Rachel's Art Room

06/04/2026

Spring in the Hills
Playing with acrylics, coloured pencils and collage. The first image is my entry into an art competition and the other two were variations.

27/03/2026

From Forest to City
Acrylic on Linen
This is my newest painting and is on show this weekend at the South Perth Community Centre. This took me a long time to get the feathers right and required much research beyond the quick snaps I took early one morning from my street. We've noticed more and more of these red tailed black cockatoos in our suburb...their screeches and pinecone remnants are evidence of their presence down from the hills and forested areas to our typical suburbia. We need to stop deforestation and help this vulnerable species and others like it!

20/03/2026

A collaged frog friend. I made 4 abstract watercolour paintings. I drew a frog, copied him twice and used one of the copies to cut out as templates, and the other to glue bits to. I used my paintings as collage paper. When I had done as much cutting and pasting as I could handle, I used colour pencils to add more tone and line to areas that needed more definition. I am very inspired by and have been itching to do a collage like her for some time. Very therapeutic after a hectic week at school.

11/02/2026

Coffee break in the garden...
One of my favourite artists these days is Sophie McPike. I love her colour palettes, shapes, and cute characters. I am always happy when she posts a new YouTube video. This is just in my sketchbook, and is meant to be a tribute, but also a way to learn more about techniques and materials I don't usually reach for or use. McPike works a lot in her own sketchbooks and generously shares her processes.

24/01/2026

This is a quick 3 hour self portrait. I spent about 40 minutes sketching and toning the panel. 2 hours in I had blocked everything in and was feeling good. I spent the last hour refining and doing the hair and background. This panel is about 30cms square. Despite my feelings of discomfort making artwork with me as the subject matter, I do feel it is important for artists to practice self portraits and I try to do one or two every year. The hardest part of this process? Taking a good reference photo. I took like 300. My image gallery at the moment looks very narcissistic!

01/01/2026

31/12/2025

Thanks to the community of people following me here. I look forward to a lot more art making in 2026 and am thankful to each like, comment, and sale.

22/12/2025

Part 3 of 3
My spotted Pardalote painting is finished and I love the colours I used and am so inspired to use more blue in my work. What do you think?

18/12/2025

Need a last minute Christmas gift? My Whimsical Australia Calendar is available now! $25 each, plus shipping, or message me and we'll arrange pick up or drop off for free.
http://rachels-art-room.square.site/calendar

16/12/2025

Like so many of my paintings, it is a process...even when planned out. My original idea was to feature splendid fairy wrens with grevillea, a stunning flower with pinky orangy petals. I thought yellow and blue and orangy pink would all go nicely together. After talking to a bird scientist, I found out this plant does not attract fairy wrens. I felt so silly! But then I was stumped for a bit...the vision was so strong in my head and the sketch came easily when I started on the board. But I didn't want to be so glaringly inaccurate with my portrayal of one of my favourite and oft-returned to subjects. So after some thinking and more research I settled on hakea, which does grow in our yard, and though I have not seen wrens in it, I know that bushier plants do provide protection for these small birds. Keeping with my previous panels painted in this style, I included a halo and simplified shapes for the plant life, adding various textures and patterns to fill the space. This one took a long time! What should I title it?

08/12/2025

I was supposed to rest today after a busy art season/markets, but after two naps, a brief shopping trip and lots of YouTube watching, I got bored of resting and painted these little fridge magnets. I had the idea to make them look like postage stamps! I obviously have another 4 creatures in mind, lol. I never have an inspiration problem.