Brooklyn sojourn

After a huge day of preparations, I managed to get away to Brooklyn on the Hawkesbury River. My employer Robert had kindly offered me the use of their house in their absence and happily I was able to schedule it in. I left by myself on Thursday afternoon as I well knew the numerous plants I had to water, beds to make and paths to sweep. If I had gone on Fri I would have wasted half the day on the journey and chores.

After a goodnight's rest, bright and early on Fri morning I packed my watercolor set and went for a stroll. This painting is of the sandstone escarpment near Robert's house.

Lovely isn't it? Too many photos I've taken of the same subject have failed to highlight it's colours and beauty. I love this so much I plan to paint a larger version.


This next one was at the mangrove swamp. I like the watercolor effect for the leaves.


Finally after a walk of 2 km I settled at a cafe near the marina. The reflections of the pier caught my eye. I then walked back and began an acrylic painting of the view from the kitchen. All up, a very productive day!

Watercolours and the art of travel sketching

Having planned a trip to Uluru in a couple of weeks, I was thinking hard of how I'd pack a compact set for the purposes of travel sketching and painting. The problems with photographs are manifold, the colours never come out as what you see. Darker colours vanish into a uniform shade and bright colours just take over the image.
The solution is to sketch something on site - but this has to be done quickly and all art materials must be compact and highly portable.  My aim is to get a set together that will fit in a backpack that I can just sling on and get going by bike, bus, boat or train. This was what the Sydney artist Tom Carment was said to have done and how he managed to so many cameos of Sydney that we all identify with and love.
Previously I had done sketching using soft pastels. The problem with that was the colours are limited - not easy to mix pastels. The dust and mess plus the need to fix the image are off-putting. The other issue was that fixative is highly flammable and therefore not allowed on planes. Watercolour was the most common media used for travelling artists and I had to bite the bullet and enrolled myself in a one day workshop on watercolour and the art of travel sketching at Art Est.

Susie Murphie is a gregarious teacher, with a love for watercolours.  Her mission is to "spread the word about water colours". The key thing is to leave white (contrary to the acrylic painter, who is urged to cover every surface with paint as soon as practicable).  Watercolour paper is lovely in texture and so I guess there is a need for white to be left.  I took to it like a duck to water - mainly because I love gestural work - where one line can convey immense amount of information and for the rapidity of execution.  I do not think that it can be the final product though - lovely as it looks. Although Susie showed some beautiful books where someone's journal was published.

The first exercise was to copy an image and to try out the watercolour.  And then to paint some cumquat branches that Susie brought in.




After that we went to a street near Art Est and sketched 6 small cameos. We didn't paint on site, as the southerly had arrived by then and it was extremely windy.

Gable roof window with flowering grevillea	Parked boat
Red front door	Striped awning and yellow letterbox

Trees

After lunch, we did an exercise in cropping.  Travelling artists seldom have much time - the bus might go in 15 mins.  One way to capture something quickly is to zoom into an interesting bit.  Susie put up a row of photographs and asked us to crop and render a small part. 

Flying buttresses

Reflection

More Still Life Paintings

Inspired by Paul McCarthy, I went on a frenzy of still life painting recently.  Still life is most suitable for this time of the year as it is frequently too cold and wet to set up outside.  The subjects can be arranged as you please, and they do not move!  Furthermore, painting from life looks so much better than from photos or sketches.  There is virtually no downside with regards to the logistics of still life painting, although I do prefer to look at a lovely view than a lovely fruit. 

I did despair when I saw Margaret Olley's bush lemons after I had painted mine.  Of course she was a very famous and talented painter and I'm only starting out.  The point of the exercise is to try and paint a white tablecloth in the light, that actually had blue and bits of yellow in it.  Did you know that a white tablecloth isn't all white??

I'm quite fond of this painting of my gorgeous silver jug.  It has the most lovely reflections, and here I posed a pink camellia from my garden next to it.  The camellias in my garden are only just started to get going, whilst I know other people's gardens have finished with them.