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.
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.
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.
Yay, I'm going back to the bush! I haven't been certain that we would be able to get to any more huts for me to draw this month because of my knee and my horse's knee and Caleb's shoulder which he pulled. But we are all getting better now! On Wednesday I went for a long tramp with a heavy pack on just to see how my knee would feel. And it didn't trouble me at all. I didn't even feel it where it had been so sore last time I walked so much. And if it dose get sore I have some special sports tape which I tried out on my knee and relieved the pain last time it was sore. So that is all good news and means that it's all go ahead and our tentative plans are being put into action.
Tomorrow Thomas and I begin two days of hitch hiking to get down to Caleb's place in Hawkes Bay. From there we will drive out to the Kawekas and tramp around there for the next two weeks.
I'm looking forward to more walking with no sore knee this time. And I am excited to begin work again. I've bought some pastels and am planning to do a few pastel drawings as well as charcoal and graphite and some more watercolours. I don't know if I'll ever settle down into one medium. I love working in them all, though sometimes I'm more inspired with one in particular. At the moment I am quite inspired to do pastel paintings and also some more charcoal drawings.
The other week I spent the afternoon outside my studio drawing the old boat shed and the red wheel barrow.
When I went for a walk on Wednesday I climbed up the Dukes Nose and enjoyed the view of the harbour heads from up there. I painted a small sketch.
And we sold Lady! She is recovering from her 17 stitch cut in her leg and doing very well. I hope she will enjoy her new home. They are very eager to have her and will be well loved. I will miss her a bit though.
But I will have more time for riding my own Tigger! The other day I rode him up on the hills. I have such a beautiful place to ride!
I haven't used it outside yet which is what the box is for, but I will soon. This little scene caught my eye and I decided to paint it then and there. There are boats all over our house the house, this little radio control yacht is my nephew's model. I spent about three hours on it and learnt that a white door can actually appear very very dark!
Last night I had an idea for a painting and started painting it in my head as I fell asleep. This is what it looks like after four hours of painting today.
The hardest part of painting teacups is getting proportions right, it's so hard to get things accurate. You think it all looks ok, and then turn the canvass upside down and everything goes out of kilter! Something I don't like about this painting is that when looked at from a distance or in a thumbnail image it looks flat. I think it is because I haven't got enough contrast and my values are all on the same range.
I think I might do another painting like this tomorrow and see if I can get more depth and contrast into it.
Remember when I had this stall at the local A&P show in November? Well it wasn't much of a success at least it didn't seem like it at the time. But that is only a result based on what I sold (which was not much), and not on how the public received it. I did get allot of good comments and everyone seemed to like my work. I am only realizing now how good that in itself is; getting your work 'out there' seems to be a good way of 'getting out there'! How ironic!
Anyway, what I want to tell you is about a phone call I received last week. And the result of it is that in a couple weeks an art group wants to come and visit me in my studio and see my work and see me working! Isn't that crazy! I feel as if I should be the one visiting an art group to learn things however amateur they say they are! I don't feel very professional myself!
But I am glad and excited about the visit! It makes me feel more like a real artist, and it somehow makes me more confident in my work. That art stall was allot of work and a big step for me, but it was worth it, I learnt so much and realize that you really have to work hard to get yourself known as an artist. But it is possible.
Most of this month has been too crowded to do much in my studio. We have had family and friends staying allot and since my studio is also the guestroom that means I don't get allot of painting done!
So I've been trying to keep my blog alive and healthy since I can't go out to my quiet little room outside and paint every picture that comes into my head.
I have been painting all day today, but not the kind of painting you are thinking of right now. I've been doing a few days work house painting for my aunt this week which is good because I will earn a tiny bit of money. That sort of thing is scarce for me these days; I no longer get a student allowance because The Virtual Art Academy I am studying with isn't NZQA qualified.
I can't wait until we get well into February then I shall be settled down into a normal routine and be able to really get working and get painting. I also have vague ideas about starting to work on drawings for an exhibition next year maybe. It's an exciting idea, and will take allot of thinking about and planning and money too. But lets see what this year brings before we start talking about crossing bridges let alone jumping over rivers!
I finished, pretty much, my still life painting today. My rose had died so I picked a new one, ever so slightly different but it served the purpose. I will add a photo as soon as I have finished and signed it.
I think I enjoy beginning a painting much more than finishing one. At the beginning I have a blank canvass and many ideas and possibilities in my head. I can paint anything, there is potential in it. But after I have begun I feel as if the further I go on it the more I am limiting myself, I feel as if I am committing myself to every brush stroke I lay down. Then I realized today that that is only because I'm not taking risks, or big changes that I feel that way. I'm scared to improve something because it's already passable and I'm afraid of ruining the little good I have. An artist I admire said, in words to this effect, that he would rather ruin a passable painting by trying something that might improve it than staying with a mediocre painting. That was inspiring to me and so with this last painting I did make a dramatic change that I wouldn't have done formerly. I would probably tried to keep going with the composition that I didn't like while all the time thinking about a painting I would do next and differently. But I changed it and got rid of one of my favorite parts entirely, and now I like the whole painting.
So I'm learning to take risks and not be afraid (or too lazy) to change something if I think that it could be better. I try to believe that if I can see something that could be better, then I can make it better. And, this way, I will probably learn to like to come back to a half finished painting just as much as I like to come at a new canvass, because when the story is not yet over anything can happen!!
I was falling quickly out of love with my first composition as both objects were calling for all the attention and I became confused about my subject. And then when I came to painting the white cloth things just got so bad that the little jug was the only thing worth saving, so I painted over the rest and picked a rose from the garden.
It is still unfinished, the rose is just sketched in for now and I still have to work on the jug. (The problem with painting from life is that shapes change if you move just a little bit! But I'm happy with where it's going and I may add something below the jug on the right to break up that diagonal line the composition has taken.
Well! Since Christmas and over New Years I've been in a whirl of family and boats and sunshine, and now I'm finally trying to get back into routine.
Yesterday I was suddenly inspired to paint a still life after watching a How to set up a still life Video, which shows it takes a long time to set up a good composition. I spent most of the day setting up my makeshift shadow box which you can see in the photo above. There is another lamp behind my easel which is lighting my little set up.
I only had an hour to paint, after I had done that so this is how I left it yesterday. Must go and do as much painting as I can today for I won't have much time in the rest of the week.
Here is what I filmed some weeks ago. The painting in progress has now gone to the girl whose birthday present it was and I can now publish this. It was rather strange talking to a camera which I haven't really done before--and trying to be serious at the same time!
Here is how the painting stands since the second day of painting at the end of last week. I haven't worked on it this weekend, but this week I hope to finished and have it framed in my 'broken' frame.
I have been painting all day today. I think I painted longer than I ever have in a single day on one painting. I hope that becomes a regular occurrence, but I do end up feeling rather exhausted. Painting can be so tiring - to the brain anyway - so when I finished at five this evening I cleaned myself of paint and curled up on my bed with Pride and Prejudice and read with the last rays of sun flickering in through my lace curtains. Jane Austen is so entertaining on every re-read that P&P is always the perfect book to relax with.
(I'd like to do a painting like that one day.) The painting I was working on is one I started this morning and have just about finished. It was inspired by this abstract painting by Osnat Tzadok
My painting is a little bit abstract but it was mostly the warm and cool contrast of colours in this painting that inspired me. If I can find a camera with batteries, I will photograph it when it is finished.
And now I've got to scamper to have the dinner ready for the hungry men when they come in from working on boats. I think Pizza tonight. :)
I painted this in one afternoon during the week. I had been working on another painting with reference only from my imagination and it wasn't going so well so I washed the old paint of my piece of frame glass I use for a palate, picked the last rose in the garden, mixed fresh colours and began to paint. I learnt how to make another shade of brown. All the colours I have in oils are the primaries plus white which is probably a good thing to teach me colour mixing, but it dose feel a bit limited at times.
I had been wanting to paint a rose in a loose painterly style for a while and from life; fortunately there was still one small pink rose on the bush for me. The box was once my grandmother's sewing box. I didn't spend much time arranging because I just wanted to paint, so a set the box on my desk and placed the rose on it 'any old how' and began. It is on a 10x10 inch canvass, a square shape which I have never used before. Apparently composition is hard to get right in a square, as you can probably tell!
I gasped when I saw that I haven't posted anything this June! Forgive me for I haven't been too busy, there's always time for anything you want to do. That's what I believe anyway, though it's an acceptable excuse to say I didn't have time. Because, of course, I didn't. I suppose I will have to make some sort of blogging schedule for myself. I can promise you will here more from me this week anyway!
Now, I want you to tell me what you think of this portrait I have just finished. Do you think it is good enough to pronounce finished and send it off to the dogs owner? I'm not perfectly happy with it myself but the photos I had to work with were truly a challenge! The lady commissioned it for her friends dog as a surprise so she couldn't very well set up an elaborate photo shoot when her friend wasn't looking. But she tried.
This is all I've done on the big painting since last Tuesday. I haven't done a thing on it until this afternoon. Was away at a friends for a couple days and went and played my fiddle at the ceili (Irish dancing) but of course only unheard behind the band. And then I've been riding Tigger an aweful lot too. I need to get him fit for some long rides!
And my we have sold Simba, the horse I have been training. Which is a bit sad as I've grown to love him.
