Inktober Drawings

  Inktober is going strong still. I've been sharing my ink drawings every day on facebook and Pintrest, except for this weekend when I was away with friends. I took my sketchbook, of course, and managed to draw every day, though they were are a bit sketchy!

 Next week I will be out on the boat with my brother and a friend. I will be painting  the coast huts between here, (Whangaroa) and Whangeri. It's going to be lots of fun, hopefully we have good weather and lots of wind to get us places.

This is Destiny, my brother's 22ft yacht which we will be voyaging on. I'm sure we will take lots of photos of the trip which I will share in a couple of weeks when we get home again. And hopefully with some successful paintings also!

  This will be the last hut hop before the Art of a Hut exhibition in Novermber from the 10th to the 29th. Remember those dates, I hope you will get a chance to pop in one day to see the results of my last two years of work.

  Here are the first 11 days of my #inktober drawings.

The Beautiful South, a Hippie Van, and Something about Art

   For the last three weeks I've been on a kind of holiday. Holiday from much painting and drawing anyway! I flew away to the South Island just because I thought I'd like to see a certain engineering student whose dear name begins with the letter C...

    One week with friends we went hitch hiking around the three blue lakes near Mt. Cook. We slept under the stars every night and traveled on our feet or by the thumb and a smile. The landscapes all around were truly amazing. I found myself wishing for a little hippie van in which to travel around the country all on my lonesome...and to paint. I might just do that, as soon as I can... be a wandering artist, and really try to capture that beauty that surrounds one down there.

  I very much like the South Island. Everything is so much grander and wilder and more open than in the North where I live. If you have seen the Lord of the Rings or the Hobbit you have only glimpsed the magic of New Zealand.

   But most of the time away I spent in the city of Christchurch where Caleb is studying. I'm quite impressed at the amount of hours engineering students spend hard at it. It seems as if they have so much to learn that they could work 24/7 and still have lots more to do. I spent a week in the University library. Lived on the fourth floor where all the art and literature books were. I believe I could spend a lifetime in there. So many books that I've been wanting to read, and that I would never otherwise be able to see. I read and read, wrote down quotes and had a mind teaming with ideas and words by the end of it.

   One book I read was full of Rodin's thoughts on art translated from the French. I was interested in what he had to say about beauty. He lived at a time when the trends in art where changing dramatically, a similar time to now, when artists were suddenly liberated by a truth which turned everyone upside-down. He spoke of seeing beauty in everything, he said that true art could make anything beautiful.

   'There is nothing ugly in art except that which is without character, that is to say, that which offers no outer or inner truth...Whatever is false, whatever is artificial, whatever seeks to be pretty rather than expressive whatever is capricious and affected, whatever smiles without motive, bends or struts without cause, is mannered without reason; all that is without soul and without grace; all, in short, that lies, is ugliness in art' 

 

Sculptured hands by Rodin

   He was right, but those that came after him in the modern age, twisted the words to mean that 'all art could make all beautiful' and then 'art is beautiful because it is art', and eventually got rid of the idea of beauty altogether for even they could not see beauty in what they created. 'Art for Art's sake' became the motto. What happened to the amazing discoveries of the impressionists and other artists of that era that art was brought to such a low level so soon after?

    Perhaps a better phrase would be 'Art for Life's sake' after all what is art without life, truth, or meaning? I think the mistake that artists make over and over again throughout all the art movements of history is to  forget about what they paint and look at the paint itself. They forgot what they were trying to say because they found such a brilliant way of telling it, they saw it was brilliant and than all they could think of was the telling and forgot what they really wanted to say in the first place.

   “Every poet and musician and artist, but for Grace, is drawn away from the love of the thing he tells, to the love of the telling"― C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce

God grant me Grace!...

My Ambition

A recent painting unfinished in the studio.

   Many artists talk about wanting to share what they 'see' in their subject as their reason for painting. I never really understood what that meant until recently. An artist takes a delight in seeing what they call beauty. To him that is more than just liking it and not really knowing why it looks nice. An artist has to truely understand what makes something beautiful. What makes it beautiful visually because that is his language -- painting is purely a visual language. The painter sees colour, shapes, values, edges, composition, and the ways these elements come together and contrast to look pleasing to the eye, and to an an artist that is what is beautiful. And he wants to share those beautiful colours, shapes, and edges with others, they are often more beautiful and meaningful to the artist than the subject itself.

   Anyone who looks at something and calls it beautiful dose so because what they are looking at has shape, colour, light, values, and edges, all combined in an aesthetically pleasing way. This is what an artist understands, or attempts to understand: How the eye sees, and what makes things pleasing to the eye. - Pleasing to the eye meaning the appreciation we feel when we see something beautiful, and which then can evoke feelings and thoughts which uplift and bring joy.

   It is my greatest ambition to be able to really see things and understand how I see them, and to master a set of skills in order to interpret what I see in reality onto a two dimensional canvass. I do not wish to copy nature like a scanner, instead I want to interpret it. To find out what makes something look like it dose, to find out what drew me to paint that certain combination of shape, colour, values, and edges, and then to put it on canvass - to share at least a glimpse of what inspires me.

Satin Dress Drawing

   I have been very busy all last week working on a commission. It's illustration work which is all very new and interesting, but more on that later. I did find time to do some drawing for myself and here is something I worked on bit by bit all week. 

'Satin Dress' pastel pencil on paper. aprox A3.

   Another from the series of photos I took of Tabitha. I concentrated on the dress in this drawing and made that my subject. I love the folds and how there is so much reflected light in the shadows. I would like to do a bigger drawing of a similar dress and spend more time on it. My favorite part is her lower foot on the ground and the train of the dress. 

   Today I started a still life painting of my violin again. I seem to enjoy that challenge! It's going really well and I hope to finish it this week. I had a few of those good moments when I applied something new I've learnt through reading and watching other artists paint and it worked! It's encouraging to know that what I want to achieve in painting is possible to learn. Also that all my hours I spend reading about painting and looking at paintings and watching videos of people paint are not entirely wasted time!

   This week again I shall be extra busy finishing my still life, doing lots of drawing, and starting on a new commission for a painting. I'm going to be painting a horse! I've been wanting to do that again lately. Also I hope to go out and get some plein air painting done.

Recent portraits

   A few weeks ago I spend an afternoon photographing my friend, Tabitha who is also a part time model. I often draw people but rarely have any good photos of my own to work from so I have been practicing my drawing from random photos of the internet and, of course, I can not share my work from them publicly. Ideally I should like to work from live models, and I do as much as I can, but that is not possible a lot of the time and so I have had to get some of my own reference photos. Here are a couple of my best works from the photos I took.

Tabitha: oil on board aprox. A3. The painting was a present for another friend, her boyfriend.

 
   Recently I have been inspired by the amazing artist Susan Lyon. Particularly her pastel drawings of people. I bought her video on drawing and was very pleased with it and learned so much. Especially about the importance of accuracy, measuring and remeasuring, and taking my time. I often have a tenancy to rush things! After three unsuccessful drawings of Tabitha I managed to draw the above and am happy with it. I took my time to measure and not rush all over the place putting down useless stuff.

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My Violin and Piano painting

Here is a painting I completed recently. It is of my violin and piano and painted entirely from life. I set up in the lounge with palette and easel and worked on it every day for a week. The violin is one I was given on my 18th birthday full of enthusiasm to learn, but as painting has taken over I have had to drop many things in order to give that priority. Still, no excuse really, I should practice sometime! 

But I do play the piano every day. The music in the painting is Chopin's nocturne no.2, one of my favorite pieces at the moment. Though you would find it hard to tell from my loose rendering of the notes!

Music Piece 16":x20"

Here are a few photos taken during the process. Forgive the bad quality of the images; taken with my phone.

Yes I have two pianos! Lucky girl, though the one I'm painting is atrociously out  of tune.

I loved painting the piano keys, so much fun figuring out how to bring them to life with as few strokes as possible.

Poutaki Hut and our Video

   This is my painting of Poutaki Hut. It was the second of six huts we stayed at on my recent Ruahine Hut Hop. The hut was built in 1983 as a recreational hut and to replace the Puketoi Musterers hut which was later burned down by 'armature poachers'. This hut is is a doomed one. Not many people go there these days and DOC has decided to only provide 'minimal maintenance' and if it falls into disrepair it will be removed. However, it was in good condition when we visited, and looks well loved by a few regulars. I can imagine it will be around for a long while yet. It was one of our favorite huts, and had a great little stove which got red hot and kept us warm. Hawkes Bay Hiking and Tramping has a blog post about this hut and the walk there which has good views of the Ruahine Range and Hawkes Bay.

   I decided to do a painting of this hut. It's the first painting I have done of a hut on location. I painted on primed A4 watercolour paper. It was a good size to take as the few sheets I brought could fit in my sketchbook to stay flat, my drawing paper was much bigger and I kept it rolled in a tube. The only trouble was getting it dry to pack away after I had finished. I used water mixable oils and did not use any medium, so they were similar to acrylic and dried quickly, and I finished drying it behind the stove so it was no trouble at all. 

   I started painting when the sun was low behind the clouds directly in front of me, but as several hours went by the lighting changed dramatically. Sometimes I began to feel like I was trying to change my painting along with the lighting, then I realized I could go on all day like that and never catch up with those changing shadows. I learnt a lot doing this sketch, but the hut is the only part of it I'm happy with, the rest is a bit of a mess, all my messing around trying to chase the light! I should like to do more paintings of huts in the future. The original plan for The Art of a Hut project was to concentrate on drawings, and I still wish to do that, but as I have said before, I would like to add a bit of colour into it.

Last week I finished a little movie of our Ruahine hut drawing trip from the videos that Nathaniel took.

South Island Working Holiday

   I'm home again from my working holiday in the South Island. I got home almost two weeks ago and it feels like I never went away. In some ways, in others I'm changed, even a little bit of travel dose that to one. I'm going to remember some of my trip for you now.

   I flew down to Christchurch at the end of March my two friends picked me up in the blue Ford Falcon '69 and off we sped up to Nelson area. There we spent five weeks picking apples in the sunshine, well mostly sunshine, it ended up being the wettest apple season in years! It was good hard work eight hours a day six days a week. We really enjoyed our days off! It's monotonous work but it's not unenjoyable. One has lots of time to think, or not think, while picking and climbing up and down ladders. And every now and then one has a bit of excitement, one day I fell off my ladder and landed on my flat back with a full bag of apples on top of me. I was unable to pick for the rest of that day and had to lie in the car feeling useless.

Some of the things I learnt while apple picking: I learnt which end is the top of an apple, and I learnt that happiness dose not depend on my occupation, and I can find funny things and beauty in anything if I look for it. 

Here's the car we traveled around in. What fun! Dominic rebuilt it himself and spent six months driving around the country in it. The only problem with it was her appetite!

   When apple picking season was over we were out of there! It felt so good not to have to wake up at 6:30 every morning to the sound of Stan Walker singing Choose You. We spent the next three weeks traveling slowly home. We camped most nights unless we walked out to a hut. The weather was getting cold, but three of us in that tiny tent kept us warm at night.

   We went up to farewell spit, visited some amazing huts where we met more locals than when we had been in civilization. There Dom went deer hunting and came back with a goat which he smoked well salted in the chimney. It was great to have fresh meat, not cheap or easy to keep when traveling.

 There are so many amazing places to see in New Zealand. I only saw a small part of the South Island but it has made me want to spend all the more time there. There's so much more space down there, and less people, and more magnificent. Sounds ideal for a painter like me! 

 This wasn't a hut drawing trip, but I managed to draw a few that we went to. This is a hut in the Golden Bay area. A very beautiful place, but I probably didn't appreciate it as much as it deserved because it was so much like the North Island and Northland.

  On the way up we made our way slowly up the North Island. We visited the part of NZ the never really sticks out in my mind, the East coast below Hawke's Bay. There is farmland for miles there, from the mountains to the coast, and barely a tree, just grass. It was beautiful.

   We drove by the place of the longest name in the world quite unexpectedly! Then we drove around the coromandel and had two beautiful days of pure sunshine. One evening as we were starting to look for a place to camp, we decided to ask a farm if we could camp in their paddock for the night as it was getting dark, and the next free campsite was still a long way off. So we drove up to a place and, feeling rather awkward, knocked on the door; next thing we knew we had been put up in the shed. A fully furnished flat with a kitchen and sky tv! We were stunned! In the morning we found out that our host was the son of my Dad's very good friend up here. It was an extraordinary turn of events, which didn't end there. My friend, Marion, found out that she had once stayed with the people who lived next door. It was wonderful to find connections with people far away from home, it was encouraging and we went on our way heartened and the sun came out. 

    And now I'm home, I had a grand time away. I've had a good break and am already settled down into work again. And in a couple of weeks I'm off again to draw more huts. More about that project in another post.

Hut Hopping in the Kawekas

   Here are a whole lot of photos from our Kaweka hut hopping trip. It was a really good trip. Three more friends joined us making things a lot more fun and distracting. I managed to get nine drawings of huts in two weeks. And compared to last time, I think I have improved! Yay, that means next time they will be even better, hopefully!

   You can read a bit more about it in my February Newsletter.

Me and Thomas and Pauline and Jojo hitched down to Hawkes Bay to join Caleb and Lewis who live down there.

Setting out in the 'Slow to Forty' towards the hills. Lewis and Jojo looking like they're wondering what they are in for.

At the carpark, Caleb with the map out and Pauline in my hat.

Getting ready for the first walk. Pauline, Caleb, Thomas, Lewis, and Jojo

At the first hut, Middle Hill hut, Thomas is on lunch.

I began work on my first hut drawing that afternoon.

Caleb and Pauline enjoying coffee on the deck. As you can see, all our stuff gets scattered everywhere as soon as we arrive. 

In the morning, looks like Caleb is making porridge in his sleep!

Boots thrown off and drying after yesterdays wet walk in the rain.

At the end of the mornings drawing, my first pastel drawing of a hut.

The critics at work. Really, they weren't that good at it. Too many nice comments!

The view up on the tops above the treeline was amazing!

 A few gun posing shots.

It was very windy up there. We had fun leaning against it and pretending to be blown away, until it got too cold and we walked on.

My drawing board kept flying in all directions! Whacked me on the back of the head a few times, and got Thomas good once.

Ballard Hut. The first four bunk hut, was a bit tight and the hut got very hot with the stove going.

Walking on to the next hut the next day.

Jojo, Lewis, and Pauline.

Coming down to the trees again.

The forest was beautiful, but we didn't manage to get a good photo of it.

Pauline often went off hunting with Jojo who was determined to shoot a deer. All he managed was a shot at one one night and missed.

Dog kennel at Makino Hut. 

Drawing Makino hut, the result of this is one of my favorite pieces.

Next stop was Te Puia hot springs where we camped the night. It was so nice to enjoy a hot bath and a good scrub. There was a really nice river there also. In the evening lots of eels came out and Caleb speared one. Here it is smoking in the BBQ chimney.

Whenever there was a river Caleb did as much fishing as he could get in.

Finished our first loop walk of four nights. Out at the carpark again sorting out food for the next eight day walk.

People trying to catch up on sleep in the car.

There was a long steep climb up to this hut, Kiwi Saddle. On the way we saw a beautiful sunset, I wish I had taken photos. We arrived here after dark and the hut was full of people. We managed to find room and most of them left early in the morning. It was raining on and off while I drew, and then it set in so I didn't quite manage to finish the drawing.

Walked down the hill to Kiwi Mouth hut.

We made a food cache here as we passed back this way. It saved carrying a lot of weight up the next hill.

It was only a four bunk hut. So we put one mattress on the floor, Caleb made himself a mattress of manuka and Pauline and I top and tailed. 

Thomas and Caleb looking bored while they wait for me to finish the drawing so that we can go.

Before we left a heli arrived dropping off a couple of hunters. If we had wanted a ride up to the next hut it would have been $150 each for the five minutes.

This is the longest swing bridge I've been on so far. It was lots of fun!

Got up to the tops again and the cloud hid everything.

Old Manson hut. We spent an extra night here so I could spend more time drawing.

There was a lot of wood chopping demonstrations at this hut. One of their past times as I was drawing.

Lewis.

Inside the hut was a dirt floor and sacking bunks.

It was very dark inside the hut, like a cave. Caleb wished we had a spade there to dig out the floor a bit. There was one beam he banged his head on just about every time he passed under it.

In the morning the sun's rays shone directly into the hut making awesome beams of light.

Pauline and Jojo left first and did a bit of hunting before walking on to the next hut. They left their packs by the track and as we passed we added a rock into Jojo's pack. He walked half a Km before he discovered it!

The view from Rocks Ahead hut. It was a beautiful walk over the open tops and then steeply down to the river.

I tried to wash my hair, it didn't work well! Too dirty for the small amount of shampoo I had. It's very hard to look after long hair in the bush.

The river was icy cold!

I drew the hut from the river bed and was savagely attacked by sand flys!

The view from the cable car.

Jojo shot a hare and Caleb made a stew out of it. It was the first time I had had hare and it tasted good.

We all very much enjoyed Rocks Ahead hut. I caught my first trout there and Caleb caught lots! 

Caleb's catch for the day made us a good feed.

Up to the tops again. A steep climb up from Rocks Ahead.

Looking down towards Back Ridge hut. The long walk makes this view look simply amazing! The photo dose not do it justice.

Playing chess with bits of paper. Someone forgot to bring the pieces so we just had the board. You must be careful not to sneeze or cough while playing this. One game was destroyed that way!

Caleb's fish cooking.

The last hut was Cameron Hut. Unfortunately it was raining here so all I got of this was a quick sketch and a dunny sketch.

The hike over and everyone is happy but tired.

You can see even more photos on my facebook page! This time there were plenty of photographers so we got a lot more photos than on the first trip. Our old camera dose alright after all.