Sketch club May

After a long hiatus I managed to make the sketch club at Art Est and found that all the participants have changed. I shouldn't be surprised I know. Our model was Elly a former dancer and an older woman. She was very graceful.


However the suburb suffered a blackout with the result that Elly was without her heaters and electric blanket and had to be clothed! I thought this an opportunity to draw a portrait.


Eventually the power came back on and she did the last pose nude. Sarah the convenor was evidently frustrated with her efforts as she considered a new hobby. Well none of us were particularly good mainly because we haven't been practicing.

Shock value in art

Recently while enjoying my Barbara Nadel detective novel(!), I was provoked to consider the shock value in art. Contemporary art and you may disagree, is distinguished from traditional art by its deliberate use as social comment. Not content with mere aesthetics, it tries to convey views on societal norms.

As an example, I once saw an ArtXpress entry on eating meat. The pig was eating a human surrounded by mounted human heads in the room. Shocking? Yes. Did I get the message? I certainly remembered it even if I didn't convert to vegetarianism. Was it beautiful? No and I don't think I want it on my wall!

Who remembers the Bill Henson controversy over his use of nude pubescent models? And Damian Hirst with his dead animals? I think the question that Barbara Nadel's book raised was how far is too far? Bill skirted with child pornography and Damian with death; both taboo subjects. In the book the artist murders his children and had them embalmed and dressed like shadow puppets for a show. All in the name of art!

Completed clay figurines

After what seems like an interminable wait, my clay figurines are ready and they look great! Pottery is slow work because things have to be bisque fired then underglazed and glazed before being fired again. Access to kilns not being necessarily easy to arrange and the need to group pots for an economical firing all add to the time. Add the suspense of not knowing whether a piece will survive the firing and the mystery of glazes (it's a bit of a hit and miss what will turn out).... and you understand the achievement.





The beauty of these figurines is that I finally get to model in 3D what I had previously tried to draw in 2D. It's actually very satisfying although quite a challenge. I have not had a life model just some photos or sketches that I extrapolated from.


My next challenge is to include arms and a head. I also took some raku clay home and am going to persuade my daughter to model for me (clothed of course)!

Monet's garden in Taipei

My recent travels took me to Taipei in Taiwan. The aim was to take my mum who celebrated her 70th birthday to see the treasures kept at the National Palace Museum. While we certainly enjoyed the Chinese art and marvelled at the skills displayed particularly in ivory carving, the artistic highlight was to see a Monet exhibition at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum.

Titled 'Monet's Garden' 32 paintings of waterlilies and pond and water features were shown from his later years. My favourite was this painting of poplars and reflections which came from Scotland. Surprisingly Scotland, where my sister lives has great impressionist art because they were an economic powerhouse at the same period of the impressionists.

Reflection on water is one of my current challenges hence my great fascination with the skill that the old master accomplished this effect.

Aside from Monet, there was an exhibition of Marc Chagall, Russian Jewish artist who painted only naive pictures of his love and obsession with his wife. I didn't enjoy that exhibition much as Chagall's works are more or less variations of a theme. Surprisingly Taipei is a cultural hotspot for the arts....

Mother's Group

This mother's group meeting was at Wylie's Bath, which is an exotic location in my experience of mother's group (at coffee shops, parks but not the beach). I guess that's what Eastern suburb mums do. I loved the way the stair was casting these slat patterns on the ground. After the lesson on using a palette I admire, I used the green, ochre and orange from a Bonnard painting 'Regatta'.


So while the colours are not realistic, these complementary colours make quite an impact. I've had several people comment on it's immediate appeal.

By the way I'm away overseas for most of Apr so faithful blog followers, I apologise in advance. Hopefully I will be inspired on my travels to paint and draw. Till then!

Foray into market stall

My daughter's school ran a fete yesterday in conjunction with the Election. She and her 7 year old friend decided to run a tattoo and face painting stall to raise funds so that they can shop at the fete. Obviously the parents had to get involved so here I was busy painting faces whilst Doreen and the girls applied tattoos. The men helped setting up and packing away.

I put up my little paintings for exposure which was fairly successful considering the type of crowd and the lack of space. Here is a picture of me at the fete.

Quite a few business cards went and I'm hopeful that people will look at my website. All publicity is good publicity, surely!

And for the curious, we made more money painting faces and busking than from art : but the girls learnt some valuable lessons about earning money and work ethics...

Miniature paintings

We are doing a stall at the school fete in a weeks time. My friend Cecile suggested that I paint a series of small canvases and sell them at the fete as a test. Good idea I think and bought 20 x 25 cm canvases. These are small but not minuscule.

Since they are small they shouldn't take long and therefore can be priced low, right? Wrong! Even with small canvases, there needs to be planning and perspective etc. You save on paint I guess and time taken to cover larger areas but really no saving on composition and colour mixing.

The good thing is they serve as a test bed for ideas before launching into a larger canvas. The term 'study' comes to mind. I took about 90mins for each one. How much should I sell them for?