Expressive colour ala Bonnard

After copying the Gaugain painting the next logical step is to use a palette that I admire in one of my own compositions. The painting I chose was 'Regatta'. The main colours were green and yellow/ orange.


Unfortunately the orange looked ghastly so I reverted to ochre. This is incomplete as I still have people to put under the stairs but I post it up to show what the experiment yielded. More on this later.

My first clay sculpture

After a couple of weeks away from the Fri girls art group, we are back and my first sculpture has survived the bisque firing. Here is a photo (drum roll)


Apologies for the background clutter. It looks pretty good for a first piece : modelled using a sketch. I've put a green underglaze and done a second one of a sitting figure this time. Hopefully there will be 3 in this series which I can display somewhere in my crowded display cabinet.

Expressive colour workshop

Attended a really interesting workshop at Art Est today on expressive colour. Thus far, I have not been adventurous with colours, sticking to real life colours. But Ochre who runs the workshop introduced us to the world of colours using Gauguin and Bonnard as examples.

I had done some colour theory previously but this reinforced what I remembered. We spend a couple of hours looking at the colour wheel. Then we made our own using warm and cool primaries. I learnt that the paintings were so vibrant because of the way they placed complementary colours next to each other. Red and green, yellow and purple, blue and orange : they weren't afraid of contrast!

Finally we copied a piece to learn the colours it used. Here is my attempt at copying Gauguin.

Website Up at Last!

I'm finally satisfied with my website and thought to tell my blog followers about it.  After the exhibition in 2010 I realised that a blog was not the place for a prospective buyer to view my "saleable" artworks.  Everything is chronological in a blog.  So I was motivated to start a real website, which is the "shop front". 

Having done a short seminar with Lisa Woolfe at ArtEst, I began weeks of fiddling with building one, it is really not for those who are IT illiterate.  But then, I realise that I'm quite fussy about appearances, given that I'm a visual artist - and it is very important that the site looks good and be easy to navigate.

Anyway, (drum-roll) here it is, folks www.mengwoo.com !  I will still keep my blog but anything that you like in the blog, you may check it out in greater detail on my website and hopefully in the near future, have the option to purchase originals and prints using PayPal.   Meantime, if you'd like to see anything for real, just drop me a line and we can tee up a time.

More attempts at rescuing

After rescuing the Moreton Bay fig tree, I was inspired to rescue the flamenco dancer (below the original).


Here is a close up. The problems with this painting in hind sight are: 1. Hands are too small. Common beginner mistake I was told. 2. Face too big and too many brushstrokes. 3. Scale of the painting is such that the face looked different when viewed from a distance from up close. This analysis was all very well but correction was fraught with difficulties. I repainted the hands no problem. But the face had me stumped. The photo I worked from was too flat to give clues. And on my first attempt the face was fine up close but really amateurish from a distance.


This is the second attempt. I know it is still imperfect but she doesn't look too bad from a distance. Up close she actually improves. So long as the face does not distract from the movement and colour!

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!

Study of colours

Last week I joined a women's art group which meets at Marrickville. It starts at 6:30pm on Friday nights and the others were mainly potters. The convenor Lisa used to run workshops but this term she was too busy and opted for a looser arrangement. I was the only painter last week.


This small painting was chosen as a starting point to see how the group went. I spotted this bather as she emerged from the rockpool at Wylies. The contrast between the sea water and the rockpool caught my eye. As the group is all about coiling and pinching pots, I thought that I should try this as well. But rather than making pots I think I'll try to make a torso of a big breasted woman next week.