Brooch For Sale

I went into The Craftsman yesterday to finalize arrangements for painting there on the 24th September. Just as well I did as they had sold one of my pendants- a blue butterfly painted on paua. I have taken three cat brooches in as well so hope someone gets carried away with some early Christmas shopping.

Finished another brooch which I have posted for sale on my website. Need to get down to putting more work up there as people are thinking gifts even at this time of the year.

The Shearing Shed

Have been finishing up some spinning for The Shearing Shed at Waitomo. Used to work for Heather a few years ago before 9/11 slowed down the tourist trade in NZ and she laid off all her outworkers. However I still had some of her angora and yarn left so she asked me recently to finish it up and send it along. I also decided to make her a gift and painted one of her beautiful German Angora rabbits on a pendant.

The Shearing Shed is situated on Waitomo Caves Road and is a great tourist attraction as each day a few of Heather's 350 angora rabbits are brought down to the shop and shorn of their coats to the great amusement of overseas visitors. Yarn and high quality knitting featuring her angora fibre are also available for sale. Heather has always been extremely helpful with advice concerning my own angora rabbits which I am grateful for.

Date For Festival Confirmed

Suffering from a headcold this week- winter's last little gift before it ends later this week. Haven't felt like doing much else but reading in the sun.

Last week the date for my day at The Craftsman was confirmed. I will be painting there on the 24th September 2006 between 11am and 2.00pm which is the last day of the Hawkes Bay Spring Festival. For further information Bob and Maureen can be contacted at 169 Gloucester Street, Taradale, Napier Ph.06-844-7514.

I took some of my small paintings into The Flying Pig Gallery in Napier to see if the owner could give me a better idea about pricing them. She suggested selling them in sets may be a better option, the tiger head one in particular she felt would be good in an endangered species series. Anyway I have repriced all my recent paintings and they're for sale on Passion For Paint.

Mask

One exercise for my course was face casting with plaster bandages before making a plaster of paris positive and then a papier mache mask from this. Here is my mask: it is as I envisaged it although I'm not sure if I like it or not.

Bummed Out

Heard Thursday that not one of my paintings sold at The Affordable Art Show last weekend. What's worse is that no one said they saw my work there at all. Very disappointed.

Paint Effects

Still no word as to whether I sold any of my three paintings at The Affordable Art Show in Wellington last week but by all reports (including an article in The Dominion) it was a record breaker with 9,000 people attending.

I have been making cat brooches for the Otane venture plus I've finally uploaded images of some paint effects I have undertaken as part of my course. My favourite was ragrolling where I basecoated an old manilla folder with several layers of deep purple before rolling gold paint over the top.



The second was marbling or a faux marble paint effect. This was achieved by basecoating in white then laying in pale grey streaks with acrylic gloss medium several times. The last layer I added some darker veins in Payne's Grey before blending with a fan brush. I know you're meant to use a feather but my cats have eaten my feather collection and short of denuding my chickens' rear ends I will have to remain featherless until the big moult late next summer.



The third effect was Lapis Lazuli where I used two different shades of blue then a little white before flicking gold over the picture. Not sure how accurate it is but it looks pretty!

New Projects

Finally finished a jewellery order for someone in the US and this should be sent out next week. Also have been contacted by someone I met at the Creative Fibre Festival in Taradale this year who is opening up a shop in Otane, Central Hawkes Bay in early August and she has asked me to supply her with anything I have so I need to get painting. Unfortunately my thumb is still pretty raw where my house rabbit Muggles bit it on Sunday so I'm not able to do much.

Also The Affordable Art Show begins tomorrow (3 August 2006) and I just found a page with all the exhibiting artists. I'm number 811.

Paintings For Sale

I haven't been able to update my blog for over a week as the bad weather put my phone out and Telecom didn't feel it necessary to repair the lines for seven days. Yes I am pretty annoyed.

Anyway I decided to bit the bullet and put one of my miniature paintings up on Ebay. It's the small Tiger Head that I sent to the Original Art Sale. The rest of my paintings are for sale on Passion For Paint.

Otherwise I have been continuing to enjoy working with charcoal in my diploma course. This first sketch was a warm up exercise. I have had her propped up on the piano in my sitting room all week as I do with much of my work.



The second sketch was an exercise where we had to draw a grid and then distort it to follow the contours of a face before drawing the face in behind. This worked better than I hoped.

Bunny Book

Have had a traumatic couple of days due to someone trashing my car. It amazes me the morons who populate this world.

However onto more pleasant subjects I received a book from Australia yesterday afternoon. Last year a rabbit breeder rang me to ask if I would read the manuscript of a book she was writing. I agreed to do this and she mailed a CD over which I spent a few days reading. I had no hesitation recommending it as a great guide for rabbit owners. Christine must be so thrilled that it's published!



What was particularly thrilling was that she had included my recommendation in the front of the book along with those from a couple of vets, a couple of Aussie rabbit breeders and my friend Pauline Taylor, Vice President of the RCNZ. I hope it sells well for her.

Strike out

I got "the call" yesterday from The Original Art Sale in Auckland to say that not one of my paintings sold! All four were on display on Saturday and I saw a photo of two of them Sunday so had assumed that at least two had sold but no such luck. Fortunately or unfortunately depending on what way you look at it many other people didn't sell anything either.

Fortunately I have commissions to work on at the moment so the blow to my confidence is not a terminal one!

Selection

June 30 was the final day to find out whether or not you'd been accepted for The Affordable Art Show and I still hadn't heard. I emailed the organizer late Friday and within a half hour had a reply to say that I had been selected but the letter must have gone astray so she was sending another copy. I had been having major doubts before this as I had heard that 1200 artists had applied but only 700 were going to be accepted so I'm thrilled.

Anyway despite the show not being on till early August all art work has to be couriered down next week so have to get my three paintings packaged up ready to go. All in all I will have seven works out in shows so fingers crossed that something sells.

I am back completing jewelry orders now and also have a painting to complete for a US buyer so need to get onto that in the holiday break which begins tomorrow.

Two Ladies

I have been unable to post the last few days due to naughty house rabbit eating through my telephone extension lead forcing me off-line. However I used the time to write a couple of articles for my websites and to get on with my painting.

These are two examples of an exercise I did for my course. Firstly you wet the paper and then dropped Indian ink into the water to make interesting patterns. After they dry (which took all day!) you draw a face from a magazine in charcoal and white pastel incorporating the marks made by the ink. The actually drawing only took me twenty minutes in each case. This blonde to me looks ethereal like a water sprite.

The second face is of a NZ actress dressed in oriental fashion. She is not conventionally pretty but has a strong face and interesting features. With that thick neck she must be a Taurean! I think this exercise could be done in colour also with watercolours substituting for the ink. It's interesting how thinking outside the square can achieve some fascinating results.

Two Miniatures

Last couple of days I have been putting the final touches to a couple more entries for The Original Art Show. I didn't manage to complete the ten they said I could send due to ill health but hopefully the four I'm sending will allow me to test the waters before entering again next year.

I have embarked on another series of patchwork paintings but this time I'm using rabbits as the feature. This is Patchwork Rabbit No 1 (not too imaginative a title but at least it's descriptive). I decided to go with a Dutch bunny as I felt it's dramatic coat would stand out well on the patchwork. Of course the background took longer than the rabbit!

I decided to hedge my bets and paint a popular image that might appeal to the males in the audience. I enjoy painting tigers anyway as their coat is so beautiful. This painting is on gallery wrapped canvas and is 4x4" as is the rabbit one.

I still haven't heard back from the Affordable Art Show as to whether my four submissions have been accepted which is frustrating so I decided to send one of these up to TOAS instead (the one I didn't think they'd want). So now I am couriering Patchwork Rabbit No 1, Tiger Head, Whimsical Calico Cat and Patchwork Cat No 2 up to Auckland this morning.

Now I have got these away I can get back to completing my orders. I have been fortunate that the commissioners were patient and agreed to wait for me to complete my exhibition paintings before I began on their work.

Sketches

I am having to keep a visual diary for the first time EVER. It's hard to think of what to include in it so have been doing preliminary sketches for paintings I'm working on.

This is a drawing for a 4x4" acrylic painting I'm doing of a tiger. Tigers are always popular with men for some reason. Perhaps they represent power? I know two people born in the Year of the Tiger and both are strong characters although they allow others to influence their decisions. Being a poor old wood snake I'm meant to avoid them as tigers "destroy" us. Must be true as I have to admit I have had some hairy moments with them!

This is a pendant I made a while back but the diary also shows the image I used to work from. I love monarch butterflies and it's interesting that their colours are the same as the tiger's. Of course in the butterfly's case it is protection against predators rather than camouflage but it doesn't work when it comes to my cats unfortunately. I spend a lot of time rescuing them from being batted around the garden by frisky felines.


This is a sketch of my cat Piper asleep on my bed. Piper usually never allows me to photograph her deformed tail but she had no idea what I was doing so I was able to reproduce her stump in all its glory. Poor girl has a face only a mother could love and since one visitor commented that she was "pig ugly" she now hides when people come calling. I think she has an interesting face plus she has lovely tawny eyes but the coat is a nightmare to replicate.


On the same page I was working on a sketch of my ginger girl Peaches but the light ran out before I finished and I haven't been able to encourage her to resume the same pose. Peaches was just about to nod off in this drawing. She is a beautiful girl with soulful "Puss In Boots" eyes.

Feedback

I have been working hard on a couple of small paintings to send to The Original Art Show next week. In the meantime I have received feedback on the first assignment in my art course. The tutor was really encouraging and said she wondered who these teachers were that said I could not draw humans as I obviously could. I am much more hopeful now that I will get some positive help in developing different areas of my work. I am still happy with the two last exercises I did in that assignment- the black picture in particular was quite challenging as I only included the highlights on the woman's face.

Exercises

Been a busy week as I put out a newsletter for the Ehlers Danlos Foundation of New Zealand. I remember the first one I did in 1996 which only went to twenty households. Now I am putting out over 150 three times a year. Just addressing the envelopes alone takes two and a half hours.

I have also been working on exercises for my art course. Have times when I feel really happy and others when I think I'm completely useless! Having to work so quickly is proving challenging as I don't have time to obsess over detail and also working in different styles is proving a challenge.

There are three exercises I found interesting. Firstly painting without a brush but with items found about the house. I used bubblewrap, cloth, sticks, a palette knife, crumpled up paper etc. When it came to complete an entire painting I chose the view from my front window but without the road running through it. I was meant to take only half an hour on this piece but ended up spending an hour. The painting is A3 size which means it won't fit on my scanner but this view shows the left side of the landscape.

The right side of the painting shows another few poplars and the view across the fields. The sky was done with a rag dipped straight into paint, the tree trunks were with the side of corrugated cardboard, the grass was done with carded wool (merino gives a soft effect) and the poplar leaves were finished with cotton wool. The colours have been distorted with scanning as the grass was much more green.

This yellow girl was another colour exercise designed to break down the tones in a picture. Using only two colours we were to paint a portrait from a magazine with the dark colour representing the shadows and the lighter colour the highlights. She looks a bit jaundiced but at least still resembles a human being.



Finally in drawing we did a few pictures with torn up photocopies which we drew in all their distorted glory. I made a photocopy of a photo from a real estate brochure and then tore it up and rearranged it so that although the landscape still looked faintly realistic it also looked a bit "off". Unfortunately the scanner cut off the right side of the drawing but this really only included a few shrubs and cows in the foreground.

Today I begin colour theory which is something I'm looking forward to and hopefully I will have time to do some of my own painting this afternoon.

Busy

It's been a busy week for me so I haven't had much time to write. Firstly completed my first folio of assignments for The Learning Connexion. These were an eye opener as I am not used to working so loosely or fast so some of the results were startling. However I did complete two portraits that I wasn't totally ashamed of.

Also have submitted photos of four small cat paintings to The Affordable Art Show to be held in Wellington later this year. I haven't entered this show before but I have heard great things regarding it's organization etc. Won't hear if my paintings have been accepted until the end of June.

Also have two orders (both from the US) for a pop painting of Elvis plus jewellery to complete before the end of June.

Perceptions

I spent over three and a half hours yesterday drawing and painting. The exercises I have been doing in my Foundation level course with the Learning Connexion have proved quite nerve wracking as I am having to work much more loosely than usual PLUS drawing human beings which I have always been told I cannot do (by art teachers at High School). I spent some time on an exercise where I had to draw a charcoal portrait from a photocopy but with the photo upside down. This meant that I was looking at the face as a series of abstract shapes rather than as a person. What was weird is that it worked and I ended up with a slightly plumper version of the photocopy woman. I was thrilled and have the drawing propped up on my piano.

It's amazing how our perceptions of what we can do can be so severely marked by negative comments. How many people have given up art because some well meaning teacher in primary school told them they had no talent? When you think about it all children draw the same until their teens but then something happens to stop them pursuing art. I am sure this is negativity from their "betters". I think you need to have faith in your abilities so that it doesn't matter what others say you still have that burning passion to follow your dreams. It doesn't matter that we're not all going to be a Michelangelo or Monet. It's important that you find joy in what you do.

Searching through the blogs the other day for a mention of the Creative Fibre Festival I came across a blog from a knitter who attended. Lo and behold there was a shot over the trades hall and I was able to see Irene and I down in our stand to the middle left (with the two tables running diagonally). I am sitting with my head down painting and you can just see my two angora scarves stretched across the wall behind me. Beverley has been kind enough to say that I can republish her photo on this blog. This shot was taken in one of the quiet times- usually the aisles were full of people.

Down Town

I finished the order I got from the Creative Fibre Festival and dropped it off this morning. The lady is happy with it which is the main thing. I am enjoying painting on paua for a change and think I might try some more monarch butterfly paintings as they look so striking. Also dropped into The Flying Pig to buy some more white paint and cartridge paper. I could go happily mad in there buying supplies.

Yesterday I had a call from Creative Hastings Gallery to say that the only have two donkey cards left from the ten I took in a month ago. Asked me to bring more in which is great news. I had intended to drop some cat ones there next week anyway. No time to paint today but at least I have done some art related tasks.

Back to school

Since I graduated from the NZIBS I have been much more confident in approaching editors with articles and other writing so thought perhaps I could do the same with my artwork. To this end I have enrolled with the Learning Connexion for their Arts and Creativity Diploma (Honours). Received a box full of supplies, a large portfolio case to send work in and a whole range of DVDs with the lessons on them. Unfortunately I found that the player on my computer would not play them so ended up going into town on one of the wettest days on record to buy a DVD player. Fortunately they're only half the price they used to be. My TV is so old and small (it was my mother's spare one) it didn't have all the plugs needed to run the machine so my brother patiently hooked the player up through the video and it's all working perfectly now.

It has been overwhelming looking at all the work I need to complete in this course and I feel that I may be pushed out of my comfort zone- especially working large and boldly when I am used to small and detailed. However I hope to learn many new techniques that I can use in my art.

I also have a phenomenal amount of work to complete for the Original Art Show plus work for selection for The Affordable Art Show has to be submitted in two weeks. I wish I had more on hand but I need to jump into these shows this year so will submit what I can and try and have more completed by this time next year. It's a shame they don't make 30 hour days......

Yesterday a friend sent me a box of CDs that she didn't want (I only had ten of my own- many of them gifts) so I am listening to Marilyn Monroe singing her biggest movie tunes as I write this. I have to have music in the background when I'm working otherwise I get distracted by the sounds coming from outside.