Eggs

Pastel on paper

A small part of our household goods arrived last week including my pastels, some paints, panels and paper. Great delight to be reunited with them, followed by a more than a little trepidation and procrastination. There is only so much alternative living (where you do the alternative rather than doing what you are supposed to be doing) you can do before you have to bite the bullet and get down to it.

Egg studies - to get my feet wet with colour. The deceptively simple shape of eggs provides complex possibilities for colour, shadows and light, reflections, warm and cool tones.

Shades of Autumn

Benefits of being stalled in Washington is getting to experience autumn for the first time in several years. Amazing colours everywhere (enhanced by great sunglasses!) - dark reds, dusky pinks, brilliant oranges, acid yellows, purples and many shades of green from lime to darkest evergreens.

Two Pairs

6" x 8", oil on canvas.
Today I did some colour studies. Single Japanese pear place on red, blue, green and yellow ground. I was aware that I got less and less loose with each one - maybe doing them all in one session was pushing it a little. It was really interesting to see the different colours that appear on the pear. The pear itself is a very pale creamy yellow and reflected the ground colours beautifully. The red was seriously in your face - nothing subtle going on here and the glow on the pear was brilliant. The blue fabric is a pale coeruleum pashmina with touches of pale lilac and paler turquoise and the pear shadow hues became much more subtle and soft. For the yellow I used a yellow top - quite a bright yellow - and the pear was almost camouflaged on it. The shadows seemed much darker though than they had on the blue. Finally for the green I used an olivey green sweater as my ground but in the light it became quite a golden colour and it seems like its only in the background that it shows as green. The shadows and lights were much cooler with only touches of warmth showing on the edges of the pear and at the stem. Interesting exercise and I learnt a lot. They look pretty cool all together too! I'm beginning to feel much more confident about moving the paint around the canvas and doing wet in wet. Another step forward!

New Year's Resolution 6 - Make notes of lessons learned.

Today was extremely chilly and there was frost on the ground - the first frost I have seen in years! All the locals were wrapped in their blanket/shawls and when my husband asked the driver why they wear blankets and not jackets, his response was that jackets are much more expensive at ................ $8.50 whereas a blanket/shawl costs only $3 or $4 and is much more useful because you can also wrap it around your head and across your mouth like a scarf as well as it covering your body and your hands. A jacket, however, only covers your arms and body. The soldiers guarding the road outside the Pakistani Parliament were dressed in greatcoats similar to the ones that used to be worn by British soldiers, their hands shoved deep in the pockets and then scarves wrapped around their heads, like a ladies headscarf, with their berets perched on top, kalashnikovs slung across their shoulders. Quite a picture.

One thing that is noticeable here is how few overweight people you see. They are also small. I am only 5' 5", very average for the western world, and here I am an amazon woman and tower over all but one person in my office!

Comfort Zone

Spent a few hours this morning putting on more colour on the chair - begin to feel it coming out of the grisaille now. I'm experiencing something quite strange here - the colours should be the same value as the grisaille - and when you get it right its like there is no colour because it just melts into the picture. And then stand back and bingo its coloured. Looking at this photo I'm not sure that the colour is quite accurate as the distant arm is not nearly such a warm orange IRL.

My Christmas present to myself came today - some books on painting. I am inspired!!! Lots of tips such as painting 2" x 3" colour studies, daily practices, and all sorts of wonderful colour advice. I am in heaven!

More Chair

More work on the chair today. A little scared of rushing it. I am still sure I am not putting enough paint on the canvas. I'm not sure about the warmth on the closest arm - it seems a little too warm - daylight check required.

This morning when I got to work I decided to spend the time that I normally surf the net before the day starts (we always get to work about 45 minutes early) walking around the football pitch to get some exercise. The sky was amazing and I took my time to analyse the colours. We had had a huge storm in the night and the remnants of the storm clouds lingered and were being stroked by the rising sun. Wonderful brilliant glowing oranges and yellow with deep violet clouds and the palest blue early motning skies. With each lap of the track the sky had changed. Spending half an hour on analysis made me realise how incredibly quickly light changes at that time of day. After my 30 minutes my cheeks were glowing and my nose,ears and fingers were frozen and I was ready to crawl back into a cosy bed and not at all like going to work.

Colour on "Comfort Zone"

I worked on the chair tonight - I don't know what came over me but I looked at it as it leant against the window and my palette was freshly loaded and lo and behold colour has been put on the canvas! I'm pretty sure that I am not putting enough paint on the canvas but at least I am over my fear of working on this. Having spent so many months on the grisaille the terror of ruining it was seriously hampering any advances on this piece. I've become very philosophical about it though. I've decided to face this project as a learning curve, not as a masterpiece. Anything that I learn doing this is another piece (please excuse teh pun!) in the jigsaw of my art education. It becomes even more urgent that I get a daylight bulb when such subtle colour changes come into play. One interesting discovery is how I can picture the chair so precisely in my head. All those hours of studying it and doing the pastels has it locked in my memory. We will see what Michael has to say!

Vineyards

I needed to do something different tonight - hard day at work called for something expressive. Trying to keep in my head all that I have learned in the last week but finally being overcome by colour. If I have it right, the greatest contrasts in value should be in the foreground and the further back to the horizon you go the less difference there should be in tonal value - so you could have equal tonal values of orange and purple in the background but in the front you should have your darkest and lightest colours. It was fun to really let go with colour. Now to find a way to use colour but with more control. The colours are not quite right in the photo, the sky is much paler and less overcast looking.

Today I had to go out to from work to buy flowers. Flowers here are extemely bright and gladioli seem to be the favourite flower - and in every shade, bright gaudy oranges and yellows, pinks and reds. My favourite flowers are all white and I find the colours a little garish here. After the drabness of the Middle East though, it is a refreshing change to see so much colour. Roses are still blooming at them moment and even in my own garden I have roses by the dozen. Unfortunately I also have marigolds which are one of my least favourite flowers along with carnations and gerbera daisies.

Gold Thread

oil on canvas 6" x 6"
Another colour experiment. I started with a purple and cerulean ground and then worked into that with colour. More paint on the canvas this time.

Also have had this idea in my head for a charcoal for a while and after reading Stacy Rowan's post about seeing things that you want to do and filing them in your mental pending file I decided that the time had come to do put this one on paper. I've long been fascinated by drapery and classical images of fabric folds and white fabric in particular. So here is the start - still toying with the idea of the bowl and chair. The bowl is one of the copper ones I bought last week at a bazaar. I would like the spotlight to be on the fabric with everything else in the neutral block.

Red Thread

oil on canvas, 6" x 6"
The first of my "homework" - I'm sure I'm still not getting the paint on thick enough (that is SO hard for me, I want to scrape off and leave minimal paint on the canvas! I'm using cotton reels as they are nice solid blocks of colour to work with while I learn this new way of painting. It involves starting with a dark wash over the canvas. You then "erase" the paint for the most highlighted areas and then paint into the ground from dark to light. As I see it the image here on the computer I can see that my top ellipse on the gold thread in the background is not right but, in my defence, I was concentrating more on colour than anything else in this exercise. I am very pleased with the muted colour in the front yellow reel and its shadow. This was very definitely a different way of painting and I was aware mid way through that I was not thinking about accuracy of depicting s but was engrossed in colour and light. I'm not quite at the Fauvist point but feel I am heading in the right direction. One of my instructions for these lessons was to paint as if using a palette knife and not to draw with paintbrush. If you want to learn about how this method works I really recommend Michael Newberry's tutorial .

At the end of our road is a police post - I was struck this week that this would be normal in many cities until you think that the policeman has his tent pitched right there on the pavement/sidewalk and in the morning when we head out to work, his laundry is hanging from a line strung between the tent and trees a few feet down! Police and Army both are "housed" in tent villages in what is the "posh" end of town. Among large villas that would be the envy of many western towns are these little encampments, complete with guard posts and little snack shacks. At one of the security posts that we passed today I was surprised to see smoke billowing out from the inside the post and when I looked back I was even more surprised to see that the soldiers had lit a fire INSIDE the post which couldn't have been more than about 4 ft square!

The Perfect Mix

Another manic painting session with more running up and down the stairs. Its one way to get some exercise! Beginning to get a little panic struck about my shortage of canvases. Going to have to think seriously about making my own canvas boards.

Great delight with the mail arriving today - the friend whose portrait I just finished sent me a care package of chocolate, and delicious chutneys in interesting shaped jars - can see a bunch of still lifes coming from these.

Still researching the Fauvist movement and am intrigued to look at Matisse's work and see it develop. So many artists get stuck in a groove of what sells and that stops them from growing. I love to see the progression and hope that my work too will develop in that way.

I have been thinking of books that I own from my University days and have a bizarre longing to go back and read them even though at the time I found them rather ivory tower-ish and rather obtuse. In particular I would like to reread John Berger's "Ways of Seeing".

Intersting picture for today - the driver of a motorbike wearing a helmet and full protective biking clothing (a rarity in itself) while his wife sat side-saddle behind him in a bright pink shalwar khameez with the scarf prettily draped over her hair. I'm fascinated by the multitude of colours worn by Pakistani women after the monotony of black abayas and niqabs of the middle east which are rarely seen here. Girls at work wear brilliant colours - lime greens and bright oranges, some patterned in modern designs while others are traditionally embroidered with silks and sequins. One thing that had intrigued me is how they keep the scarf draped all day - and then I was told that its all down to safety pins! So much for that!

"Colours, like features, follow the changes of the emotions"Pablo Picasso

Crazy Mix

Nothing like painting ice-cream to make you paint fast!! I think someone on the outside looking in would have been rather amused by my running up and down stairs with a choc-ice. I painted a bit then took it back down to the freezer while I worked a bit more on building up the painting, then running back downstairs to pick up my model and work for another few minutes before having to return it to the freezer. I gave up after the third time and just ate the it!

A quick pastel - its hard to do anything outside because of the security situation here. But the golden light on the changing leaves just wouldn't be ignored. I'm really not at ease doing anything like this so it took a concentrated effort to try and pull this together.

I've been looking at the Fauvist group of artists in my research on use of colour and have found a lot of what Michael Newberry had talked to me about - using cool colours for distant objects to push them back. So for example - a red object in the distance to use magentas and more blue reds. Matisse is a master of colour and uses its hue to move objects in space as does Derain. I was delighted to find that Dufy, who is a favourite of mine (such happy, cheerful paintings!, was also a fauvist. What a great art movement.

Deborah Ross kindly commented on my blog and so I went to take a look at hers and she was talking about a poem she had read but then couldn't find. I thought I would have a look and see if I could find it and came across this - not sure if it was what she was looking for but it realy spoke to me..... I also found through Deborah's blog the Sketchbook Project which has wonderful things going on. I wish I had found this sooner as I would love to have taken part in the latest project but with mailing times to and from here it would leave me less than a month to fill up and entire sketchbook and I am not sure I could do that! Going to keep an eye on this and maybe join in something else.

"From the start, From my Heart, That's really art!"
Randy Vanlandingham

Colour

I recently made a list of my favourite artists and wrote down why I liked their work - the artists are many and varied in style, Monet, Bonnard, Seurat, Macke, Thiebaud, Diebenkorn, Hopper, Rothko to name a few. The predominant theme that ran through my little discourse was colour. It struck me as strange that something that I find so difficult myself, is what I love in other's work. I discussed this with Michael Newberry in my mentor session last night and decided that I need to use colour more as a concept within my work. So I have gone back to revisit the cotton reels as they are nicely brightly coloured and will use these as a base for a few more small works, experimenting with colour in seeing how it positions itself in space according to its hue and saturation.

Today I went to a bazaar of local handicrafts which was very interesting. Wonderful sight of hundreds of Persian, Afghani and Pakistani rugs spread over the grass. The majority of the carpets are reds and blues but amidst them there was one that stood out in the crowd (no I didn't buy it)- it was a Tabriz carpet from North-Western Iran, 80% silk, 20% wool. In each of the four directions that you could look at it, it took on different colours. One way it was the most delicate pale steely blue, in the opposite direction it was apricot, from one side it was pale silvery and the final side a deep goldy colour - just unbelievable. The tufts were very fine - about 800 knots to the square inch. The central panel was a snake design, interwoven snake-like emblems, very different from any other rugs I have seen. And the tufts were cut at different lengths in the pattern so there was the added textural differences. Just absolutely beautiful.

I may not have bought that, but I did buy three copper pots, one large with a brass base, rather rustic, the middle sized is engraved all over the outer surface and is slightly over an 1/8th of an inch thick and the smallest one was unpolished - a sort of old pewter colour. I love the warmth of the colour of copper.

It is rare for me to be out in the middle of the day - during the week I would be at work and on the weekend at home, so it was quite a novelty to be outside those two places. Now we are in late autumn it is dark in the morning when we leave for work and nearly dark when we get home so I have missed seeing how the landscape is changing with the coming of winter. The colours are wonderful, leaves are varied from a deep golden yellow, to a more acid yellow, burnished coppery pinks to deep apricot, and the most wonderful deep rosey reds. I'd forgotten how wonderful autumn can be!