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!

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.

Pochade Boxes

 I hope you all had a good Christmas and Boxing day. We had as white a Christmas as you can get in the North of New Zealand, there was a cyclone hanging about so we had rain and mist, but it was still a merry Christmas and we are still too full of leftovers! 

   I have recently discovered pochade boxes which are boxes used for plein air painting (painting outdoors). I have fallen in love with these beautiful boxes. I've always loved boxes and these ones are very useful tools. I have spent allot of time researching them over the last few days and have discovered that they are rather expensive items! There are not allot of second hand ones for sale as they are things that can last a lifetime so the only second hand ones I can find are vintage ones. 

  My favorite one is pictured above made by Alla Prima Pochade. These are handmade, built and designed by Ben Hagget a plein air painter himself, so allot of time and thought goes into each box. I like the bitterroot design best and am wishing I could afford it, maybe one day I will have saved up enough! 

   I showed Dad the boxes and he might be able to make me one some day. I would love to get outside to paint soon. Here are some photos I found on Google of pochade boxes in use.