The 'Why?'

 

   All the trips out into the wilderness to draw are over now and in a weeks time all my pictures will be hanging in the gallery. Oh so looking forward to seeing all of my work on display together!

  At the beginning of this adventure when I was still wondering how it would all happen and had not much money to make a lot happen, I contacted many businesses and organizations thinking that sponsorship would be the answer. But, in the end, it wasn't. I don't have a job, I'm a full time artist who just doesn't make much money yet. I have been able to live at home still thanks to my amazingly supportive parents - I cook and clean for my keep. And what little money I might earn from selling art has all gone towards The Art of a Hut project. Somehow I've always had just enough, and when it's needed the money comes. Life is like that when you just trust and go for it. Passion and love defies logic. There have been times when a trip we had planned was coming up or I need to pay for more art supplies or buy contacts, so I can see (my glasses got lost along the way and I can't afford new ones - yet!), and every time, at the last minute, the money would come. I was donated money from some wonderful people who follow my adventures, and at other times just when I should have been panicking an email pops up and I've sold a painting! And all my friends have been incredible, everyone wanted to come along for a tramping holiday and so we split the costs of the food and travel between us. And when we were all tight on money we hitched and meet some amazing and some unique people on the road!

   It is a good thing I never started all this to make money. I think that for some people it is a strange concept to accept, this naive disregard for money that I have. I have spent two years of life and career on a project that has no great return in profit, At very best I might get the equivalent of half a years minimum wage for my over two years worth of work. But believe me, I'm far better of and happier than I would have been at a stable job with a regular wage. I get to live my dreams while I work, rather than work while dreaming of what I can do with the money I'll earn. I am very blessed to be able to do this. 

   If I were a better sales person I might be able to make money our of this little project. I could have put huge amounts of energy into promoting and marketing my art and making prints and cards and calendars, la de da, talk to the right people and bingo. Exciting as that all is it is also an exhausting thought for me, and in a way kills the very reason for what I'm doing. WHY am I doing this then? Just like any other real artist out there I'm just indulging a passion of mine and trying to find a way to make that possible. It is a passion that requires a lot of hard work and dedication, but that comes willingly when you love what you do. I do this because it's what I would do if money were no object. Because I love art and beautiful pictures, beautiful places and I think that that is important. It is far more important than we know to have beauty in our lives and the artists are those who should be there to fill that need. 

   So, for me, if, at the end of the exhibition, I have sold none of my pictures I wouldn't count it a failure. Yes, of course, it would be very discouraging, but it wouldn't change a single thing that I have done so far. It wouldn't take away from anything that I have learnt about tramping, about my own country, about drawing and painting in the wilderness in rain snow and sun, and about putting together an exhibition, and finally seeing the result of all my efforts all together in a beautiful display. These are invaluable lessons and experiences. As an artist and as a person I've grown so much and I'm not so afraid to do new things any more.

   So that it the Why of it. The How and the What are explained on The Art of a Hut page.

#Inktober 31 drawings in 31 days

   I found out about Inktober last October about halfway through the month, then I forgot all about it until today when I came across it again on a blog I follow! So glad I decided to  give my blog some attention today.

   Inktober began with one artist setting himself a personal challenge to ink every day for the month of October. Pretty soon this idea caught on and Inktober became a Thing. I think it's a fun thing so this year I will be joining in with thousands of other artists all around the world. And of course you don't even have to consider yourself an artist to do this. Just a couple minutes every day, or a couple hours if you have them handy, and that's all. There's nothing in the rules about having to have a perfect drawing, just put ink on paper, date it and you're done. Out of the 31 consecutive drawings I'll do, I'll think it had been worth my time if I just got a few good drawings. It's about the practice. 

  It is simply a personal challenge to draw and ink or pen drawing on each day of the month of October, that's 31 days. The rules from the Inktober page are:

1) Make a drawing in ink (you can do a pencil under-drawing if you want).

2) Post it on your blog (or tumblr, instagram, twitter, facebook, flickr, Pinterest or just pin it on your wall.)

3) Hashtag it with #inktober

4) Repeat


  Here is my drawing for the first day of October. Because spring is here and we can all go barefoot!

 My mind was half out of the window when I drew this, Tigger was grazing in the garden and I didn't want him to have a go at my lettuces. All he got was half a mouthful of parsley.

I have created a pintrest board for my Inktober artwork:

Inktober 2015, Felicity Deverell, artist

And just to share some inspiration here are a few boards from a few artists from previous years.

Inktober 1

Inktober2014

My attempt at a 365 day challenge. 

I got to 220 and used a lot of pen.

I hope you take up the challenge with me! I'll also be posting every day on 

my facebook page.

Huts in the Orongorongo Valley: Sixth Tramping Trip

   In the last two weeks of April I was away on another 'hut hop' drawing more huts for The Art of a Hut collection. This time the destination was the Orongorono Valley in the Rimutaka Range just east of Wellington. It was a very different trip compared to the usual weary tramps up and down steep and disappearing tracks in the highest ranges of the North Island. In this valley there are so many huts so close together that the longest I had to walk to a hut was two hours and we managed to stay in one hut for the whole 11 days we were there.

 Here are the three of us, Guillaume, Me, and Jerualem. The same three from the 

Whanganui Hut Hop. We found a hut, Rata, which had a big shiny window so we took a selfie of ourselves, after many tries we managed to get this.

   Before going down I had contacted the Orongorongo Club about a place to stay. They were very helpful and managed to find us a hut to stay in. In the whole valley there are about 60 private huts. They are very different to DOC huts, since they are all privately owned and as it is possible to drive a 4X4 up the valley on the riverbed a lot of these huts are very well set up. They are almost more like little batches than huts, but they all had simple beginnings. The hut we stayed at was one of the oldest in the valley. 

   Many beautiful places to look out from on some of the tracks that lead up to hidden huts. On the day we arrived the weather was perfect and the whole place looked like paradise.

  Near Paua Hut we had some fun on the long swing from a high up branch. This stand of native beech trees was so beautiful and magical especially with the sun streaming and dappling through the branches.

This is Nikau Hut and the painting I did of it on the first day. There was one tree right in the way of my favorite view of it, so I simply didn't paint it in. It was quite amazing how a few hours into the painting I forgot all about that tree and simply didn't even see it any more. It reminded me about selective sight, how we only see what we are conscious of and how easily many things go overlooked though they are right in front of us. It is good to be aware of this as an artist for it makes me look at what I'm painting more intensely, and not get into the habit of painting what I think I see instead of properly looking and seeing how it truly is. In order to interpret shapes and edges into recognizable objects the brain edits stuff out and learns to jump to conclusions about things. As an artist I have to stop seeing a hut as a hut but as a collection of shapes and edges working together to form the image. In this way I can make in image of what is really there as opposed to what I think is there. Often two different things!

   This hut had no dunny, but it had a toilet!! That was one of the best things about it, it had a flush toilet with an amazing view. Jerusalem was quite taken with it and spent a good deal of time sitting on it writing in his journal!

  Guillaume enjoyed the unheard of contraption called a 'yellow wheelbarrow' and found it entertaining to fill it with wood and wheel it the short distance from woodshed to hut.

  When we were shopping for food for the trip Jerusalem insisted that we wouldn't buy any meat as he would catch all the meat we needed. So we brought only two cans of tuna and yes he caught us meat. On the first night at the hut the boys caught an eel from the river and a couple of days after Jerusalem came back from hunting with a wild pig. It was a nice size and lasted us the whole time in there. 

  I spent every day searching for huts and drawing them. There were two days when it poured with rain but I managed to work inside and painted a small oil painting of the rifle and a couple of lanterns above the open fire.

Journey's End

  It was a novel experience walking to all the huts and ticking them off on our map as we found them. Usually we walk five hours between huts, here we only had to walk five minutes in the bush until someone would sing out 'I've found another one here!'  They were quite well hidden and we meet a number of people who come regularly to the valley and had no idea where all the huts were. Fortunately we had a map with all the huts marked on it which proved very helpful and by the end of the trip was in three pieces.

   It was fun meeting people in some of the huts. During the week we saw no one but come the weekend there were people everywhere!

Tahara Hut

  There were a few very cute and unique dunnys. And some very unusual huts:

Waikapai Hut

Drawing Kiwi Hut

   A couple of the huts had some sort of paintings on the walls, this one, Riverside Hut, had beautiful murals painted on the outside walls. It made something special and different out of an otherwise plain hut.

Xanadu Hut dunny

   All the huts are locked of course except Bane Iti and Hebron. Hebron Hut we spent a long time looking for scrambling through ferns and supple jack until we finally found the remains of an A-frame hut slowly falling apart with age.

   While I worked the guys drank tea...and slept... Well, not all of the time I guess. Guillaume did a lot of wood cutting climbed a mountain or two and did some school work he'd brought. Jerusalem went hunting all the time until he shot the pig, then he spent the last week cooking it.

   This is the bridge at the beginning of the track out of the valley which is only a 1.5 hour walk.

    I really enjoyed it and felt my first earthquake! I was sitting on a big log one morning in front of a hut painting when suddenly the whole thing began to wobble and shake. That evening I heard on the radio (yes we had a radio in our hut!!) that there had been an earthquake in the area. Overall it was a very relaxing trip.Or should have been. At first I felt like I had a lot of time to do all the drawing I wanted to get done but as the days passed I realized I could spend months painting in that valley and still have more I'd want to do. I wanted to do some landscapes as well as huts, but only had time for a small watercolour of the river.

  But I still managed to get lots more drawing done than I usually would on a trip that long since there was less time walking and more for drawing. I have gathered enough material to do some nice larger paintings and a large drawing which I have already visualized in my head. In my next post I will share some of my paintings and sketches from the trip.

Equine Fine Art Newsletter

 I sent out my newsletter last month, it covers both January and February as I missed the first month of the year!

 Equine Fine Art Newsletter 

Charcoal sketch after John Singer Sargent's 'In the Garden'

Different kinds of success

   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.