Saxophonist

We are learning Ben Quilty style portraits today but portraiture is such hard work!



I cheated by choosing this jazz saxophonist as a subject. The best part is that it has all the marks like Ben but I couldn't use the palette knife well enough to attempt it.

Desert paintings

Deserts have always been my challenge. Their colours are so vivid as to make it unreal and yet it is difficult to conjure up a suitable palette especially since the sky is usually so dominantly blue. As Ochre is a master with colours, it makes sense to attempt a desert painting under her watch.


This first one was of Katherine Gorge which is a spectacular place in NT. I've eliminated blue altogether and used green as the complementary.


The second is of the view from Ubirr at Kakadu. In reality it is a lush green haven but this painting depicts it as at sunset when the colours are more mauve. I'm loving the Giacometti approach in drawing back into a painting.

Spring is here

And I'm doing plein air at a park near the art school.



It's exhausting standing for hours but the results are worthwhile. Everything is much fresher and so alive plus I get to be outside.

Interior of my art school

Last week it was rainy and cold - brrrr and so we stayed indoors and painted our art school.


It is an old warehouse with lovely light coming from the high windows, lots is exposed beams and pipes. Ochre our tutor said that she had not seen anyone get a good picture from the front studio so I rose to the challenge and painted this.



I also had a chance to give my urbanscape the 'Giacometti' treatment and it's actually looking pretty spiffy.

Drawing with paint

Back to art school and today we learn of the Swiss/ Italian artist Giacometti. Giacometti was famous as a sculptor. But he also painted or rather drew with a paint brush. He would go over the lines many times in different colours. This gave his works an expressive effect.


So today we had a still life set up and had to draw it with paint brush. This is my take on it.

Expressive Urbanscape

This week's painting is still in the orange red and blue palette but it's cooler and I've decided that it's hopeless to paint urbanscapes with an eye to accuracy. Instead I let rip - treating the painting like a drawing.


This is a view of Castlereagh St in Sydney. The original building on the right is an eyesore. It's a car park with the trains running overhead. But doesn't it look a treat in my painting?

Also the liberation I now enjoy with the colours - whoever has seen a sienna brown road?

Landscape from plane

On a recent work trip to Canberra, I flew over some mountains - possibly the southern highlands. The mist was rising from the valleys and it looked remarkable.


I thought to paint it but using an orange and blue palette. The real thing was covered thickly with eucalyptus forests and was verdant green but as I've a trip to Kakadu coming up I wanted to try a palette more like the red centre. Ochre guided me away from my original extremely complementary colour scheme to this subtler scheme.