Artists Blog

Kung Hei Fat Choi or Happy Chinese New Year! To celebrate I thought I’d paint a dragon inspired piece this evening. I set my favourite dragon vase and Dragon Wing plant in front of me. I ended up with a local species of dragon, one that lives along our coast right here in Perth. It’s our Leafy Sea Dragon, a species of sea horse. Above is my work-in-progress, painted with a number 0 round on  Arches rough.

This is one species that knows how to share responsibilities. The dad looks after the eggs, not the mum.

Hope your Dragon Year brings you much happiness & success. I’m off to prepare for an upcoming week of being scorched silly. We have been warned to expect temperatures around 42 C (107.6F) !!!

Where’s the ice cube trays….

Last Friday the lovely Marie and I had coffee and an explore near the Hillarys Lighthouse.

A wander around the Marina with Marie and her camera, then off across the drawbridge to the Marine Research labs.

Behind the doors and windows are tanks with scientists researching our Marine environment.

Sometimes it’s tough knowing who’s checking out whom. This cuttlefish was very intent on eyeballing everyone that went past his window. Very very smart creature this one.

It was feeding time when we were there. Can you make out who’s in the top left hand corner?

That’s his bum up top, and then a From Above view. Yes, it’s a sea turtle.

Next day was Saturday and time for Marie’s Demo at Jackson’s art store.

Marie was fabulous and a wonderfully patient teacher. She is a Full Bottle on all things digital and her mixed media pieces were amazing.

Thanks Marie for sharing your knowledge!

After showing the work of the weekend pastel students in my last post, it was only fair to show the finished pieces of the weekday group. Above is Kim’s Mindarie Beach, hot off the framer’s workbench.

Joy and Beaumaris Beach.

And the secret to Kelly’s North Hillary’s Beach piece is the being held aloft by Inga! 

You may remember the post about my violet shell which I sketched and unfortunately broke. My lovely husband Jeff found this shell today on his beach travels and left it on the kitchen bench for me to find. It is adorned with goose barnacles, a lovely lilac hue themselves.

That wasn’t the only amazing object to grace the kitchen bench this afternoon…

this GINORMOUS mushroom is slow roasting in the oven for dinner – yum!

The work produced on Saturday’s pastel workshop was just wonderful. The students are really spreading their wings with their paintings. Above is Thea working on Mogo Crater Creek rainforest in the Atherton Tablelands.

Albert proudly shows off his first pastel painting in many many years.

Heather shows us her vision of Quinns Beach, her 2nd painting ever!

Cathy is working in a very fresh and loose style on happy sunflowers from The Continent.

Lil is re-creating a stunning waterlily form Port Douglas.

We all share laughs, stories, tips and chocolate on Workshop days.

With finished paintings at the end to share with a wider audience. Thanks to everyone for sharing their work.

So impressive is the calibre of the students work, we are going to hold an exhibition on the first weekend in Decemeber. Stay tuned for details!

This week my local beach was full of interesting things. It’s been a while since I’ve seen the floating Violet Shells – these were used in days past to produce the colour purple. A quick sketch with purple ballpoint pen was fun. Sadly I dropped and broke one of the shells, but it did show me how luscious the purple is inside.

 There was also the most amazingly delicate coral formation, like porcelain filigree work – easily the most beautiful ocean treasure I’ve found in a long time.

Whilst I was peering into the rockpools there was a buzzing in the distance.

Quickly followed by more giant Man Bees. They seemed to be everywhere!

They were doing fancy turns, racing each other and just enjoying the freedom of birds. But with propellers.

Then off they went, one after the other, up the beach and out of sight.

It was a lot more peaceful when they had gone….

“Serenity” Pastel on Board 100cm x 70cm (framed)  40″ x 28″

You may recall seeing a snippet of this painting from a recent post. It was one of my pieces on show at the Pastel Society’s Annual exhibiton held over the weekend. It has gone to a new home where I hope it brings much joy for many years to come.

Below are some detail images.

Opening Night was great fun. Lots of people passionate about pastels in a beachfront building full of amazing work.

Can hardly wait for next year!

If you’ve ever fancied trying pastels but don’t know where to start, or just want to pop in and say “Hi”, I’ll be doing a  free pastel painting demonstration at Jacksons Art Store tomorrow morning at 11.am. Just RSVP to Jacksons (ph or email details at the end of this post) I’d love to see you there!

Lots to do today with the opening of the Pastel Society’s Annual Exhibiton. It’s right on the beachfront at the Maureen Grierson Centre – directly in line with the Observation Hotel. Opens at 7pm – might see you there as well!

Sanctuary Acrylic on canvas, 100cm x 100cm (40″ x 40″)

I knew I was tempting Fate when I said aloud “What else can go wrong?” after my recent spate of applicance meltdowns.  I thought nothing could beat the washing machine, phone & computer all going belly up together, until the car and computer (x2) went on strike.  When the car made a loud “pop” under the hood, with strangling noises following, I called for the roadside assist mechanic. “Starter motors’ gone luv.” he said in a strong Irish accent. Odd, considering the youthfulness of the car. Next day at the garage/hospital it was revealed that it was nothing mechanical at all – a computer module was to blame. Some Power-Interface-Control-The-World module had told my car that the starter motor was cactus AND that it was out of fuel, and therefore don’t go awyhere. I also think it had a word to my home computer (you know the one that had it’s power pack replaced last week!), who now refused to allow mouse clicks to open anything. Several hundreds of dollars later, fastforward to today and my world is a much happier place. Fate can go jump.

Happy days on the go again, I finished some paintings, the above is for an upcoming exhibiton. The Quackers are back, but we have the pool blanket on, which rather confused them and me, seeing them walk on the rippling surface just like a water bed. The howling winds soon threw back a corner of the blanket, so happy ducks now as well. (Ssshhh, don’t tell Jeff, he’s not fond of all the mess they make…)

A huge storm is brewing tonight, due to hit in the early hours of the morning. Damaging gale force winds, hail, thunderstorms, abnormally high tides & flooding along the coast with beach erosion forecast. From Beaumaris Beach below, it looked very bleak. Time to snuggle up with a mug of something hot with my feet getting toasty in front of the heater. There’s good chocolate hiding somewhere as well…..

I’ve been on the ”loose end mend”, meaning finishing and tidying up the unloved and unfinished, both inside and out.  Going through my studio I found this old demo piece  from the summer waiting patiently.

I had left this months ago as a quick pastel sketch, just blocks of colour.

Refining the tones of the ocean, suggesting the rolling waves with turquoise on top and pthalo blue beneath.

Deepening the dune shadows with Ultramarine and Prussian Blues. Plants and grasses taking shape.

Morning sunlight shining on leaves.

And here is the afternoon sunlight shining through the leaves on my Chinese Tallow Tree outside my kitchen.

Most of them have ended up in the fish pond over the weekend with the storms. Beautiful leaf boats on the water, with the fish in Hide-and-Seek heaven. Autumn has finally given over to Winter, with huge drifts of mulberry, manchurian pear, and frangipani leaves all through the garden.

Wishing everyone a wonderful week of “doing”.

Late this afternoon I opened a box of treats. It was a lot like a box of chocolates, unwrapping each “flavour” of colour. I had only a few minutes to play with them before I was off to a new beach to “move my bones a bit.”

Just north of me is Mindarie Beach, a long unspoilt stretch of sand. The beach was pretty much deserted, so just right for a bit of sand jogging in between photos.

Dusk gives great colouring to the sand shadows, going from that cool blue to purple. Footprint shadows have great colours when you look closely.

Sunset saw me huffing and puffing, but I panted my way to the top of the stairs without stopping. I can’t remember the last time I exercised – high time I think!