This is really about what you do when you can't do anything complex. I have just been putting colours on the page.
I quite like them, they look like fuzzy blankets.
It is not at all difficult to do. So I did a number.
I think they are pretty. Some colours work better than others.
I have not been challenging myself on the art front for a couple of months now ... it's just been splashing a bit of paint on as a distraction at the end of the day. Which is absolutely fine. It usually ends up as flowers.
Lots of flowers.
Although one set of large blobby birds.
And some chickens.
I bought an expensive (for me) Baohong cotton sketchbook somewhere and it's been sitting on the shelf waiting for an important occasion or for my skills to improve. Which isn't going to happen, so I used it the way the people on Youtube say you're meant to use sketchbooks - to test ideas, develop a theme, practice things and generally just chill. It was great to do and it's all in one spot now so I can flick back through it. The pages are about A5 size so not huge, but enough to do some mucking about. I started with an internet reference photo and did various ideas of leaves.
Played about with white pen on watercolour background for a while (there are half a dozen variants not shown! It was all a bit the same).
Moved on to marigolds, or possibly flowers that look like marigolds. And from there to flowers generally for a bit.
Foray into fruits and vegetables was next.
Many pages were really just mark-making.
I bought some new Kuretake Gansai Tambe graphite colours in Melbourne so played with them for a bit.
And finished with a fiesta of watercolour washes - creepy trees, looming mist and ghostly figures. With varying degrees of success.
I went to the January meet-up of the urban sketchers on Sunday - big turn-out of nearly 30 people, which is a lot for us. There's a short pedestrian street in the middle of town that has just been refurbished so we went there to see what we could see.
Definitely more onlookers and bystanders around than we usually have. All fairly interested and asking questions, which is kind of nice. I cannot imagine a situation where I would be comfortable sitting on my own drawing on a busy street but once you're in a group? No problems at all.
As usual there were all sorts of different takes on the scene and levels of talent. I wanted to include people because my people are AWFUL so I need the practice ... they look like humans but I clearly need to work on it more. Mostly I wanted to capture how very green the street was, which I did! The two hours just flew by, I didn't go for lunch afterwards this time as I had boxes to pack, but it was a lovely morning.
November's urban sketchers meet-up was down at the Mawson shops - a suburban shopping centre that has a lot of middle eastern grocers, some cafes and an excellent fruit and veg shop. It also has seats, a fountain and enough nooks and crannies to sit and sketch without getting in anyone's way ... dodgy 70s design.
I ignored all of that stuff and did a phone box. I wanted to capture the sheer agressive pinkness of these free / wifi phone boxes - they are really bright. And graffitied. It was an interesting exercise to get the lines down right and then squelch the colour on.
That didn't take two hours so I went back to the fruit and veg market and tried to something completely without lines - not really my style usually - so I put all the colour down first then arranged the more architectural things around it. Not wonderful but it does what I wanted it to do.
As usual there were many wonderful variants as people see wildly different things and then record them in wildly different ways. And, in other departures from normal practice, I went out to lunch with the group afterwards! I joined in on something! SO proud of myself. It was really nice, they are a relaxed chatty group.
Then I went home and turned out the linen cupboard (we have way too many quilts). The cat helped.
Between being sick and travelling I haven't had much stamina for anything difficult or time-consuming on the art front. So I've been doing lots of doodles or splotches or copies that make me happy enough to be moving paint around, but don't require too much thought.
This was using a palette knife on watercolour. Very much something I would never have thought to do, but surprisingly cool. A palette knife is very unwieldy with watercolour and you get unexpected results.
I did these just because I know they will work. And the colours are pretty.
A Brian Huntress head.
And a Gary Fredericks person. My people look more like people when they are wildly wrongly proportioned than when I try and be accurate. Why is that?
Negative watercolour painting is where you put a light wash down, then a darker one, painting around the shapes you want to keep light, then a darker one again, painting around more shapes ... and on and on until you have all the layers. It involves pre-planning and precision brush control, not my strengths. But the good lessons required negative painting of fish, so away I went.
I am quite pleased with the result, although my fish may not have the correct fins, as is normal.
I gave it another go with trees, which didn't work quite so well. I think I should probably have painted the trees and not left them so pale, it looks odd.
I gave up on negative painting and did some cupcakes to make me feel better. They were very simple and are pretty. Also a furry blurry cat.
After the excitement of the north it was a quiet weekend back at home. I spent Saturday sitting quietly (although I did get a haircut - sick of it blowing in my face!) and then on Sunday I went and joined the Urban Sketchers meetup again. This time it was at Parliament House, which was a bit like a work day for some of us, but we met in the gardens which are always beautiful.
I decided I'd do the beehives. There were lots of long vistas and big buildings and gorgeous landscapes ... all of which frighten me and none of which I think I can do successfully. I felt like tackling something a lot smaller. The only problem with the beehives was you can't get too close for obvious reasons, so I took a few photos and just zoomed in when I felt I needed more detail.
I am unusually pleased with the finished result, although I did use a lot of artistic license in the layout. I felt like just using pen rather than trying to capture the landscape (dull gum-tree brown mostly) but it was a bit boring so I added in the bees! Completely wrong species of course, I think they are more bumble bees, but fun to do and got the point across.
Here is the group throw-down of all the sketches, some are absolutely amazing. Everyone is so supportive though, no matter what people do, I really like it.
I'm still continuing with the good lessons - intermediate - with mixed results. This is a pen and wash, which is OK but not great - my proportions are all wrong. The watercolour effect in the wet street is OK but otherwise it's lacking depth and interest. In my opinion.
I am more pleased with my peaches. This is the third version, the first one wasn't good at all, the second one was better but I hadn't got the colour quite right. I think this is peach colour.
One of his birthday presents was a fancy schmancy loaf tin - made in France, weighs a ton and has a lid for humidity and extra crunch. This is the absolute first experiment and it was delicious! I expect many tasty delights ahead.
I am white-knuckling my way through Level 4 of the good lessons with Jenny. She still gives you plenty of guidance but there's no warm up exercises or taking it slow - every lesson is a painting that you have to plan and then paint your way through, somehow. The first one was flowers on a soft background - there are a couple of dodgy bits that I'm not happy with but generally it turned out OK. I painted this twice but prefer the first one for all its flaws.
The second one was 'old boots' which I struggled with from beginning to end - drawing, getting the colour right, getting the 'crumpled' look ... it looked like an absolute pile of crap until the very end and I nearly threw it away and started again about five times. But you have to paint through the well-known 'ugly stage', and so I did, and I really like the result. Still some issues but it actually looks like boots. Most surprising.
