I always tell myself the Big Day Out will be good and am disappointed by an abundance of festival jerks, but Laneway actually was good! Great, even.

On a whole the crowd was respectful. You still get the some that’re there purely for the social aspect, but the BDO has degenerated into pretty much only people that are in attendance to be at a festival… Or to get blind drunk and show off their pecs while rubbing their sweaty arms against you.

Anyway, bands I rated live…

BDO:

• Kasabian!! I’m gonna have to catch them when they tour. I really like their latest album – the energy behind them and their tunes gets the crowd pumped.
• Passion Pit were pretty good. Another one I’d like to see touring… with a better sound setup; the vocals were somewhat drowned.
• Rise Against was a surprise. I don’t follow them or anything but the singer is so powerful. And a winning showman!

Laneway:

• Mumford and Sons!! Pick of the day. Awesome! I can’t figure out how much is novelty though. Their music is new and exciting, involves a banjo, and their songs are really well structured. They build up so well and typically develop into some form of hoe down. Also, the crowd extended as far as I could see outside the Museum. I was quite proud of Perth, and the band seemed genuinely stunned by the support. Heartwarming stuff.
• The XX were pretty good. The vocals were a bit airy on the girl’s behalf but otherwise a fine set.
• Florence and the Machine went off. I was having crowd issues during her set but if I wasn’t raging I would’ve been loving it. Her voice cuts through ambient noise like nothing else. If she hooked up with the Rise Against guy they could have very loud (but gifted) babies.

Actually I feature pretty heavily in the start of this since I put my artworks up just above the crotch-level camera then loitered around chatting to various art-istes and designers.

Also note the subliminal Summer advertising around 0:19. ha

I don’t even remember who held the flyer. Probably Jeremy (the man behind this awesome video!)

Guerilla Laneway Exhibition, Perth, 13th Dec 2009. from Jeremy Hall on Vimeo.

I found it interesting to frantically pause-play this video and check it out frame by frame. It’s a great cross-section of the day, and there were a few things that stood out.

Firstly, the red parasol!

Look at the way it transmits light! It’s awesome! She’s immersed in a red shadow, and will be my next lighting study. Plus her outfit’s pretty cool.

Then I spotted a familiar face:

I laughed when I got to the frames where he whipped out his phone because I assume he was typing the message I received about 1:30pm giving the exhibition the thumbs up.

It’s actually pretty strange to see this in context. Whenever someone sends you an SMS you have no idea where they are or what they’re doing, so watching this footage was quite surreal. Being able to pinpoint in your mind a ‘connected’ moment in time from 2 different places.

If you’re reading this in the future, having seen my work and bludgeoned ‘facepocalypse.com’ into your keyboard, then welcome to my blog!

This is where I draw, paint, post about my upcoming exhibitions, show some freelance work and talk about various unrelated things like the angry bobtail in my backyard.  A link to my actual portfolio can be found in the sidebar. Or, you know, where I typed ‘actual portfolio’.

Plus if you feel so inclined you can show me love and +1 facebook fan that action.

I started this in greyscale and it’s turning out surprisingly well… Even the skintones, which are typically a problem area, aren’t turning out too badly.

Still, I’ll keep refining it tomorrow. And by tomorrow I mean today, after I’ve slept. I’m gonna try adding some feathery texture and needa refine her belly, hand and probably adjust the lips (darkening a little).