June In September

I've just looked at the calendar and realised how long it is since I posted. The past few weeks have just flown by in a blur. The Otane Painters' Exhibition in Hastings was well attended and favourably remarked upon. Unfortunately due to the depressed economic climate only one painting sold during the two weeks and surprisingly it was my "Patchwork Rabbit No 1". Gine helped pack up the paintings last Saturday and collected my three unsold works for me.

In the meantime I was frantically trying to finish my entry for the Pukeora Festival Exhibition which was due in last Monday. In desperation I positioned the easel in front of the sofa and settled in for the long haul on Sunday, staying up till 1.30am. I managed to grab two hours sleep before falling out of bed to spend another hour painting. The bad news is that I was out of film for my camera so didn't manage a photo although I did get two fuzzy scans of the painting and just need to work out how to merge them together to get one cohesive image.


My marathon painting session did not do good things to my body as I spent two days crawling around in a state of complete exhaustion. By Wednesday however I was feeling much better and able to enjoy portraiture at Otane. Our model June had long hair caught up in a bun which proved great fun to sketch. I did a couple of heavy graphite drawings which I brought home and covered with linseed oil to get the dark effects you see here. Even where the oil has soaked into the paper there are interesting effects which I think add to the spontonaity of the image.