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.