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.

Linocuts

Recently I made three different linocuts of trees with sinuous branches and then printed them one on top of the other in different colours.  I think I need to do some more with different colours and a different order as there are so many variations that can be made.  It is a fun thing to do.

Painting showing colour of Fauves

It has been a long time since I posted on this blog as I have been overseas in Scotland and England for 2 months, seeing the Scottish Isles and renting a car to visit many friends in England.

I am now settling back into the routine of printmaking and painting each week.  This large painting (100x70cm) on stretched canvas is painted in acrylic.  I have composed it to reflect the style of the three artists we studied in last semester -  Andre Derain's amazing colour, Dorrit Black's hills with shading, and a little bit of scribble from Michael Shannon.

I intend to put it on my wall after giving others on the walls a rest - no room for any extra paintings.  My walls are full!

Painting of a dead tree in the bush

I have just finished this painting today.    It is fairly large on canvas and the idea was to paint it in the style of Michael Shannon, an Australian painter whose work is generally loose, often begun with scribble.  Most of the foliage was put on with a sponge.  A palette knife was used for some white areas.  It was finished with glazing to delineate the warm and cool areas.

Pointillism Painting Process

Pointillism is a technique of neo-Impressionist painting using tiny dots of various pure colours, which become blended in the viewer's eye. It was developed by Seurat with the aim of producing a greater degree of luminosity and brilliance of color.  My idea began with this photograph taken near Adaminaby in the Snowy Mountains, NSW.  It was an assignment set in my art class by Michael Winters.
 

I then made a collage (A2 size) from the photograph using tiny torn up pieces of advertising junk mail.  It took many hours to do and was an interpretation especially as junk mail colours were not always what one wanted.
 

Finally I made this acrylic pointillist painting approximately the same size as the collage on a stretched canvas.  The background was first painted with Cadmium Red to warm up the painting.  I then used small brushes, both round and square to make the marks.  I had spots before the eyes!  But looked at from a distance the blending does take place and the colours enhanced.

Bark of the snow gum tree

These photographs were taken as slides several years ago when I was staying at the ski resort of Charlottes Pass in the Snowy Mountains.  This was summer and some of us rose very early and walked in the mountains to an area where we knew these snow gums were displaying their beautiful colours for the season.  As the sun rose the water on the trees increased the saturation of the colours.  I still love these shots and scanned them.