Snow paintings finished

Back here, I showed you work in progress on some snow paintings. The idea of painting the lights, colours and shadows that sit in and under snow came to me after seeing news reports about avalanches in the South Island here in NZ. The finished works are mutli-layered: blue, mauve, purple etc then transparent layers of white, more colour, more white, more colour, more white…

The four are now finished, strung, signed etc and off to a busy Auckland hair salon for a time. It’s all about keeping my work out there, making sure people see it and see my name. You can read what Alyson at ArtBizBlog says about getting your art of of the studio here.  

 Here’s the first of them, I’ll save the erst for later in the week when my art room is quiet. This one, titled “Glacial”, is 12×16″ on W&N deep edge canvas.

Crusade #33 – back to school

Michelle’s challenge over at the GPP Street Team this month is to learn something new, either in or out of the studio – you can read all about it here. I decided this month I would learn to let go of the results a bit more, and just enjoy the process. In the spirit of going back to school I have been reading about the creative process, about play, and about some new cutting-edge techniques – trying to make my objective an active on. Some of the books I have dipped into have included Nita Leland’s “The new creative artist“, Nancy Reyner’s “Acrylic revolution” and Lisa Cyr’s “Art revolution“.  

Moving on from reading, I have been playing with looser backgrounds as beginnings to works, collage, enhancing digitally then printing and working further on paper. In the image shown here I photographed a chook in amongst some weeds, made a loose background with texture, collaged the photo on, added some old watercolour painting strips on top, scanned and enhanced digitally. Is it a masterpiece? Not at all. Did I let go off the results and just learn through play? Yes.

Thanks Michelle – my “back to school” lesson was one I needed to start (re)learning.

Play time at my desk

It’s good to just fiddle round with supplies sometimes, just getting a feel for your materials, and seeing what pops into your head. At the weekend this popped into my head, and then out onto heavy watercolour paper.  The base is washes of thin acrylic over gel medium, some acrylic on rubber stamps, more gel medium, then collaged images, more paint and some stencilling. Did I learn anything from doing it? Perhaps not, but it felt good – and isn’t that half the point of making art?

Back to mapping the land

Over the last few months I have been looking at Aboriginal Art, especially works which map the land using an aerial perspective. It fascinates me, but it turns out I find it quite hard to do; the traditional Western viewpoint is so strongly ingrained. You can see my original post about this here, and some unsuccessful attempts here.  

Yesterday I was having a ‘play’ day – just spending time with paint, stamps, glue etc. I did some mono-prints, some mixed-media collage, a little scrapbooking. A bit of this and a bit of that. I sifted through a few books on my shelf, including some that show the land from above.

After I had relaxed a bit I pulled out some heavier weight watercolour paper and did some monoprints using a bonded plastic bag I had saved from something-or-other. I started just casually working on top of the monoprint. And there it was – the first attempt at aerial mapping that starts to approach what I had in mind. It feels like I have broken through an unseen barrier.

Graffiti it – NZ Art Guild challenge

The current NZ Art Guild Challenge is graffiti. Given the recent awful graffiti on my work place I was keen to try this one, and make it more about art, less about vandalism.

Title: Cath was here, 2009

Size: 21x30cm on Art Spectrum Colourfix paper

Medium: Background – acrylic, inks, rubber stamps, stencils, pastel. ‘Cath was here, 2009’ added digitally.

Inspiration: I have had the start of the background sitting round for two years, knowing one day I would use it. I have added another couple of layers to it today, then scanned and added ‘Cath was here’ in Photoshop.

Working on the snow WIPs

My goal for today is to get another layer or two – or more – onto the snow WIPs I showed a few posts back now. I’ll be dripping splashing and brushing on thin layers of Anthraquinone blue, Permanent violet dark and Payne’s gray. Once that’s dry I’ll do a couple of very thin layers of Zinc white. Then back to the shadow colours. So my only paints today ar Golden Fluid Acrylics – what’s the bet I run out of Zinc white 😉

Old house – latest Art Guild challenge

You might remember that a few posts back I showed you the reference photo for the latest NZ Art Guild Challenge. At the time, I was sure it was the colours that would inspire me – and I was right. I tackled the subject twice today; once in acrylics and once with ink, oil pastels, soft pastels and acrylics. Neither are an accurate representation of the image and in one I have moved windows, resized some parts, generally messed with it a bit. In the second I was thinkng mainly about colour blocks, the Impressionists, ghosts (don’t ask!) and light.

For me the NZ Art Guild challenges are a great opportunity to tackle a subject, style or material/s I might not normally go for; a chance to have a creative play with no real pressure. So here are my two most recent entries: