Trees

It's officially winter and pretty wet and cold but I guess the trees haven't caught up with the season. Everywhere I go there's still autumn leaves. One evening I was popping by our music teacher's place when I was struck by the street scene.


Shadows are long even at 3:30pm and the sun sets before 5.



I found time to paint these gum trees using watercolour. The wax crayon makes a great effect of the tree trunk. This is the view looking up at the trees.

Mangrove Cooks river

I've been working on this painting for a little while, on and off. It's a mangrove clump on the tidal Cooks River.


What I like is the reflections of the tree on the water, which is moving. Cooks River is a great spot for cycling and walks at high tide but not so great at low tide.

Rocks at Coogee

Apologies for the long absence but I've been distracted due to child swimming prowess requiring presence at various carnivals. This has taken chunks of time away from painting.


I finally completed this painting of waves crashing on rocks at Coogee. I've always loved the beauty of Wylie's and this is a picture of the north side of the rockpool. Sometimes there are explorers on these rocks but not at high tide when there is a risk of being washed away. Moss grows alongside oysters making it even more dangerous.

Colours of the desert

In an attempt to get the palette right for desertscapes, I painted some rocks and then used soft pastels to highlight them.


Incredible as it looks, these are the colours of central Australia. I've struggled to capture the desert and now feel that pastels are probably the best medium.

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!

A Commission

Those of you who follow my blog will know of the avenue of autumn leaves http://mengwoo.blogspot.com/2010/06/plane-trees-in-autumn.html that I painted last year. Whilst at our house, my brother-in-law Jeff and his wife Toom admired the painting but I had no idea they were interested in purchasing it. The painting was exhibited last year and they were just about to purchase it a few minutes into the opening, when a red dot was placed next to it. "What does that mean?" Toom asked the gallery owner. "That means that it's been sold!" he explained.


Having missed out, Jeff decided to commission me to paint another just like it. Now, a commission is a commission, right? Artists can't afford to turn these away, can they? Yet, my personality is such that doing anything once is fine (there's the bits about trying something new, finding something different to explore and improve on) but painting the same subject twice? I fobbed them off with the line that I've to have autumn trees before I can paint them.... which gave me another 6 months to think about it. Well, autumn was definitely here in Sydney. In fact, the wind has blown all the leaves off now as officially, we are in winter. So I've run out of time, and had to knuckle down and produce! Thankfully, it is easier the second time around. I plan to give the painting to Jeff as a present for his next birthday. He tells me he has a space awaiting (6 months of a blank wall..... I do feel a bit sorry and hope this will be an adequate compensation).

Moreton bay fig tree

Those who follow my blog know the principle I follow in painting; if it doesn't look good after 8 hours of effort then it's time to discard and start again. On this principle I have abandoned about a quarter of projects. This painting, begun last year, should have been a casualty except for the fact that I loved the way the trees in the background came out. There is a feeling of warmth and a glow about it that made me think it worth rescuing.

What I was stuck on was the foreground. I tried painting a stream but that didn't work. I tried a road but that looked too flat. I stopped numerous times and contemplated taking the canvas off supports and cropping it. Then I stuck it at the back of the cupboard and forgot it for months.

In the new year, I felt like making some corrections to old work (believe me this is a rare feeling!) and pulled it out again. As foreground I decided that a road was ok but something had to lead the eye to the tree. Further, I borrowed a book on common oil painting mistakes and applied myself to the problem of the flat grass and road colours. That recommended the inclusion of different shades of green and gray to break up the expanse and create interest. A handy tip : I think I rescued this one! Mind you I would hate to think how much time I spent on it!

Diversion into landscape

The school holidays are on and we booked at Christmas to stay a week at Coffs. My sister in law and her family live at Central Bucca, near Coffs and so we could catch up. We had a lovely social time. For the first time ever, I packed a subset of my materials and equipment for a trip. Could only fit in some pastels, charcoal and a couple of sketch books, A5 and A4. The A4 book consisted of watercolour paper, which I put some washes over. As it turned out, this was perfect for vacations... the paper size was just small enough to be able to complete a drawing in about 30 mins, which is just about the time I had anyway. And they weren't unwieldy to cart around.

Of course the Coffs coast is a place of great natural beauty. There are numerous beaches and even at its peak, they aren't anywhere as full as Sydney beaches are. Besides the beaches, the mountain range comes very close to the sea at Coffs. This means that there are opportunities to draw the bush and potentially the astounding views from banana and avocado plantations on the hillsides.

We stayed at an apartment near Moonee Beach. Moonee creek runs into the beach and the creek was stained a deep tea colour due to heavy falls the first 3 days we were there. Eventually, the sun came out and here is a drawing of our view from the apartment at sunrise. We had a view of trees and the creek beyond. It was really quite lovely.

We took walks to Moonee beach and played at the beach. However, access to the beach was via the creek and one had to wade about waist deep through the creek (where you couldn't even see the bottom!) to get to the beach. This was not very practical for carrying art material! There was another way to get to the beach but due to the heavy rain, the path was extremely muddy and slippery and once again not conducive to the setting up to plein air sessions. However, I took lots of photos and if anything comes out of this I will post them here.

Lake Russell Gallery is a very special place - it is located next to a lake and the gallery has lovely art and the cafe is very nice as well. The day I went there, it was wet, so I did this drawing in the car.

I also did this drawing from a photo.

The wet weather provided some opportunities to complete sketches of my family.