Artists Blog

“Whispers” Acrylic on canvas 100cm x 100cm (40″ x 40″)

Years and years ago I remember the absolute horror I felt when someone stuck a 3inch hake brush in my hand and said “A whole painting with just this brush.” It was watercolour,I did it, but hated it. I never picked up a big brush again, unless it was to paint the house or undercoat a canvas. Well recently I have been feeling I need to “loosen up”, and take a break from the fine work with 20/0 brushes.

This acyrlic painting has so many layers of watercolour-like washes, with me battling to get away from fiddling. I would feel good about a section I had been working on until I stepped back away from it. If I couldn’t see brushstrokes at 20 feet away I wasn’t happy. Back to the big brush to paint over details. Also, as this was for an a exhibition recording a particular place, I needed to identify it with the city landscape in the distance. Painting city buildings is definately NOT in my comfort zone! In fact I can’t ever recall having painted landscape structures at all.

It wasn’t unitl the final stages of the painting that I allowed myself to go down to a size 5 round brush.

Exhibition on now until August 7 at Belmont Forum

Here are some of my original reference photos, taken at the Swan River foreshore in Belmont. My interpretation is not a direct copy of the photos, but more my spin on the colours and atmosphere I felt. So different to how I usually paint!

Lots of squabbly chatter from the White Cheeked Honeyeaters around the foreshore.

Just around the bend of the river is the Garratt Road Bridge, a lovely old wooden bridge with lots of character.

Rivers have been in front of my lense a lot lately - painful as it initailly was, I can feel more “Big Brush” paintings coming on!

Lots going on - time in the Hills, the beaches and the boys even spent time back in FNQ.

I’ve been head down, bum up working on 4 pieces at a time - fun, but demanding. 

I also been experimenting with synthetic textures for the first time - modelling compound and structure pastes. Sometimes mixing with paint and other times applying it first then painting over it.

Textures are what’s got me going at the moment, and there is inspiration everywhere. At Burns Beach there are limestone rocks with so many different weathered faces:

Rockpools and waves also keep me fascinated. Almost got a good dunking filming this sequence:

But back to the artwork… this piece also saw me using Structure paint (by Matisse Derivan) for the first time. More like thick buttery oil than acrylic paint. I could even carve into it sgraffito style to reveal metallic paint colour underneath.

Knitting needles so versatile with structure paste!

Also new to me was having to varnish the piece. Up to now I’ve always used paints with an inbuilt “sheen” of their own. As the acyrlics I’m using now dry with a flat matt finish, a spray of varnish was required to “lift” it. Not easy using aerosols when it drops below zero degrees at night!

Unvarnished on left, varnished on right.

The completed piece. (40cm x 75 cm / 16″ x 30″)

Over the next few days I’ll post all my “catch up” pieces.

Stay warm everyone!

What  a wonderful Lunar Eclipse on Saturday! Even though temps were unbearably chilly (we had -0.6 Saturday morning!), it was worth frostbitten toes to record the moon and her shadow phases from my home (Lat -31° 73′, Long 115° 72′)

An eclipse of the moon (this was a partial eclipse) can only occur at full moon phase. If you look carefully at the top right quadrant you can see the large crater Tycho.

And whilst we are on the subject of all things Lunar, this week’s Illustration Friday theme is most appropriate - Satellite.

After my short break I’m back on deck with brush in hand ready to splash some paint around!

Here’s my piece in full entitled “Welcome to the neighbourhood”, now on exhibit in Joondalup.

Opening night was fun, with over 280 works to look at and the band playing gypsy swing, Romany style music.

 If you look carefully below at the portrait on the far right hand side, you may recognise…

..Jeff!  In a moment of raw Aussie Rules emotion (he’s a Dockers supporter).

Jez won a Highly Commended for this graphite portrait of his dad entitled “Dad’s Derby Day”

The exhibition runs until June 26 in The Great Space.

Watercolour on 175 gsm medium

This week’s topic for Illustration Friday is TRAIL.

 You can track my teenage son just by following this trail….

Another busy week comes to an end. Delivered some work this afternoon to an exhibition that will be opening soon, so I thought I’d share a little corner with you.

This is an Azure Kingfisher, cute little guys of the Kingfisher world. This is the bottom right hand corner (approx 10cm x 7 cm) of my finished piece, which I’ll share in full with you on Wednesday to co-incide with opening night.

After I’m happy with my sketch I apply liberal amounts of masking fluid.

Then the background is softly airbrushed in.

Then flat blocks of watercolour is applied quite thickly.

The starting from the beak down I start to move colour around and put in some brushstrokes.

Once the eye is painted in he takes on a real personality.

I define my light source and place the darkest shadows in.

Highlights on the feathers are brushed in with a fairly dry brush.

Feet are blocked in and work on his tree stump starts.

Final shadows are dropped in as well as the highlights on his toe-nails. When I paint the polish on these I know I’ve finished!

Will reveal the whole piece in a couple of days.

Have a great week everyone!

A quick watercolour & ink sketch late tonight to test out my new Winsor & Newton pan colours.

Hope you all enjoy the weekend!

Here’s my submission for Illustration Friday’s current topic - SLITHER.

If you’ve been following this blog you’ll know that my life has been one big python and snake adventure, so I may as well record it in watercolour!

My take on an “Amethystine”  Python:

Watercolour on 225gsm rough

Another exhibition this weekend, with my Lady in Red (in yet another incarnation) now off to her new home with new owners.

It was a lovely opening night, with a most talented Harpist providing the evenings’ music.

The Harp itself was a work of art. It must be so confsuing to play, all those coloured strings! The concentration she held was intense.

 A real Medieval atmosphere descended amongst the exhibition rooms, with such lilting, beautiful sounds.

Hope you all enjoyed your weekend!

Last weekend our Calligraphy Guild held a workshop for calligraphy on canvas. Now calligraphy can be challenging enough on paper with nibs, inks and guidelines, so dealing with paint, brushes, an uneven surface and writing in a straight line unaided was quite a task.

Firstly we laid down some acrylic washes on our pre-primed canvases. Then a fine spray of “Moonshadow Mist” in various colours was overlaid, some over stencils. (Those are the bottles in the above photo).

Moonshadow Mist is essentially interference powders (metallic, pearlescent etc) held in a suspension of walnut ink (brown when wet). When dry the powder rises to the top to leave a lustrous effect on whatever you have sprayed it on.

Next came some lettering - highlighted words from well known verses. As the canvas was wet, no leaning to keep hands and arms steady was possible. An added degree of difficulty to write with your hand up in the air!

Then more layers of acrylic paint and mist to partially obscure the words before the next layer of lettering went on. It was really foul wet and windy weather outside as well, so things were just not drying (crucial when you’re layering). In the end one kind soul went home to fetch a hairdryer to speed the process up. One hairdryer to dry a whole room of wet canvases was a slow process!

Using the local flora as stencils (both negative and positive shapes) gave added richness to the layering.

One of my pieces below still has quite a few layers to go, so will be a Work In Progress for a little bit longer yet. All in all it was a fun way to spend an afternoon in a room full of people who all love the art of Lettering.  If you’ve got a canvas laying around and a bit of time to spare, give it a try yourself!