Happy Thanksgiving

...to my dear American family, and friends, many of whom I've made through this virtual window to the world, and viewers known and unknown - though we don't formally celebrate, I am thankful for you all. I have to confess to being relieved that I don't have to produce a large meal with pumpkin pie, when major festivities are coming up in a months time, but I am extraordinarily thankful for my husband (who would probably have to cook the Thanksgiving meal if truth be told), family and friends here at home, and those that soon will be home again.
The watercolour is one I did years ago from a photograph of my daughters at a funfair (the blond one at the back is returning home from seeing the world in less than a week - whee!) and wasn't very pleased with at the time - the painting that is, not the daughter - but now I've unearthed it again, it brings warm, happy feelings of nostalgia, and gratitude that these little girls have grown up into the wonderful independent young women they are. Their little brother wasn't born yet when this was taken, but I think I feel a blog post of his own coming on, as he moves from one life stage into another and my maternal role goes through churnings and adjustments.

Back to the River

Got the watercolours out this morning to go and join my sketching buddy, John, at Emmarentia Dam - we continue to hope other enthusiastic sketchers will expand our little band, but so far it's a slow process finding them. We sat in a dry part of the river bed and painted this woodlandsy scene. The sun kept disappearing behind clouds, changing the light and reflections completely. I so want to learn to paint water and reflections, and they are so difficult! The yellow parts in the water are greener in the actual sketch - reflecting the trees behind, it looks a bit sickly in this scan. Actually it didn't smell too great either, recent rains must have washed down some muck from upstream, but I'm sure you'd rather not know that!

Drawing course Day Two

 

Actually I can't remember exactly what we did on each separate day - I think we did some warming up quick exercises on the second day too, but the main object was to take some of the previous days 'sensual' drawings and work new drawings over them, not obliterating them, but trying to have some new feeling or meaning emerge from superimposing images - I'm not at all doing justice to Hermine's urging us out of the usual or the safe, she had us each enthralled in our own individual and different journeys of discovery. This time she had made a doll out of clothes, blankets, buttons and string, as a prop to the model, which in some of my drawings manifested as a rather sinister and ghostly voyeur.

 For our final drawings we were to use all the materials we'd brought as we liked, which were many and varied - and combine everything we'd learnt to create a composition. Not the most attractive result here, though Hermine kindly called it 'stone-like', I used an old chewed foam roller to draw out the figure, which made her look a bit like some of us post-course students (one artist was so coated in charcoal and ink you could hardly make out her features - wish I'd taken a photo!) and added powdered graphite and glue, charcoal and ink, and stuck on some textured paper - didn't get to the candle wax, sandpaper and crayons!

Drawing course Day One

I mentioned a drawing workshop I went on in October a couple of posts ago - I have only now got to photographing the results, and am glad to recall it before it disappears into the dim dusty recesses of my mind. It was an intense two day course devised by a fabulous artist and teacher, Hermine Spies Coleman, called 'Drawing with all of your senses'. I'm not going to go into too much detail, but we had to bring a wide variety of drawing materials, scented things, music, and food (lunch!) We had a young newbie model not comfortable with disrobing completely, to work from, though formal life drawing wasn't the object so it didn't really matter.

 The first exercises were using a soft powdery medium like charcoal dust or powdered graphite, dipping our fingers into it and 'feeling the drawing' directly onto the paper. We then added glue or water to make a creamy mixture and continued the sensual experience of building the images with our hands - I was frustrated with how difficult it was to get the glue and graphite to do what I wanted it to, but persevered rather irritably rubbing from side to side to get the pigment to stick the paper, and was surprised and pleased to step back and find an interesting, evocative image (right) had resulted, as if she's in or made of water.

I have to admit to getting very bored with much of my life drawing last time I was doing it regularly, and this course forced me to leave my comfort zone and discover new ways of mark making and unexpected solutions to problems - and excitement. They may posssibly not appeal to many viewers who like their life drawing conventional, but I was happy to launch into fresh directions, and as I relive the workshop, am excited again to get back to the drawing board, the sooner the better.

We did a series of short exercises - drawing with our eyes on the

model only, not looking down at the paper, looking at short poses and then closing our eyes to draw them quickly and succinctly, drawing to music, trying to put the music into the marks and then drawing the model dancing to the music - a huge amount of concentration and being in the moment. The afternoon session saw us all exhausted, and returning to our old tried and tired drawing styles...

Peepo!

I haven't slipped off the edge of the world - just emerging from a too time intensive fund-raising project in between a stack of deadlines for something exciting that I don't think I'm supposed to mention yet. Drawing, paints, brushes, paper, canvas, seem like a dim, distant happy memory as do gentle days of blogging, visiting and commenting.

I thought I'd do a Christmas stall at my church's Arts & Crafts Day, after finding that paintings weren't really a viable seller with that particular marketplace, but boy, I wasn't prepared for the commitment of time, money and energy that filling a little table with angels and mangers, gingerbread men and Christmas stockings, candles and biscuits would entail. About half way through I was telling myself firmly - never again! I have to figure out a better way of raising funds creatively, or else just hand over the cheque that would go into raw materials and save on the weeks of slog - it would have meant more money for them!

Here are some of the angels and nativity scenes made from jacaranda pods - they all sold out and though the heads with hair and headresses were fiddly, quite fun to make, and could be worthwhile in an organised production line. They emerge with their own little characters and caused such delight that I got over my mutters about how long they took and happily sent them off to their new homes.