Boring boring boring

If you happen to be following my blog, I'm very sorry that it has been so boring. I haven't updated it since September! The year has gotten away from me and I have a massive list of 'things to do' on my plate right now, and sadly this blog is way down the list.
I finished my year with Mary at Archibalds too...we have a class exhibition coming up but I really dont feel I have finished anything to the point where I can sell it. I only managed to paint at art class - whereas I really need to paint on a regular basis to both get better and to finish stuff.
Quite frustrating really considering that once I start painting I just LOVE it...get in the zone and find my bliss, zen, whatever you call it.
Life keeps getting in the way.
Anyway, I should at least manage to post photos of my last few classes of work so I will get on to that hopefully in the next week or two.

Bill Martin

I found this site on the internet and am finding it very insightful. It helps me understand what Mary has been on about. I like it and now I can't wait to have a go. Pity I am at work and not home in my studio!

Yellow Art Awards

Had a great idea this morning for my next Yellow Art awards so went on site to find out when Wellington is closing and discovered they are no longer going to run the programme . Not only that but the charity auction I was supposed to be invited to as a 'finalist' has been and gone. I feel a bit miffed. Especially as it was the last opportunity to attend the auction.
Oh well. It is awesome to have been a finalist at least once in the 20 years that the programme has been running.
I'll have to use my idea for another purpose!

From dark to light

Struggling with oil painting. I missed two art classes because I was sick (worst case of flu I have had in a long time - I think it might have been swine flu). So I took my canvas of Seth to work on and spent the night trying to paint the fabric around him...disaster. Mary insists that we work from dark to light. Painting in the darkest bits first, then the mid tones then the light. I couldn't get my head around this and attempted instead to do a light background then work my shadows and shades into it. It just didnt work. I should have listened. Now I need to wait til this layer dries then start again.
Mary's parting comment was that I am a 'good drawer' (nice to hear) but I need to work on the painting side of things. Next term she is going to dedicate a class to painting fabric. I will listen carefully this time and follow her advice.
In the meantime if anyone can enlighten me on tips for oil painting and explain the dark to light theory, that would be great:-)

MAFPAR

The other night while I was painting with a palette knife and likening it to icing a cake, I began thinking about ‘painting’ a series of cupcakes using the pallet knife and was chatting to some women at work about the idea.
One of them was out buying cards and found this one which made her think of me. She bought the card for me which was very sweet of her (scuse the pun).

This got me thinking today about my cupcake idea a bit more and about one of the big questions in life, ‘what is art?’
I have felt pressure in the past, to consider art as something that is not necessarily nice to look at, that has to have significant meaning and must evoke an emotional response. i.e., true art is a visual depiction of personal expression.
And a true artist is someone whose primary purpose in life is to produce true art, the need to do so taking priority before people, places, things and even personal needs.
These ideas always conflicted with the idea of art being decorative and my preference for decorative reasons behind any other for owning art.
At home I own many pieces of art, many by people I know. Most of these were done by my Dad. Dad, like me, loves to paint. Most of his pictures have been of scenery from photos of places he has visited. Since retiring, he has been ‘challenged’ to seek other subject matter and techniques but his primary love is scenery.
Knowing the person behind an artwork makes a piece particularly meaningful to me but none of the works on my walls would be there if I didn’t love the aesthetics of them. At some point between those pressure filled days, and now, I have come to believe that the answer to the ‘what is art’ question is, ‘whatever you consider to be art’. And an artist is someone who considers themselves as an artist.
There is no definitive answer and there is no right or wrong opinion. Such is what makes art so arty.
So considering my cupcake idea, I have coined the term ‘Meaningless Art For Purely Aesthetic Reasons’ (MAFPAR). I think that creating a series of meaningless art of cupcakes will be fun and will (hopefully) look wonderful. I can see these palette knife creations in my head - scrumptious I am thinking. Tangible thick smears of deliciously smooth, velvet, hues of paint to represent sweet succulent icing. I can see them on my wall and reproduced for the world at large on sale on my website
But is it art?
Yes, of course it is art.
Because I say it is art, there for it is.

Monotone from a pallet knife

This week it was fruit time and we literally painted over the scraped off vegetable painting last week. I chose red this week as my hue, mixing black and white in first to create a mauve then adding black for the shade or white for the tints. The twist was that once we sketched the image in charcoal we used ONLY the pallet knife to apply the paint. I loved this technique. I might explore it further. It was kind of like icing the canvas instead of painting it. Might have a go at 'pallet knifing' a picture of cakes and cupcakes. Could be fun.

Alla-Prima

We were given one hour to complete a monochrome painting 'alla-prima' (at first). Wet on wet, one session. Apparently Van Gough painted his master pieces Alla-Prima and since there was no layering, his paintings never cracked and still look freshly painted today! This was the first painting I had done since my painting of Seth and I didn't much like the end result. I thought that the background was too dark or maybe the rest of it wasnt dark enough. I had a go at lightening the background (that being easier and quicker than trying to darken up everything else) but wasn't sorry when Mary instructed us to make a print of it onto some newsprint and then scrape off the excess paint with our spatulars, thereby rendering the canvas scraped enough to use again next week when we will be painting a fruit.

Week 1 of 3rd term

I missed the last week of last term but planned to work on my painting and get it finished. Well it turned out I never touched it which worries me - is this going to be another thing I'll get round to some day but never do?
Anyway, I was enjoying not having art class, or should I say, having some nights in when I got a phone call from Archibalds to see if I was coming back and to tell me what to bring and I realised that YES I definately wanted to go back to class.
Yeah, so anyway, off I went tonight and LOVED it. Totally need to sort out some music, put it on and just do art. Once I get set up and started I just love it.
Tonight we had to bring along a small canvas and a vegetable. I bought a capsicum, it being the only thing interesting I had in the cupboard.

Term finished but painting isn't

I missed my last art class for the term in favour of catching up with my brother who was on a flyby visit home from Australia. This means little Seth didn't get finished not that I think I would have finished in one night.
My task now is to get myself sorted to paint outside of art class. I just need to put the beautiful music on, get the paints out and go for it.

The wee fella emerges

Another night of painting and more of Seth emerges. I have applied the paint thin and used too much medium (so Mary tells me) so this is going to be an 'under painting' meaning that once I lose all the orange bits, I start again with the serious and final layer. Still not feeling confident but can see that I just need to keep plugging away at it.
Did I mention that I am rediscovering that wonderful place called the zone - in a room of people creating with music playing and before I know it, an hour has gone by! The other night I had a 'flying' dream (where I can actually fly in the sky - so real and exhilarating). Haven't had them since my happy days at Polytech!

Hail back to 1997

1997 was a very cool year for me. I had left the ugly greasy world of sales behind and went to art school. This was something I wrote about my year at art school:
Art school validated me. I found my people. I was immersed in art, around art and doing art. I was free and life was good. This was the year I had glorious dreams of flying - the most liberating exhilarating feeling in the whole world. I would fly to see my sister in Christchurch. I flew to London. I created an image of my flying in one of my art projects. Such was my bliss that year.
Glittering days, glittering memories. Artist friends and artist teachers. Weird and wonderful and interesting and warm and expressive, intelligent people. And I was one of them.
Cycling along the orchards in glittering sunshine to the workshops where days were spent with music playing, people in their zones, free for all food in the kitchen, craft, colour and design and clever pieces of brilliance were made each day.
Picnic lunches in the sun, admiring friends, passionate people.
Wineries and cafes, lunches and dinners, art galleries, pubs, poets, music and beauty everywhere in sparking, glittering Hawke's Bay.

Book cover

A friend at work asked me if I would design a book cover for her collection of poetry. I was honoured. Her brief was 'clean and quirky'. I based the theme on the title and there was surprisingly few back and forthing before we settled on the mantelpiece idea. Amidst trepidation that I couldn't produce anything she would like I managed to come up with this which we both liked. The collection was entered into a competition so I've yet to find out if she was successful in getting her works published.

Stretching our own canvas

One of my big regrets is that I never learnt how to stretch a canvas at EIT (they did that workshop after I left). So I was rapt to hear that Archibalds were running a workshop and signed up for it. The night cost $55 but for that we got one-on-one tutorage from Garth at Main Art who import all the bits and pieces and went home with our very own stretched canvas. Very informative evening. Who knew what a science there is in canvas and other painting mediums and stretcher bars and even the tools that go with the job! I got a good result so am planning to paint little Avian on this canvas next term (if I finish Seth this term).
I already have this photo lined up :-)

Blocking in the colour

Once I finished the outline I was a bit unsure what to do next so I started blocking in the colours. Mary seemed happy with this - I guess once I get the first thin coat of block colours down I can then go back over and take my time putting in the details like fabric folds and shading. Mary keeps on about going from dark to light but its a bit confusing. Just have to plug away and see what results.

Blanking out the canvas

The following week we used a complementary colour to the one we would be using as our main tone (eg, I was planning to do a blue or green background so orange would be the complementary - opposite on the colour wheel - colour). We then used another colour to draw in our outline drawing. I used a knitting needle to measure out the grids into the wet orange paint (made a helofa mess of the ruler!)
I also knocked my small bottle of medium onto the concrete floor and it smashed to pieces, wasting $14 and getting us all high on the fumes! Ha

willow charcoal

Our first task was to draw our subject in willow charcoal to get to know it. I have doted over this picture for the past 3 years so I knew it pretty well already. I was trying to cheat by using a kind of light grid when Mary showed us all how to legitimately grid our work. Ye ha. With the guidelines of small little rectangles to work within I managed to get the proportions right and was quite happy with the result. I put the blue in as per my idea of plain backgrounds and to define the outline of gorgeous little Sethypoo :-)

Finally - a subject we choose ourselves

I figured that if I was going to be working on one painting for the rest of the term, I would pick a subject I love. This is a photo of my grandson Seth, taken when he was just a few month's old by his mother on her cell phone. I just LOVE this photo so decided this is what I would paint.

Close up of the McIntyre copy

Sorry Peter

More icing

We did some more mixing of colours to get to know our paints. My initial thoughts were that this was a waste of time and paper but it’s a very therapeutic activity and I enjoyed the night :-)
I was also a little surprised that some students really didn't understand what we were doing and were doing random mixes in the hope that they got the right colour in the end. It showed me that all the 'non-art' years behind me probably in fact included a fair amount of practice and training as I find mixing colours second nature, almost instinctive. I can see a colour and generally know exactly what pigments and how much to get that colour.
Nice

First week of second term

This was our first week back and we had some new faces in class - Barry didn't join me this term. He really wants to do technical drawings and so the nature of this art class didn't suit.
To get us back in mode (since most of us don't get time to practice outside of class) we practiced drawing from a photocopy of one of Peter McIntyre's paintings. Once we had a bit of this, she got us to draw on each other's work - we rotated around each easel and worked away for 5 minutes or so before moving onto the next. It was kind of interesting and kind of frustrating but also liberating as we revealed that most of us were less worried about the end result so we were more relaxed.
The final result kind of looked good if you didn't look too closely!

Plain background

I wanted to do a plain background on my still life a bit like a painting I saw by Michael Smither. I couldn't find a copy of it online but this one is by Mark Olsen which is a similar concept.
Mary instead pursuaded me to use the greeny yellow leaves that I ripped out of a magazine as inspriation but I don't like the result. I have to decided now if I want to finish my first painting or paint the whole thing white and reuse the canvas. I didn't like the subject matter and would never put this up on the wall so I think that's my answer - I can keep the photos for prosperity!

Last week of term 1

Well my plan to regularly update this blog isn't panning out so well. At least I have been faithful in keeping up with my classes and taking photos.
In my last class of term 1 I managed to put some more tone into my painting of the bottles and jars but ran out of time to finish so this is the part I am most pleased with.

The under painting

This is where I am at. This is my ‘under painting’ which should be giving me some clear shadows and tones but it didn’t work out because I blended too much - under the florescent light I couldn’t see much shadow so the result is a fairly bad representation. I’ll be painting over it this week so hopefully I can get things looking a bit better.

Mixing paint is like mixing icing

We took a break from our still life this week and instead began mixing colours. First was black to white with 3 shades of grey in between. We then used these to make tonal shades of blue, red and yellow then green, orange and purple. Finally we practiced mixing the colours to accurately represent the still life.

Transferring onto canvas

Once our sketch was finished we lay it face down and scribbled some charcoal on the back then gently lay it charcoal side down onto our canvas and drew over the lines with a pen thereby transferring the image to the canvas. We then got some dryish paint (oils) on the tip of a brush and produced an outline.
We only used blue and red to fill in the shading and cover all the white canvas. The paint was quite dry.

Week 3 our final sketch

We came up with our final sketch. We measured along paint brush with one eye for distance relationships to get the dimentions right. Mary explained that it was good to start off being as accurate as we could to train our eyes to see the subject matter...from there we can move on with our personal interpretations. I got some parts totally wrong and had to overlay bits of paper to redraw them.

Week 2 sketching

We practiced warm up sketching...2 minutes with a thick black pen on news print to get a feel on the shapes and depths of the still life. The pen wasnt to leave the page. We also had a go at blind drawing where we looked only at the subject and not once at our drawing.

Week 2

From week two we began working on this still life. We conferred over a tea break and told Mary what medium we preferred to work in...ummm acrylics? Turns out Mary loves oils and would have everyone use them if she had her way. I was happy to try them out but Barry really wanted to use water colours. Mary gave us a list of the items we'd need. 10% discount from her shop...but man it adds up!

Week 1

This is week One. We chose two colours and painted sheets of newsprint then painted a grid and our initials in each square. We then were split into two groups and had to confer with each other to arrange all our pictures on the floor in an artistic way and present our installation to our audience (the other group). My feeling on this first day was ' wow, I'm actually doing it...i'm actually painting again'.

I'm free!

I am free! I have finally finished all my extra contract tedious I-hate-it work and have passed the test by declining further work when asked under duress. Is that the right word? It was a desperate plea from my old boss who is under pressure and who, I have just discovered, is about to run for council . Hard as it was I have to be strong so the answer was a pathetically apologetic NO.
So anyway enough of that, I am very excited to be going to an art class again. Mary Archibald is my tutor and hubby Barry has joined me for the ride. My plan was to post a picture of each week's achievement but the first term is almost over already so I'm going to post the whole term's class which was all pretty much focused on producing an accurate (as can be) still life for the purpose of learning to see what we are painting before moving on to more expressive stuff and personal preferences.

Happy New Year

We had a wonderful Christmas and New Years with family followed by some time at home getting sorted and tidying up all my stuff. Funny how much I hang out for a break from work yet seem quite ready for it when its time to come back.
My new grandson arrived on Saturday and he is perfect. I adore him already and gave him his first bath. Tom and family are all moving down this week to Wellington which is stressful for them but exciting at the same time. It means I will have a lot more time with my grandsons hopefully. Yah.
Creatively I have a table at home piled with sewing projects and another table piled with writing and business projects and five book cases in my studio - one is for stationery, one for books, one for business stuff, one for art and crafts and one for sewing. It feels good to be organised. I emailed Artisan and told them I definately would NOT be available for any more contract work so as soon as I finish off the two projects I am working on at the moment, that will be it.
I have so many ideas to work on and cant wait.