Kuretake paints

I bought a completely unnecessary set of 36 Kuretake watercolour paints - but gee they’re nice. They can be used as normal watercolour with lots of water but are thick enough to have almost a gouache effect if you don’t use much water. And the gold is LOVELY. I was having a tiresome day at work and weakened for online shopping. This is absolutely my weakness - distraction at work! When I retire I will be much richer. 

Part of the charm is the box, talk about marketing genius, they suggest the first thing you should do is fill in the colour chart on the inside of the box. Brilliant - because obviously all you want to do is try out ALL the colours - and they make it sound like you are doing a sensible and useful thing! And give you a series of little boxes to colour in! Honestly painting in those 36 boxes was one of the happiest half hours I had this week. 

I also got a watercolour brush that has the water in the handle. I thought I was buying one but it turned out it was three of different sizes, and that’s fine too. The instructions are in Japanese but I figured it out. I thought that it would be like a normal brush, just not dipping it into the water, but it’s not, it’s quite different. You use the paint dark at first then brush it out with the wet brush. I think it will be very useful but might take some time to get used to. 

I thought it would be good for roses (dark in the middle, lighter at the outside) so practised with a sheet of flowers. 

And then, when I was downstairs, the avocado-shaped assassin jumped up on my desk and flicked out half a dozen watercolour pans, one by one, off the desk and onto the carpet. Why???? Vengeance????? Now I have to leave the lid on the box. Monster.

Labour Day weekend

We had a long weekend so of course I headed down to the beach for a slightly longer than usual getaway. It was the middle of the school holidays so heaps of people around - it is always such a shock after the emptiness of winter. Saturday it rained but Sunday and Monday were beautiful days with lots of keen beans in the water. Not me, I thought about it but went for a long walk and didn't take my sweatshirt off - a cold breeze. I did paddle though. Water is absolutely freezing.

Here is a log that had floated up. Massive thing, and covered in tiny little shellfish. Every dog and child under the age of about seven was absolutely fascinated, and would bury it in sand that would get washed off in the next tide. I haven't seen anything like it. I wonder how long it was in the water for? Does it take years to get covered in little shells or is it something that happens in a few days?

I made three pairs of very boring elastic-waisted trousers of varying lengths and widths; made a zucchini bake on Friday night that I ate for three dinners; read an excellent science fiction book; poked around the shops in Mogo and bought nothing I didn't need (amazing) and gave the place a good scrub when I left.  We shifted to daylight savings time too, which is always a bit disconcerting for the first few days. 

The new chair pads I bought from Ikea are manifestly way too small for the cane dining chairs. However the old ones have basically squashed out of existence by now - they are literally 3mm thick - so the new ones are more comfortable even though they only cover two thirds of the butt space. I swapped them over and if anyone objects they can swap them back, and I will keep an eye out for large butt chair pads. Not as easy as you might think. 

Whimsical things

Still painting along with Diane, stranger things now, blobs of watercolour and pen lines. She says you can make bookmarks and greeting cards, which I don't want to do, so now I have paintings of strange sheep.

Cats on a branch. The pen lines aren't meant to be the same as the paint lines, it's intentional. And artistic. The sheep are on the cheaper (but still 100% cotton) paper that I don't really like, it's too slippery. I found that Officeworks has 100% cotton paper in its house brand which is also cheap (well, cheaper than Arches, so not cheap at all) and better than the slippery paper. I quite like trialling paper but there's a wild variation in quality, even with the same ingredients. 

Cats covered in mystical symbols. This is why I'm buying more marker pens, including gold ones and white ones. 

Blobby birds. Diane does a lot of birds, and she's very good at them, but I haven't quite got the shape and the shade right. There are places on birds that are meant to be darker than others and I'm not exactly nailing it. But they look like birds, and not giraffes, so we're halfway there. 

Diane Antone

So I have found a watercolour artist who does Youtube videos and has a website, and does almost daily painting demonstrations that you can paint along with .. and she is really resonating with me! The emphasis is on loose things that are fun to do. I like that. She is clearly talented and very experienced, and I am finding the approach and attitude extremely refreshing. Not to mention the dogs, chickens, cats and sheep that occasionally wander into the videos.

This was the first one I did, when I was dissatisfied with some flowers, so did about five Youtube videos in a row of different ways of painting watercolour flowers. Most of them were not so great, but I did love this, it appeals to me. 

Next we did a dragonfly. Diane likes to use mixed media, which I also like :) A bit of pencil or marker pen or watercolour pencil can pep things up no end. And put some splatter over it all, why not.

And some not-found-in-nature birds. 

Another vase of flowers. None of these are particularly good but I feel like they are using all the potential of watercolour, in a way that I hadn't been lately. I spend about an hour and a half doing one of these paintings and it makes me happy! 

Sick

Good thing I did yesterday's post a day early to go up automatically - on Wednesday I was totally out for the count with another nasty migraine. I haven't had one for ages now that I'm getting much better at avoiding triggers - onions mostly, but also some chocolate, some chemicals and possibly too much sugar - but something set me off and I had a bad one. Ended up taking codeine which I don't like doing but it is remarkably effective at putting me to sleep! And then like a zombie for the next 24 hours, but that's better than vomiting and pain. I did have a little snooze buddy though. Very helpful.

Thursday was very quiet - a public holiday for the queen. I'm not sure what everyone was meant to do, I went for a walk to get some fresh air and then lay down again :) There was a minute's silence at one point but not sure when and they had to cancel the flypast because the weather was quite bad. So now back at work for a day and then a weekend again. I am quite confused by which day it is, and still a bit dopey, so yeah, all good.

Abstract art

Jenny from the good classes has a Pinterest page where she puts various boards of things that might interest students - including one that is 'ideas for complete beginners' - and it is full of excellent things to inspire. Or copy, as the case may be. One of the paintings there that quite intrigued me was by Shell Rummel, who is a Californian artist/designer that does abstract things. I do not know about abstract things so I googled, then straight copied a few of her works to see what was involved.

Tonal colours, some unexpected bits, outlined in fine liner pen. Much more complicated than it looks originally, and somehow manages to suggest something landscape-like. Kind of.

This is a tree I copied where I experimented with different types of outlining, which is why it looks a bit scrappy. I tried charcoal pencil, felt tip pens, coloured pencils, watercolour pencils, thicker and thinner marker pens. Anything coloured that isn't exactly the right tone feels a bit rough with this type of painting. It either has to be black or the perfect colour, which is hard with a 12 pack of textas from Officeworks. 

I did a couple of other copies that weren't particularly successful, and then went off-books and invented my own landscape. Not 100% what I was after, the colours are a bit crude and don't fit together properly. But all of it was very fun to do, and not able to be rushed, so it took quite a long time. Meditative, which is nice. I don't think I'm fully committed to abstract work, but I'm pleased I took a little detour.

Paddling in water

Much more satisfying to dip your toes into water than try and capture it in Winsor & Newton Prussian Blue. Although I think the creek would need quite a lot of Aureolin and possibly some Cobalt. Isn't it lovely? And the sand was very white on the weekend.

My husband came down with me which was an unusual bonus - I didn't sew but read a book, ate ice cream and watched the footy finals. An absolute one point nail biter for one of the AFL semi finals but the NRL was a washout for the Canberra team. I pay absolutely no attention to any football during the season but I can happily watch a final if there is alcohol and nothing else to do. 

Sunday was a big warm windy sky. Rain on the way, which hit by the time we got home. Slightly too much wind for swimming, but I possibly could have, if I dodged between the fisherfolk. No, they weren't catching anything. It was the middle of the afternoon and there's not that much of a gutter. 

We walked back around to the old house where we used to rent before we bought our place - they've put on a new roof, a deck at the front and re-painted it, which is a bit shocking after twenty years of complete neglect! But it doesn't look they re-stumped, so still a bouncy floor and a suspicious soft spot near the bathroom. Good times.