Pastel Portrait

I am not very experienced with pastels or portraits so went to a 3 hour class recently with a photo I took of this old woman when I was in the islands east of Lombok, Indonesia.  I really enjoyed working in pastels and finished this last week.  I think she has a lovely expression on her face.

Old Indonesian woman

What I've been doing

Nearly a month has passed since my last post and the weather has changed from winter to spring. The daffodils have finished their flowering, the hellebores and polyanthus continue to flower and the bluebells are coming up. 

 The beautiful Floriade Festival has just begun in Canberra - I must make time to visit ... it has over a million blooms and is the only known free one in the world.

I've been busy trying to restore my front garden which was partly destroyed when the electricity authority dug a 10 metre trench to fix their high voltage cable which just happened to be under my driveway.  They were supposed to  restore it ..... but we all know how this never really is done to the standard we want.  I have planted some small native plants which I hope will be OK when I am overseas for 7 weeks soon.

I have been experimenting with abstract painting each fortnight when I paint with a group of artists who did courses with me in the last two years. This is much harder than I expected.  This is one which someone said looks a bit like a map of Europe! It is mainly acrylic but with some collaged paper and board.

I entered six paintings into the ASOC (Artists Society of Canberra) Spring Exhibition just over a week ago.  Some were my Greek ones and I also included a couple of watercolours I did some time ago but had never exhibited. Here they are here - I was just learning to paint with watercolours. 

Flowers - collage mixed media painting

I haven't posted for a while as I have been laid low with the flu.  I made this painting a little while ago and it's been in an exhibition at the Strathnairn Arts Centre in Canberra.  It is only 30cm square on a  stretched canvas.  I got the idea from Cloth, Paper, Scissors website and really loved scrunching up tissue paper and gluing it with other fancy papers before adding paint and varnish.  The texture really stands out.  Magenta is not a colour I usually use but I quite like it - gives a happy look.

Rosie & Daisy

Rosie & Daisy, a photo by banksias on Flickr.

Was looking through the many photos of my two lovely Lhasa Apsos and couldn't resist posting this one even though it was taken a long time ago when I was making a wall hanging and had lots of wool in baskets.  Then below is a more recent one - Daisy on the right is the cheeky one.

Recent large painting

It has been ages since I added anything to this blog but I have finally finished this large acrylic painting I did in the final weeks of Michael Winter's classes this semester.  He insisted we get two canvases 700 x 1000 and screw them together to make one large canvas so we could work more freely.  I have been learning Aperture photo-editing software recently and today managed to get rid of the crack between the two canvases.

We were asked to get a photograph of a landscape "looking down" and I thought of this one I took several years ago when taking a hot air balloon ride in autumn.  It is the same tiny photo on the right of this blog. The photo was a jumping off point to paint a picture with everything having a soft misty look like the early work of  Max Meldrum and Clarice Beckett but I insisted on making the balloons sharp and I'm quite pleased with the result.  The sand adds to the texture but wrecks the brushes!

As I have some large paintings around I have decided to change some of the pictures on my walls and this one is now hung.  Some smaller prints have been given away to freecyclers.

Macro Photography

I always like photographing closeup.  Here are a few photos of mainly native Australian flowers I have taken when using film and then scanning.    I still have a wonderful Minolta 100mm macro lens that I loved but I can no longer use it with digital.  As I find the weight of SLR and lenses more than I can easily carry as I'm getting older, I am only using compact cameras and having more trouble getting the really close images that I want. But I will persevere as I know that depth of field with a compact small sensor is actually better than with SLRs.



These 2 photos are of Correa Manii, one of my favourites.

Banksia

Callistemon

To learn more about digital macro I did a one day course recently and photographed weeds closeup along an old river bed - amazing how beautiful the rejects of plants can be!

Stained glass picture and National Museum painting

I am soon taking part in an exhibition of art inspired by last year's trip to the Greek islands of Leros, Patmos and Lipsos.  Several gouache paintings from this were placed on this blog last year, but I decided to do one in glass.  The theme is houses in Lipsos.  The picture is meant to be hung in a window.  I've added two photos of this glass piece - one taken on a light table and one hanging on my deck.  The latter of course shows the trees coming through the largely transparent glass.  I love working in glass, but this was quite a hard project since there were so many small pieces of glass to handle.  All were wrapped in copper foil and soldered in the Tiffany style.



 





This acrylic painting was another one done in the style of Jeffrey Smart.  Although taken from a photograph of mine of part of the National Museum in Canberra, I have changed some aspects to make it more surreal.

Top 50 Tapestry Blogs

I've recently been notified that my blog has  been added to "Sewn Together by a Thread: Top 50 Tapestry Blogs".  I am really pleased by this, especially as I am not doing as much tapestry this year and therefore don't have much to display.   For those interested in looking up these blogs the link is http://www.liberalartsdegree.com/sewn-together-by-a-thread-top-50-tapestry-blogs/  Many of them are excellent.

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.

Photo Reference for Palette Knife Painting

I was asked to post this photo which was the original idea for the bark painting.  Maybe the outline shape reflects the painting but I changed colours and even shapes in many places.  I always end up doing this.

Palette Knife Painting

I have done very little work with a palette knife, and I really enjoyed painting this big painting using one. The canvas is 1000 x 700mm.  It was a challenge for many of us in my art class as we had our easels set up.   I interpreted the photo I began with quite widely as I love to do, adding colours that were more in my mind than in the photo.  The background on the left had fine sand stuck on it in places and then the acrylic paint used like watercolour to create a different kind of finer texture.

Art, monoprint, my garden and cockatoo

It's been a while since I have posted anything - busy, busy with a range of things - but here are a few pictures I like.

Cliff in the Grampians

This acrylic painting began with a photograph of a landscape and became a semiabstracted one. I was especially interested in shapes, lines. The colours, except for the green, were close on the colour wheel.  I'm doing an art class with Michael Winters again this semester and it's called 'Landscape - one step further' to get away from making realistic paintings and putting ones emotions into the painting.

 


Monoprint
I made this print using soluble wax crayons (Caran d'Arche) to draw the picture onto a piece of polypropylene, then printing on a piece of Arches watercolour paper 185gsm soaked in water for 30 minutes



Sulphur crested cockatoo
These large Australian birds love the seeds on my pistache tree.  For the last 2 weeks they have been stripping the tree of seeds and also breaking off branches which is very annoying. They are easy to photograph as they are quite unafraid of people quite close by.



Colombines in my garden

Back garden in summer

This summer has been unusually wet so everything looks so green

Back deck in summer

Printmaking

I attended an ASOC (Artists Society of Canberra) Summer School two weeks ago and studied printmaking with Jo Hollier.  A week learning new techniques and ways of working and building on  previous skills was an excellent experience.  We all chose our own subjects and this meant a great variety in the prints we made.  Some  prints were done entirely by hand, and others made by putting through a press.  We made monoprints, linocut prints, woodblock prints, drypoint etching and collagraphs.  Usually it is very hot and the paper dries out too quickly (which we sometimes need to use damp) but this time it was so cool and wet we had trouble drying the shellac on the collagraph plates so we could make prints.


Here are some photos of our classroom and our displays on the last day.

Some of my work on display on the last day linocuts, woodblock prints, collagraphs and monoprints. (Three were from a previous workshop)

Linocut prints - mine is the large one on the right - Eucalyptus Caesia flowers

Other students work on display

Drypoint etching of my two dogs Rosie & Daisy

Landscape Abstraction

The photo of Tasmanian forests was made many years ago by the late Peter Dombrovskis.  It was part of a calendar and I used it for inspiration to try painting an abstraction of landscape.  In a couple of weeks I will be starting a painting class again with Michael Winters - called "Landscape - one step further" which will be looking at abstraction to some extent.

Is This Me? Tapestry Weaving Challenge

Each year the AuNZ Tapestry Group have a challenge to weave and exhibit in both Australia and New Zealand.  "Is this me?" or self-portraits was the 2010 challenge and this is the link to Flickr where they are all displayed.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/41841907@N04/

"Tapestry Blues", the challenge from 2009 is also here.

Tapestry Weaving finished at last

At last I have finished weaving this tapestry, the largest I have done for my Tapestry Diploma course.  Is about 46cm wide and 86cm tall.  It is based on a part of an abstract collage I did earlier this year.  This is the first time I have used mixed thread for the whole work but basically it is a colour study.  Mostly woven with 2ply wool, but with a little mohair added to achieve the colours and textures I wanted.  I also used some synthetic yarn and some small beads (hard to see) are added to the centres of the dark shapes.  Many of the colours are hatched into each other and I should have done more of this in the earlier part at the bottom but I was just feeling my way then.  Sewing up vertical slits is not my favourite task but I had some quite long slits to sew as I went.

I have 5cm hems turned under at top and bottom and sewn securely.  I have also sewn velcro to the hem at the top and attached an aluminium batten with velcro stuck on to it for mounting.  There is a slight shadow line across the photo near the top but this does not show on the actual tapestry.

I really enjoyed the experience of playing with colours and choosing ones to go together in the bobbins I used to weave with. 

Tapestry Weaving Progress

Large Tapestry
It has been a month since my last post but in that time I have been weaving most days trying to complete tapestry weaving assignments for my TAFE diploma.  Here is a picture of progress of the large tapestry which I begun some time ago.  I have nearly finished then have to do a hem and mount it with a batten and velcro to hang.  It has been a lot of fun mixing coloured threads in the bobbins to create effects.  But I can't say I like the rolling warp I had to use as it's not possible to get an overall view of the design as I'm working.



Tapestry Technical Sampler (below)

The title says it all - learning to weave straight lines, curves, outlines and points. It was remarkably hard to do (woven from the side) and is not perfect. But then tapestry weaving is a long process to learn - I'm into my 5th year of the course!

Tapestry Sampler for Commission (below)

Another assignment was to do a commission for someone's home. I used a friend of mine and she was interested in tree bark patterns for the wall space in her home. This is a sampler to scale of a photograph I took ages ago of snow gum bark when it is very red and green.

This is the original photograph of the snow bark and the sampler was done accross part of the top right section. I interpreted it fairly widely although the colours are actually a little closer than they seem here on the screen.

Tapestry Weaving

I have been quiet on the tapestry front for a while but nevertheless have been busy doing lots of assignments for my Diploma course.  I am doing a large tapestry as my final assignment for this year and it is so... slow.  I thought I would put this image of it in progress. As I am using a rolling warp, part of it has been rolled under.  It is 46cm wide and will be 86cm long excluding the hem.  This image shows about the halfway mark.

This is an abstract based originally on a collage of old paintings of mine. But I have had fun playing with colours and mixed thread in a wide interpretation.   It's easy to see I love colour!

Pastel Painting

I haven't used pastels for years but decided to try a painting of an old Greek man I photographed on the seafront on the Greek island of Leros last June.  The skin colour looks too red here but he was weather beaten anyway.

More paintings & photos

This is a painting in gouache of a door in a town on the Greek Island of Leros. I especialy liked the little bit of lace  hanging in the window.

This is a gouache painting of restored flour mills on the Greek Island of Leros

This is spring in my back garden with the prunus in flowers above the BBQ made of convict bricks. 
These were obtained years ago from an old demolition site in Sydney.

I couldn't resist another photo of my dogs asleep in their winter knitted jumpers.