Stencil print - Rufous Songlark Sings

Rufous Songlark is singing about the good things of Summer.

The Rufous Songlark is a small bird native to grasslands of Eastern Australia. Each Summer the male bird sings almost constantly.

This 2 colour stencil design was originally cut and hand printed to be part of the Bimblebox 153 Birds Project. 153 printmakers have each represented one of the 153 birds known to use the Bimblebox nature refuge. This nature refuge in central Western Queensland, Australia, is to be destroyed as it is in the path of a mega coal mine.

The prints contributed to the 153 Birds Project now form a touring exhibition raising awareness about the plight of the nature refuge and the potential threat these vast coal mines represent to the biodiversity of the region.

Visit Pixbyrichard on Redbubble  to shop for Rufous Songlark Sings on gift cards, giclee art prints and home decor

spruced up the website

Too often have I thought 'Must update my portfolio website' and gone on to do exactly nothing about it. Well a few days ago I broke with this long standing tradition. I reviewed and changed my portfolio images and updated the layout of my website and blog. I also gave the site a shiny new domain name www.richardmordenillustration.com.au

My aim was to make a site visually clean and simple to navigate. All the information a potential customer needs is on one page. No need for a separate landing page, folio page, contact page or about page. The website is built with blogger so folio images are easy to update and the responsive blogger layout means all should look fine on a mobile device.

You will notice inky octopuses in the side bar. These tentacled critters were painted as decorative devices to visually break up the text and give the site some added personality. I took photos of the octopuses on the drawing board. Here they are...

a bench for my studio space

I made a bench for my studio space. The working surface is a lot higher than is typical for a work bench allowing me to comfortably draw at it when standing up.

I have to admit most of the work was done by the local hardware store. I asked them what I should do to make a cheap standing height bench to be used for light work, mostly drawing. They suggested the basic construction you see here and sold me a light hollow door, 3 metres of 70x35mm pine which they cut to the required lengths, some screws and drill bits. All that remained for me to do was drill pilot holes and screw the lot together. Even I could manage this.

And because I am much better at illustrating diagrams than I am at timber constructions here's a very basic isometric projection of how the bench went together.