This Week in the Studio

   This was my painting at the beginning of the week. It is a painting of Blue Range Hut in the Tararuas. It's one of my pieces for the Art of a Hut exhibition at the end of this year. All I have to go by is my drawing and a rather bad photo from an entirely different angle which has only been helpful to see how the moss grows on trees so far. It is quite a challenge painting almost entirely from my head. It is still far from finished and this is how it looks today, Friday.

   I haven't been working full time on it so there is still a lot more to do on it. I will finish it this week. I have also been doing a lot of drawing. This is the longest drawing from this week, a portrait of Marion on which I spent about six hours.

  And while I have not been at the easel or the drawing board I have been shooting arrows from my bow (also losing them!) and working my way through the huge amount of content on the Art Renewal Center website. I'm enjoying learning a lot about Art History and discovering amazing artists I never knew existed before. The site has many high res images of some great paintings so it's a great place to view art if you are like me living in the uncivilized north of New Zealand. I dream of going to see the great master paintings in Europe and America. We do have some pretty good work here too, but I don't often have the opportunity to see it. Besides NZ is still mostly in the Dark Ages of Modern Art!

  And to end with here is a drawing which I finished months ago but never photographed until today. I never see it but I think of Thoreau's Walden which I was listening to while I drew this.