Chillies in acrylic

Another journalling spread of chillies on black gesso. I’m not finished with this chilli theme. I’ll do some more small ones for studies and then a large painting. It’s far more vibrant in acrylics than the Conte crayons, and quicker too.  In using an altered book, I’m glueing pages together and removing some, so that it doesn’t get too thick when I gesso all the time. This means that the pages have a bit of a ripple sometimes, and that the gutter is very pronounced. This means it always has to be worked around in some way. This is why I have a border down the side of this page, otherwise my gutter would be down the centre of the centre pot.

I’m still not convinced about this ‘art journal’ business. I am just pressing on till the end of September in the hopes that I create some good habits that I’ll use in my sketchbook. My ‘main’ sketchbook is handmade from Stonehenge paper. Nearly all the pages have been prepped in some way – mostly by just sloshing on a wash of whatever is on my palette when I’m painting. So that is not new – I just want to write more, though without turning it into a diary, and to compose the page spreads with more thought.

Cubist painting with Matisse Dry Mediums

I started this painting some time ago. We decided to make a project sheet for doing a cubist painting with Matisse Dry Mediums. I’d painted this cubist painting at the Easter Show, so I had to do another one so that we could photograph it step by step. Here’s how this painting started out. I got sidetracked by all the watercolour pencil drawings I was doing for Kate Johnston’s Watercolour Pencil Class. Finally it got done now, and the project worksheet won’t be long.

Demonstrating on 2nd July – new Dry Mediums

Hi everyone,

On 2nd July (which is not far away at all) I will be demonstrating a semi-abstract landscape done with the new Matisse Dry Mediums at The Art Scene at Ryde (on Victoria Road and not far from the Homebush Bay turnoff (Concord Road)).  I will be putting the dry mediums onto a canvas and explaining them as I go. Then I will magically whip out another canvas where the texture has already dried, and I will proceed to paint it to completion. Full step-by-step project sheets will be available.  The painting I will be doing will be very similar to the one shown in the background of this advertisement.

There are some great demos coming up at the Art Scene in July …. read about more of them here.

Paste papers in the rain

This is what we did on Sunday. I had an arrangement made a very long time ago to teach some friends how to make paste paper.  We wanted a fine day, because we needed to dry the papers on the clothesline out in my courtyard so that we do could do more layers.

The weather was against us. First we put them on the line, but then we had to go out in the rain & quickly bring them in. So we had newspaper all over the floor of the lounge, the heater on, and papers pegged to the clothes-horse in front of that and all over the floor as well. We also had the heater on in the kitchen where we were working, and were drying off the driest ones   there.

We started off with some paste I’d cooked made from wheaten cornflour. When that was used up we used Matisse Print Paste, and it worked very well diluted a little.

These are some of the ones I made. I only wish that they’d scan as beautiful as they are. The top one is Matisse Indigo with the gold.  There’s a little cerulean blue in under there too. That’s my favourite.

This green one is Matisse Emerald over paper that had had blobs of paint put on it, pressed together and then pulled apart. It has a sort of batik look in under there.The orange one is Permament Orange over Cobalt Teal.

I made 10-11 pieces, which wasn’t bad under the circumstances. We started at 10am and it was getting dark when we finished.

Fiamma – sketches for new cubist painting

Now I’ve regressed and done a bad drawing on bad (cartridge) paper.

I did a few little sketches and it just seemed such a waste of good Stonehenge paper that I’d already prepped – especially since the next page spread was strong greens and blues.

This drawing is the first step of a step-by-step Project Worksheet using the Matisse Dry Mediums that will be eventually on the new Matisse Derivan website.    I painted this cubist style painting at the Easter Show, and we decided I’d better do a different one for the worksheet so I could photograph each step as I did it. A different (landscape) step by step project should be online within  week or two.

Pyrmont Art Prize

The first Saturday in May is the Pyrmont Art Prize. They have a one-day exhibition of all  the paintings in Union Square in Pyrmont. It is a good one to enter, because for the entry fee you get your canvas as well,  so everyone is painting the same size. You can paint whatever you like. So I’m entering – hoping to sell, not to win. And my painting is priced to sell, because with all this testing of new products my house is filling up with paintings.

I couldn’t find the dates for delivery on the web, so I emailed the Pyrmont Village website. They asked me if they could write me up on their site -  asked me to fill a questionnaire and asked me also to send some images. Here’s a link. For some reason there have been some problems with this link, so I’ve now put the painting in this post, butyou can  read the article at the link.