Holidays and Filming Plein Air Painting

   I've been home a week now since the holidays with Caleb and this week I'm back to normal life and am planning my next hut painting.

  The holidays were awesome, Caleb had three weeks off and he came up out of the cold South to see me. We spent a week at my home then went down to spend time with Caleb's family in Hawkes Bay. Of course the time flew and we had lots of wedding planning to do. We found our wedding venue. A forest of Totara trees on a friends family farm where I spent a bit of time growing up. It's just perfect and I'm so excited for our forest wedding!

   We were planning to a bit of a hut trip in the holidays also, but I put my foot in it. I sprained my ankle and was a little bit disabled! But despite that I still managed to do lots of things outside and among others we shot pigeons, goats, and turkeys and had a mid winter Christmas feast.

    I didn't do a stroke of drawing all holidays! Far too distracted! But I did do a quick painting. My brother, Erik Evans Photography, came up one weekend with his drone and wanted to film me painting down by the water. I didn't really feel like painting but I dragged out my plein air kit and we drove down the road. I decided quickly to paint one of the boats directly off shore with the rock, St Paul, behind. I wasn't feeling inspired at all but literally in five minutes after I had put the first stroke on the canvass I was in another world and everything else phased out.

 For about an hour or so while I painted I was completely lost in my painting and didn't mind the drone buzzing above my head or my family looking on from behind and didn't notice the tide coming in. It was just a quick sketch, and I painted very fast, but I don't think it turned out too badly. I'll start making a video from the footage Erik has given me, so you can look forward to seeing that sometime soon.

Welcome to the 'Goop family' Caleb!

In other news:

My drawing 'Unheard' did not make into the short list for the Parkin Prize, but I have sold the drawing. It's amazing how things work out, with the money from this drawing of me in a wedding dress I will be able to buy my own wedding dress!