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