Semi-somewhere

 

My portrait of Anna Walker – “Basement Bird” has happily made it into the semi finals of the Moran Portrait Prize, so it is currently in transit back up to Sydney town 🙂 Out of a field of 216 chosen as semi-finalists, only 30 get through to the Grand Finale – so we’ll have to wait and see what happens … some great entries, you can take a tour of all 216 entries here: http://www.moranprizes.com.au/competition/2013-doug-moran-national-portrait-prize/semi-finalists

Semi-somewhere

Portrait of Anna Walker – Archibald Prize 2013

Basement Bird - portrait of Anna Walker

After taking a break from entering last year, I’ve created a painting for this year’s Archibald Prize – A portrait of Illustrator / Author Anna Walker. Happily we’ve known each other for years, so I was very happy when she agreed to sit for me. I’ve had this image floating around in my head for over a year now, so it was good to actually have the chance to realise it. And it got me into a bit of costume design / creation as well – I made the lush ‘Red Riding Hood’ cape and managed to persuade poor Anna to wear it one sweltering day last December. After sketching and gathering reference. I got started on the actual painting in January and put the final coat of varnish on the first day of March.The actual size is about 2 metres x 1.1 metres, so again it was great to give myself the opportunity to work so large, though I did wonder half way through if I would actually get to finish it in time.
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