This Week in the Studio

   This was my painting at the beginning of the week. It is a painting of Blue Range Hut in the Tararuas. It's one of my pieces for the Art of a Hut exhibition at the end of this year. All I have to go by is my drawing and a rather bad photo from an entirely different angle which has only been helpful to see how the moss grows on trees so far. It is quite a challenge painting almost entirely from my head. It is still far from finished and this is how it looks today, Friday.

   I haven't been working full time on it so there is still a lot more to do on it. I will finish it this week. I have also been doing a lot of drawing. This is the longest drawing from this week, a portrait of Marion on which I spent about six hours.

  And while I have not been at the easel or the drawing board I have been shooting arrows from my bow (also losing them!) and working my way through the huge amount of content on the Art Renewal Center website. I'm enjoying learning a lot about Art History and discovering amazing artists I never knew existed before. The site has many high res images of some great paintings so it's a great place to view art if you are like me living in the uncivilized north of New Zealand. I dream of going to see the great master paintings in Europe and America. We do have some pretty good work here too, but I don't often have the opportunity to see it. Besides NZ is still mostly in the Dark Ages of Modern Art!

  And to end with here is a drawing which I finished months ago but never photographed until today. I never see it but I think of Thoreau's Walden which I was listening to while I drew this.

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.