Watercolour harbour view

While I was drawing the landscape with the blue-green ink background in the previous post, I was also painting this watercolour. I quickly realised that it was a while since I’d painted a watercolour, and I didn’t know what I was doing. Like Nina, in the most recent post on her blog, I felt the need for drawing – for the lines. So I put them in. Also faffing about with far too much detail. My sea started out like a flat blue carpet, so I’ve dug into that and put some glazes over it. Still not so happy with it. Next time I need to concentrate on a watercolour and not multi-task. It is painted on a Canson Fontenay card with Dory Kanter’s primary triad, from her book, Art Escapes, which I am re-browsing through, and remembering good stuff I’d already forgotten about.
It’s soooooo hot tonight. Too hot to go to bed. But I’m slaving over a hot computer, and drinking a hot cuppa tea. Just finished reading an amazing book – so sad. It’s called Cousins by Patricia Grace. She’s a New Zealand writer who I’d heard of but never read before. It’s about three Maori girls – cousins- born during WWII. Made me remember how much things have changed, – though some things have stayed the same. Brought back some things I’d forgotten all about, like blackboard dusters made from socks.

Urban Landscape on Sydney harbour….

TWO mornings in a row I’ve gone down to Blackwattle Bay to draw. Until about 11am, if I get on the eastern side of a cove, I can be out of the full sun, while it is shining on what I want to draw.
Yesterday I drew this amazing old winch (?) I first tried to do it straight with the pen, but no. It’s too complex. Second try with a pencil, then Rotring pen, then watercolour pencils worked a lot better. I plan to draw this thing again.
Today I went round on the southern side of a cove, and looked east, towards the city skyline across the water. This time I was working in the coptic sketchbook I made myself with Stonehenge paper, that I have been prepping the pages of for some time. This particular page was prepped with blue- green ink and a little snippet of paste paper. I drew first with pencil, and then with the Rotring pen & the coloured pencils.
I didn’t have any white pen or pencil with me so now realise I need that in my kit. When I got home I tried my with pen ( it’s one of those white Uniball Signo ones that I and everyone likes so much.) However, it doesn’t work on top of the ink wash, so I resorted to my white Prismacolour. I now need another trip to the art shop to get one of those for my kit.While I was doing this drawing, I was also doing a watercolour of the same scene. It needs work.
I got a new mobile phone a few weeks ago, so that I could use the camera for occasions like this. I’m still learning how to work the phone. This week I’ve partly mastered the MP3 player, so I sit down by the water with my favourite music playing. Yesterday it was Putumayo Music from the Chocolate Lands. I discovered Putumayo in Bali last time I was there. I love world music. Today, I played Queen’s Greatest Hits We are the champions, my friend!

Urban Landscape

I did this drawing with watercolour pencils from a couple of different photographs. Then yesterday I went past when the shadows were in an entirely different position, and caught a shot with my phone camera. I want to do some urban landscape paintings, and I know which places I want to paint, but I need to do some drawings first to get it set in my mind what to paint. I may crop them quite drastically.

My very favourite of all Australian artists is Peter O’Doherty . I went to his wonderful exhibition at NGA Gallery and they showed me a video. Well, his cat features strongly in the video. It was doing figure eights on his knee, saying Me, Dad! Me! How can you not love an artist like that. Click on his name to see his work (tip: go sideways if you don’t see the images – oh, the link to the video is also on that page) Peter is slightly less famous than his brother Chris who is better known as Reg Mombassa. They are both known for their rock’n'roll careers in Mental as Anything. Reg is also an artist, and I’ve come across him in the printmaking studios when I was at Meadowbank College. (Oh, isn’t that interesting – that’s my etching on the ‘Printmaking 1′ web page!)

Anyway what I DO love is Peter O’Doherty’s soft fuzzy edges, and I love them even more when I saw in the video that he uses Matisse acrylics. That’s the paint company I’m associated with. The other thing I love about his work is how he pares things down. Just fabulous. Another rather more famous Australian artist who also pares things down is Jeffrey Smart. I have to learn to simplify. I’ve already been doing some soft edges.

Fast Sketching at Marrickville Metro

The rain stopped and I went to the supermarket to stock up. That done, I went for my flat white at Michel’s. Looked for a good place to sit for some Fast Sketching Techniques. Spotted a place, but two women with prams and several children got there first, so I went in the other direction. I found what I thought was a good spot and started to draw this fellow who was working on his p.c. Unfortunately, at a table closer to me was an oldish man whose eyesight obviously wasn’t very good, because he raised his newspaper to six inches in front of his face which completely blocked my view. I decided to persevere, which meant I was peering over the top of the man’s newspaper. This must have attracted the attention of a lady, who came and stood behind me and watched. She said ‘It’s very good – are you going to go over and show him?’ I said ‘certainly not – he might hit me’.

Two groovy gays

I’ve finished another double-page spread of my sample circle concertina artist’s book that I’m going to be teaching at Artwise. If you remember, it’s about Newtown, where I live. There’s quite a gay scene here, though recently that community has been adversely affected by the closure of the Newtown Hotel under dramatic circumstances. So I wanted to put some gays in my book, and I preferred them to be of indeterminate gender and I hope I’ve been successful. I wasn’t sure about the ‘rules of earrings’ for gay people, but I had a look on Wikipedia and from what is said there, where the earring is worn no longer seems to have a lot of significance. The earrings are made from Matisse glitter 3D Kindyglitz that dries hard enough to be used inside a book. The shirts are collaged from some scrapbooking papers, and I’ve used watercolour pencils and a Rotring pen for the drawing. The drawing has deliberately been kept as simple as possible so as not to frighten the students in the class. But bear in mind that their books will be about their own subject and not about Newtown at all. I just need the sample to look achievable.

Response to Shahzia Sikander

When I went to the Shahzia Sikander exhibition at the MCA with Alison a couple of weeks ago, I said I was going to do a ‘response’ to the work. There were a lot of images with the pink backgrounds, so I started there. Then I did some stencilling in white, then some Prismacolour trailing fronds (for want of a better word). Then I used some acrylic and marbing gel transparent bits, then back with the Prismacolours. I think it might be finished now.
This effort will come in handy, because I have booked with two friends to go to a stencilling workshop at the MCA inspired by the work of Shahzia Sikander. Follow the link and you can read about it. We’ve also booked in for Dr Sketchy’s Anti-art school, where art meets cabaret, also at the MCA. Sounds like fun!