Realism and Russian fudge

I have taken a brief foray into realism / illustration thanks to Youtube videos by Nia - another talented watercolour artist with wonderful drawing and painting skills that I feebly copy. And get cross. I slow the videos down to half speed and pause frequently ... but even then there are things I just can't do. Kind of fun but kind of frustrating. I did the yarn balls.

And the ice cream van.

I am currently half way through a view from a window that is NOT going well. I know intellectually you just have to push through but I might give up, it's not looking good. I did a hedgehog with a bee from a Diane Antone video ... I don't think I can really call this realism but it is an identifiable object!! surely that counts.

After enjoying my sister's signature Russian fudge in NZ I got the recipe and tried it for myself ... there was a lot of swearing, I think sweets are hard. I even used a thermometer but it just didn't look right so I boiled it for a couple more minutes and then of course it set in the bowl while I was beating it. But I bashed it into the tin, chopped it up and it tasted AMAZING. I do not think there is anything russian about it but NZers know what I am talking about.

Flowers

My walk on Sunday took me through the rose gardens and they are looking very beautiful. The roses in our garden are pretty good too - but not a patch on the public ones. It's late for roses but the weather has been so cold and wet it is not really surprising. 

The walk was very windy and I took a shortcut to avoid the long exposed stretch by the lakefront. I do not need a mouthful of brown mucky lake water. Pam, scary beaches in Australia are the ones with waves that knock you off your feet and rips that drag you out to sea - it is hard to tell from a photo but that beach had plenty of them! I do not trust a beach at all, especially the suspiciously flat patches, which have currents that can drown you quick as you like ... Uck. But much better to walk along than dodgy coffee-coloured artificial lakes.

Anyway I took inspiration from these flowers and drew another bouquet on the new bamboo paper I bought in NZ. It's lovely - I can't really tell the difference from ordinary cotton paper except it is a little smoother. This picture wasn't a very wet wash one, so perhaps I will try that next time and see how it holds up.

This is a different take on flowers - the background is a wet wash with salt for the white kind of bits. Then draw the flowers in marker pen and basically colour it in from there! I do like colouring-in, it is very soothing after a hard day of work. Even the drawing is quite meditative, although there is no botanical accuracy in those flowers. 

Even more beach

I had a second beach weekend in a row and went down with my husband ... and the cat. We are trying to get her adjusted to travelling as a kitten to make it easier in the future and we think it's working? maybe? She did angry meowing for the first half hour on the way down, before settling, and it only took about fifteen minutes on the way back up before she was resigned to her fate. So if we keep doing it she should be perfectly chill in the future. Maybe. We don't really know how cats' brains work. Once she was there she was perfectly relaxed and happy. 

I had another lovely swim on Saturday but Sunday was rainy. We went down to a beach a bit to the south to explore - there are about half a dozen houses at the end of a dirt road and one is for sale. We'd never been to the area so thought it was worth a look. It's lovely but the beach is too scary to swim at, which defeats the purpose in my mind. Wonderful view though.

We walked down and went along the beach. Beautiful... but I'm not leaping in there. Especially not on my own.

Number one had an exam so it was probably good we were out of the house - more time to study. Or panic, whatever comes. I didn't do any sewing or anything useful, just read books and sat about. I took another photo of the cat because she is so pretty.

More flower paintings

Here are some more Diane Antone flower paintings of quite different styles. First up a 'loose bouquet'. Description is accurate!

Secondly pen over background wash; this is where you make a background of various colours with a very watery wash, then tip salt over it and leave it to dry. Actually you 'sprinkle' salt over it, much more ladylike. Then you have a good look at the different colours, how they have mingled, what effect the salt has had, then draw flowers and leaves accordingly. And add a bit more paint (or pencil, or anything!) to demarcate the various flowers and put in some leaves, and outline with the pen. I don't know if I love it but the background is super fun to do.

Lastly we have a wreath collection of more autumnal tones - I played with almost all of the Kuretake paints for this one - they make a good dark. And there's a really nice deep greenish blue that makes lovely purples and browns. 

The wreath is on new paper that I bought in NZ - just a standard UK brand but I haven't seen it in Canberra shops so I thought I'd try something new. It's only 200 gsm rather than the 300 gsm I usually use but lovely .. a bit smoother than the Arches and a brighter white. Paper is fun :)

First swim

I made it back to the beach and had the first swim of the season! Normally I would be a bit tougher and just swim every month; but the clouds and rain we've been having has made that extremely unattractive ... this weekend was sunny at last. Not exactly warm, but warm enough for me to leap into the water. It was just lovely to splash about again. The water temperature should be bitingly cold at this time of year, but it wasn't, which is probably suspiciously awful climate change. At least everything is looking beautifully green with all the rain.

Here is the beach at twilight. I'm not sure the photo captures it but it was very soft colours, very pretty. Other than the swim I made a top which was a disaster so stopped sewing, pre-washed some of the mountain of fabric I bought in NZ (I went overboard in the fabric shops, oh well), and read some books. 

Most stressfully, there was a snake on the path over the dunes that I use - it was sunning itself on the black plastic stuff - of course this is the path I merrily wander along in bare feet or jandals at the most. I about had a heart attack because even though Australia is RIFE with venomous snakes you don't see them out and about very often. For the rest of the weekend I stomped heavily along the middle of the path with my eyes PEELED.

Back into it

It's been a busy week - I've moved into another job within my same organisation - similar work to what I've done in the past but each area has its own unique quirks! I think I'm going to enjoy these quirks, it is interesting subject matter. But there is a learning curve, and my brain isn't quite as flexible as perhaps it once was. Or maybe it's my personality that's the problem (curmudgeonly).

This is a thing I did before I went to NZ - covered over my fabric shelves with corflute attached to the shelving, and now I'm using it as a display wall. There's a double benefit in that it covers up my fabric which was getting dusty and also sun-faded on the edges, and gives me somewhere to put my pictures! Or my favourite pictures, the crappy ones get put in the cupboard. They are definitely easier to store than quilts.

These are all more Diane Antone tutorials/copies - pen and watercolour. I like the wall, and being able to see what I've done. I still don't think I'm getting any better - I think I understand more about shape and colour, but it's not reflected in the quality of the pictures themselves. And like all these things they look better en masse than individually. 

These birds are ink with gold pen details. My birds are still very peculiar shapes. The flowers are outlined with the dip pen, that gives a wide/narrow element to the lines. And because you can really only draw in one direction with a nib, there's a swoosh to the lines that is quite different to using marker pens. 

These flowers are very simple, and very broad brush (literally), but I like them.