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Friday 1 May 2020

Welcome to May ...

Our inspiration this month comes to you from Graham Gercken with Autumn Stroll.  May is the last month of Autumn (Fall) here in Australia before we head into the colder winter months.  

CRITERIA - Please use Autumn/Fall colours

A little about Graham Gercken ...
Graham, predominantly self taught he chose oil paints as his medium and painted wet into wet, which is the style of the impressionist artists and lends itself best for outdoor painting. He was most influenced by Sir Arthur Streeton and those of the Heidelberg school of artists.
1984 saw Graham moved to the "World Heritage listed" Blue Mountains west of Sydney. He tried a number of jobs but always felt constrained. His professional career started by selling paintings to the buses of tourists who visit the Blue Mountains every day. Graham applied for an Artist In Residence at Dunmoochin, Victoria 1998, the home of renowned Australian artist Clifton Pugh, Here he met other artists and with renewed vigor painted the local landscapes plein air. This area North of Melbourne had beautiful stands of Huge River gums and other subjects which were all new and fresh to his eye.
In 2001 Graham returned to NSW living on the Central Coast. Selling online the majority of his work was sold to overseas clients from the USA, Japan, UK and Europe. With the freedom of the internet to make sales he traveled to China where he lived there for 4 years and met some great Chinese artists who showed him the techniques of ink wash painting.  Graham presently lives in Lithgow NSW where he continues to sell through his online gallery. After painting professionally for many years he has won many awards and his works have been presented to visiting dignitaries, sports persons and are represented in private collections all over the world.

And now some inspiration from our team ...

(in no particular order)

Karen Guy (Australia)
Inspired by the painting, an autumn tree in autumn colours.

Karen McLaughlin - (Australia)

Annemarie Caister - (New Zealand)

Dale Tiernan -  (Australia)

Sharon Bishop - (Australia)
I took my inspiration from the yellow and orange/ brownish leaves for my field of wild flowers. Two people in the artwork and green undergrowth.

Karen Brierley - (Australia)
I love working with yellow and orange, and I delved into my old paper stash to pull out some patterned papers to fit the autumn colour scheme.

Jane Howden - (Australia)

I took the opportunity to scrap a page for my Tasmanian travel album.  This one is all about using leaves I have had in my stash for ages and working with a 6x6 paper pad and a circle punch.  It was a lot of fun putting this together.

Our main prize winner is selected by random draw - so anyone could be a winner, no matter your style or your level of experience or your country of residence. If there are more than 8 entries in the month a second prize (donated each month by one of our team) will be drawn.

Main Prize

Second Prize
(drawn if more than 8 entries)

Now over to you ......


This year we will no longer be using a "linky" tool. Please upload your entries directly to the monthly album in our Facebook public group (ARTastic challenges) by midnight on the last day of the month - please remember we are an Australian based challenge so do check your day and time. For anyone not on Facebook, simply email us your entry and if you have a blog, a link to that too so we can still pop past for a visit. You may combine your entry with 3 other challenges. You may enter more than once in any month as long as each submission is with a different creation. International entries are very welcome.


Hope to see your amazing layouts in our Facebook gallery.

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