Gales and snow and brrr...

The words the weather forecasters are using for the weather in Dunedin are 'raw' and bitter'. It is because of the gale force winds. Yesterday there was snow - this pic from the Otago Daily Times. Today it is just bleak as you can see on the city center webcam.

New guidelines stipulate that new housing must have double glazing and proper insulation. About time too.

Ring Cycle Jewellery

I finished the jewellery workshop yesterday. I worked in copper with gold leaf and based my work on Wagner's music.

Raum/Zeit (Musical notes in Copper)

Hojotoho!

The eyes have it

Part of my art school project: 'self portrait with Ta Moko' .I learned how to paint the eyes by looking at paintings in a recent exhibition of portraits of women at the Dunedin Art Gallery.

Snow

Well we didn't have to wait until evening. A storm blew through a minute ago and covered my south window.

I can see big snow clouds billowing to the west so it must be snowing hard in inland Otago. There is a hint of yellow on the horizon which would mean hail if we were in Sydney. Maybe a hail storm is on the way.
The windows of the buggy are snowbound too. The running water on the window distorted the picture.

Winter

Winter has arrived. This morning it snowed and now it is blowing, sleeping, raining and generally horrible. Even the hardy locals are looking cold. The ski resorts will be happy - they had no snow at all in May and now they will be deluged. They say snow is expected to sea level this evening so perhaps we will wake to a white Dunedin.

Art School

The art school is housed in an old school on the edge of Otago University Campus. This is the lunch area - photo taken in summer. Behind the blue windows is the painting workshop.

A restraining hand

Here is the child with candle image again - this time with a restraining hand.

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.

A tray with knife and fork

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

Child with candle

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

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.

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?

Yellow undercoat

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

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.

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).

Prison A-Frame

Another photo from the Dunedin Prison series. Both photography series are now online.

Dunedin Farmers Market

A Farmers Market is held in Dunedin every Saturday morning. Its a great place to buy organic vegetables, organic meat (which I have not seen in supermarkets here), German type bread, good Italian espresso coffee. Today there was a fellow selling beer made to German purity standards - so I got a pack of 4 bottles.



This piper was piping for pennies - I had not seen him there before. He sounded just like the piper in Frome.

Glorious Flowers

Are these not the most glorious flowers?
A birthday gift from Alison.

The historical Hocken

We are back at school today after a 2 weeks break, beavering away in the photo lab.

The Hocken Library is a specialist research library which collects items of historical and cultural interest to New Zealand. This photo is a montage - the arches are from the courthouse. I am sure there are lots of historical documents pertaining to the courts in the Hocken Library.