Drawing Cone Hut

    One of my favorite huts from among those I drew in the Tararuas was Cone hut. Built in 1945-6, the hut replaced two huts nearby parts of which were used in the construction of Cone Hut. Piles and slabs were cut from surrounding trees and everything else was carried in including 1.5 tonnes of cement.  Cone Hut is the only slab hut in the Tararuas that remains in such good condition. It has a lot of character and is in a beautiful little spot next to a river. Perfect location for a hot summer weekend.

   This was the first hut of the second week. That morning we had walked out from Blue Range hut, said good bye to Luc (who hitched back up north), meet up with three more friends, and all tramping out to Cone Hut. We did the three hour walk in two and jumped into the river as soon as we got there. It was our first really nice day, we had sun and blue sky for a couple of days! The river was cold, but so nice to go for a swim and a proper wash!

   I drew the hut that evening. It went well from the start and is one of my favorite drawings from the trip. I kept it simple, focusing on the hut and didn't add any background. I drew on brown paper with black and white charcoal. 

L-R: Dominic, Marion, Pauline, Guillaume, Me, and Jojo, and Esther behind the camera.

  I'm so blessed to have such good friends always eager to come on a 'hut hop' with me. They always remind me I should be out drawing and not enjoying the warm fire or the cold river too long! Thank you all!!

   That night we shared the hut with two Norwegian hunters. There was not much space in the hut, especially in the sleeping area, but we all squeezed in. Everyone took it in good humour and one of the Norwegian fellow's deep loud laugh remained famous with us for the rest of the week. 

   We walked out back to the cars the next morning. At the end of the walk out was a long high swing bridge. They are always fun to cross. Most of us ran down to the river and jumped in after walking out from the hut. Afterwards we drove arround to our next car park and spent the rest of the week tramping a loop around Field, Kime, Mungahuka, and Penn Creek huts. 

   I took all my drawings into the copy shop to be scanned last week so I now have digital images of them all which is great. Below is a page from my dunny sketchbook. I've done a lot of little sketches of various dunnys at the huts. The Cone hut dunny had an entire wall made of punga logs, one of which was missing...

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.

South Island and Newsletter!! I'm off...!

   Today I leave home and on Monday I fly to the South Island. It's been my dream for years to go down there. And now I am going!!

   I'm not taking my laptop and don't hope to be in contact with the internet for the couple of months I'm away. So don't expect to hear from me online before the end of May. But when I come back I will get back on my blog and tell you all about it and share some of my sketches. I'll be apple picking near Nelson for five weeks, and hopefully get to tramp to some huts in the weekends. Here is my March/April Newsletter. In which I write a bit more about what this artists been up to lately.

  Here are just a few of the huts I want to visit and draw if I get the chance.

 I've been packing today, and look who wants to come with me! Not this time Pansy!..

Well, I'm going to go now and ride my horse, Tigger, one last time before I go. Then I've got to quickly finish packing and leave. 

Good bye.  :-)

Perfect Practice & Advice from Barry J. Raybould

   During the last few days I have been practicing drawing people. I've been focusing on accuracy and getting a likeness. I noticed that often when I draw people that even if the end result looks quite good it is often not exactly like the person I was drawing. I often get carried away by the drawing and instead of correcting it from the model I correct it to what I think looks best, and the result is not a perfect likeness. My challenge has been to get accurate first lines, and spending more time on getting the exact proportions down before I add too much detail and shading. So these are just sketches which are an invaluable part of the process of learning to draw. Getting good at your art is all about practice--perfect practice. 

   Profiles I have always struggled with. It takes some time to get it to look like a person one might meet in real life rather than in a nightmare! I'm going to have to work at it over and over again until I can get an accurate profile and a perfect likeness in just the first few lines. I have been studying Sargent's drawings and I am amazed and the confidence and accuracy of every line he puts down. He can capture a person in just a few bold strokes of charcoal. 

   I watched a video interview with the artist Barry John Raybould who began the Virtual Art Academy and at the end he gave an invaluable piece of advice to artists. I don't remember his exact words but in giving advice to artists who art struggling with making good paintings. He said don't try to make a great painting. Simplify things down, go out and make studies of one thing that interests you or that you think you need to work on, whether it is colour harmonies, value relationships, edges, or reflected light. Focus on just one aspect of painting, and that way you will learn it. There is so much that contributes to making a great painting that it is too overwhelming to learn everything in one painting. It is all about perfect practice, for when you come to do a big painting to sell or a commission everything you have learned in the hundreds of small studies will come together. And besides this those studies may even come be be your greatest work. He also stressed the importance of going back time and again to the basics. Even if you think you know it all, there is still more to learn or re-learn from the very fundamentals of drawing and painting. And that inspires and encourages me to draw a hundred faces!

   I've been filming a new video for my YouTube channel encouraged by the many people who have subscribed to me lately. It's a speed drawing video of several sketches of people. So that's coming soon!  

    Because I can't wait around all day for someone to stop and sit for me I sketch of the internet--Pintrest has a wealth of inspiring reference. These sketches are not intended to be sold they are entirely sketched for my private enjoyment and because I loved the reference photo.

   When the internet went down yesterday I turned to the cover of a book I am reading to sketch from. It's called Fly Away Home by Rachel Heffington, one of my best friends. She is an incredibly talented writer and this is her first published novel. Her blog is well worth following, the book is available on Amazon. It's very exciting! She lives in Virginia and we communicate with long long letters full all kinds of nonsense and the ecstasies and sufferings of our intensely creative selves! Of course when one of us becomes famous the other will retire on the profits from these intriguing missives. 

Painting, Music, and Apple Picking

   Since coming home from hut hopping life has gone back to normal-ish. I don't have so many things-to-do on my list which is really nice. I'm learning how to limit how much I bite off, because it's exhausting and disheartening trying to chew really fast to get through everything!

   So what am I doing with myself these days? 

   I've been painting. Last week I worked on a large painting of Rocks Ahead Hut, one of the huts I drew in the Kawekas last month. Here is a small detail from the painting when it was in an unfinished state. I had only my sketch from on location and my memory to work with. I did have photos of the hut but they were taken at a different time of day and the shadows and light were completely different so there were useless to me.

   I quite enjoyed painting again. It's nice to come back to after doing mostly drawing for a long time.

   I have been reading a lot too, these days. I have two large volumes about the Impressionist painters in the ninteenth century. It's full of beautiful paintings and I am enjoying reading all about the artists like Renoir, Monet, Cezanne, Dagas, Manet, etc. I love the Impressionists and there work and it is really interesting to become more familiar with their work and study their paintings and notice how really very like impressions they really are and yet what makes them so appealing and so beautiful that they have stood well the test of time and are still the most loved paintings in the world.

Monet

   I think it fascinating how all these painters who began the Impressionist movement all knew each other and influenced and encouraged one another in this new way of looking at the world and putting it on canvass. And yet they each had a different take on the same thing all contributing a certain aspect to the movement.

The Monet Family at their garden in Argenteuil. 1874 Edouard Manet

   There is so much information on the internet about these artists but it is often very confusing and possibly unreliable. I often comes across bad copies of the masters works passed of as the real thing on Pintrest and such sites when I'm looking for images of paintings. So I much prefer to read real books about artists, it's much nicer and easier to study them that way. I have just got a pile of books out of the library about Dagas and Cezanne which I am looking forward to reading through.

   When I am not painting or drawing or thinking or reading about painting and drawing I am spending a lot of time with Jenny, my piano. I am currently enjoying learning Chopin's Nocturne 2. Maybe I'll be able to play it as well as this someday:

      At the end of this month I am going to the South Island! Somewhere I've wanted to go for a long time. I'm going to join a couple of friends picking apples near Nelson for a month and then go traveling around and see a bit of my country. Of course while I'm down there I'll do the best I can to get to lots of huts to draw them for my project. The Art of a Hut.

  I'm really looking forwards to spending a couple of months down there picking apples which means earning money--a novelty for me! And then traveling around with my friends in a bright blue ford falcon '70. Lots of fun, my sketchbook will be ever at my side and when I come back I'll share them with you. So you won't hear much from me here in the months of April and May but I'm not going away just yet and I plan to do a fair bit of blogging this month.

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.