Sicily April 2016

This was a trip I did with others from my art group.  I had seen other parts of Italy and had always wanted to go to Sicily where Val and I were headed in 1973 but unfortunately were robbed and had to return to Rome to get a passport.

We briefly stayed in Catania after our flight before joining the small group in Ortegia (part of  Syracuse) on the Art Incontro trip.   We stayed in apartments and spent a lot of time sightseeing, visiting galleries & museums and doing printmaking - lino, woodcut and collagraph.  And some small artists' books.

I made some slideshows of my photos and decided to try and put them on my blog but soon found I had to first put them on You Tube.  So you can see them there or on this blog.  I posted the first two a few days ago and here is the larger of the three slideshows which I have saved as a video.

Slideshows of Abu Dhabi and Oman travels in April 2016

This is my first attempt to post my slideshows on You Tube and then to this blog.  It has taken a lot of trial and error but I think I have got it to work.  Watch them in fullscreen (little square with arrows) as the images are too small as set out here.

Abu Dhabi  was only a  night and day stopover mainly to see the huge mosque and carpet. There were three of us on our way to Sicily - Ann, Robyn and me.

Oman was a five day trip on the way home from Sicily where Ann and I spent nearly three weeks doing art and sightseeing.  We met an American woman at our first hotel and shared a rental car with her to see some of the country, especially the sand dunes which were stunning.

 

Linocuts

Last week I finished printing these linocuts so thought I'd put them here before I try and think of some new printmaking ideas tomorrow.

This colour linocut was modelled on an old photo of a Queensland sunset in the outback.

These two were just a design based on sunlight when I was having fun cutting lino.

More Pastel Paintings

I've been back a few weeks from my trip to Sicily and Oman but am not sure if I can post the slideshows I have made of my photos.  I will try later.

I'm now looking at some of the art I did earlier this year and am posting it here.  This pastel called "The dog walker" is based on a colour slide I took twenty years ago during the annual Floriade festival we have in Canberra.   The camera was set on a slow shutter speed to blur the moving person and dog and I've always liked it.



 I did the next two pastels in a weekend workshop by Louise Corke with a concentration on light and composition.

One painting is a landscape with trees in the foreground and background;  the other is from a photo I took several years ago of the citadel of Carcassonne in France.









I just finished this pastel of an old tree trying to use a cross-hatching technique in hard pastels to begin it - then scumble in soft pastels. I'm not sure how it has worked.