Wednesday, May 30, 2007

Sunset


Dunedin has great sunrises and sunsets. This sunset was taken out of my living room window.

Yesterday the sunrise was stunning - but I didn't have my camera. When I got into town people were standing out on the street in front of the cafe where I have my coffee and looking upwards.

Wednesday, May 23, 2007

A tray with knife and fork

Another work from my painting class. Yes, the knife and fork are there, if you look hard.

Monday, May 21, 2007

Child with candle


This is the finished 'child with candle' painting with yellow undercoat. The beginning of this painting is below.

Sunday, May 20, 2007

Cultural integration


Coming back to NZ has confronted me with some identity issues . I am exploring them in a painting - which is still in the first stages. There has been a vigorous discussion on the appropriation of Maori symbols over the last 20 years. Now tattoos have become fashionable but some use them without knowing their meaning. In a recent American example, the macho figure in a computer animated game had a Maori tattoo - but the animators had used a female tattoo design!

All grist to the mill.

Saturday, May 19, 2007

Sunshine

Nice weather from top to bottom of NZ. This is the view from my dining room window. Just to the right of the washing line, tucked away behind the building is an apple tree that no one seems to love. I had noticed it earlier in the year but had forgotten it. Yesterday I rediscovered it with lots of apples on the ground. Apples are cooking on the stove as I write. I cooked some yesterday too and they are delicious.


In the living room-cum-studio paintings are propped against the walls. The sun is pouring through the windows and you can see half an easel ( see post below).

Friday is our life drawing class - we have been drawing on black paper (never my preference) for these last 4 weeks and yesterday we used oil sticks as well as charcoal. The model had a fabulous floppy straw hat.

Everyone gets a bargain



I bought an easel this morning from ... where everyone gets a bargain. The box was too big to fit in the car so I had to unpack it. Just as well, as I found that the box had an easel in, but the wrong one. Either the factory made a mistake or some struggling artist had taken the more expensive one away in a box with the less expansive bar code on it. So I exchanged my box and now I have it home and am puzzling about how to put the bits together. Where do the springs fit?

Friday, May 18, 2007

Yellow undercoat


For my painting project I decided to try different coloured undercoats. This is the beginning of my picture using a yellow undercoat.

Saturday, May 12, 2007

Tints

Here is the same image painted using tints of red, blue and orange. Right side is cool, left side is warm. These are the sort of studies you always think you should do but never actually do. I am finding it a good way to learn to mix acrylics.

Monday, May 07, 2007

Blue, yellow and orange

Art school is much more time consuming than I expected but that's fine by me. Suddenly I have a reason to read art history, something I never did before.

I am now in the painting workshop and we are doing colour studies - as many as we can manage.
This is a study using two primary colours ( red and blue) and one secondary (orange).

Tuesday, May 01, 2007