the graphic background. It was an interesting material to work on. I made it challenging for myself by leaving the shiny surface unmarked as the white in the image and attempting a cleaner style.



Still life in Studio
Oil on canvas


Hot Tap
Oil on Canvas
A couple of square still lifes on canvas, the first painted from life, the second from a photograph.

I'm now working on a few portraits so I should have more pictures up here soon folks!

Thursday 11 December 2014

Dec 2014 paintings

Recent oil on board paintings:


Val at Gaomei Wetlands



Summit of Jade Mountain



Noodle Man on Yongching St.



Entrance Pot Plant