Thwarted!

Sometime in the last three weeks I lost my trusty digital camera, or horror of all horrors, it was stolen. I think it must have fallen out of my backpack on the train or something like that but nobody has handed it in. I am lost, totally lost without it and I can't photograph any work to post here. It's frightening to realise how dependent an artist is on her tools, and all I have left is an old SLR and a baby digital, which works, but can't meet the challenge of photographing art. I don't know if my insurance covers this sort of thing and I am loathe to fork out hundreds of pounds for another. Woe is me. Really down about this.

"Baby digital camera"

The Virtual Paintout - May 2012 Challenge

I had no intentions of participating in any challenges this year as I am working on bigger and 'slower' works which are more personal to me but I still check into the Virtual Paintout blog, and when I saw this month's city was Jerusalem, I felt a bit left out. I've been to Israel and walked down the Via Dolorosa and believe me it is very, very strange. The Google Street Maps seem to have visited on a sunny, busy day in this chaotic and mysterious part of the Old City of Jerusalem, so different from the day I visited when it was darker, in fact spooky, and far fewer shops were open.

"Corner Via Dolorosa & Beit HaBad - Old City, Jerusalem" 

Gouache on Watercolour Paper - 8" x 8" 

#TwitterArtExhibit - Images from the show

In a recent post, I wrote about the second Twitter Art Exhibition that was put on by top Norwegian artist, David Sandum to raise funds for a women's crisis centre. I just thought I would share some photographs from the exhibition held in the library at Moss, Norway. It is currently still running and apparently paintings are still being sold. This was a superb effort put on by David Sandum and I was delighted to have taken part. Apparently my painting has sold which is good news. Above the photograph of the display stand there is a link to the whole photo album on David's 'Posterous' page which beautifully shows what a well-attended and exciting event it was. So strange to think of my little work hanging up in a library in Norway without my seeing it on show!  My painting is in the middle of the right hand side display in the photograph below.

LINK to complete photo album: Click Here

Display Stand at Twitter Art Exhibition II

Tall Trees

I have been wanting to paint some tall, spindly trees for ages and hadn't realised there were two such gorgeous examples in the beautiful park next door to my home. Sometimes it takes years to take in one's environment! I photographed these recently and decided to paint them today. The work is basically a bit busy and I must learn to edit and work from large areas first and then develop the details at the end of the process. I also had difficulty with the yellows as they were just so transparent and weren't able to pick up the luminous leaves dancing and sparkling in the dark shadows so I mixed in a bit of white.  It's probably worth saying that the sky did have that dramatic transition from dark to light - the values of the blues in the painting are not fabricated. However, I'm fairly satisfied with this one and quite surprised with it really as it was the first time I've worked on this ultra-elongated format.

"Tall Trees"

Gouache on Watercolour Paper - 9" x 5"

Peony - Sketch

This started out as a sketch for a bigger work but ended up being a bit more detailed than planned. I just couldn't help it for some reason. The colour of the peony was such a violent pink and very difficult to paint and photograph, but it was luscious and I just couldn't stop. I learned a quite a bit in this tiny work, one being that the surface of the watercolour paper I was using was a bit too rough, but overall, it's not a real issue. Learning a bit each day, these days.

"Shocking Peony"

Gouache, Watercolour on Watercolour Paper

6.5" x 5" (Approx.)

February Flowers - Quick Sketch

Today, after enduring about five months of low dark skies and no natural light, I was determined to make good use of the sudden appearance of sunshine in my part of the world, to the extent that I turned my back on domestic chores and pulled out the art materials and quickly got painting and sketching. I haven't painted for weeks now and this is due in part to not having any decent light and being very busy at work. No excuse, but a very solid, irritating reason. I didn't even want to think about anything; I just wanted to splash some colour around so I chose a painting of Fantin Latour's as inspiration and went from there. I am partly shocked, (but not surprised), if that makes sense, how difficult it was for me to get the effects I wanted. I really have to work a plan to give myself more time in front of the easel.

"February Flowers - Mini Homage to Fantin Latour"

Watercolour, Gouache, Pencil on Watercolour Paper - 6.5" x 5.25"

Blank Canvas and a "Clue"

After a long think this past weekend about what I have been doing art-wise since I started this blog, I decided that some of the work should be deleted as it was just not up to scratch. Part of my 'agenda' with the blog was to document my progress as it went along, but now I have realised that to a certain extent some of the paintings were done just to keep my hand around a paint brush and I refer specifically, in this instance, to a lot of the art blog challenges I have participated in over three years. These have been good for me in their own way, but as most of the subjects painted haven't been close to my own vision for my work, they have passed their sell-by date and quite frankly, have gone 'dead' on me. The juice has gone from all of them except for the 'History of Art Challenge Blog', which hosts challenges that, if I submit good work, will actually serve as an enabler for my next project. If I am going to be serious about pushing my art to a higher level, (and I am) most of the work on this blog should really be categorised as 'warm ups' and to have said 'exercises' out there in the blogosphere, doesn't seem strategic or grown-up.  I am all for full disclosure when it is practical and I even considered deleting the blog, but felt that might be a step too far and too soon until I had another blog going.

So, I am keeping this blog open to everyone until Sunday evening, 29 January 2012, and after that it will be open only to those who wish to keep up with what I am doing on a regular basis and I know there are at least three friends out there who want that. Once I have sorted things out, which should be by the end of February, I shall open it to everyone again.  Friends, if you wish to continue viewing this blog until I get cracking on my new series, please send me your email address via a comment (which I obviously won't publish) and I will add it to my contacts list. I am not too sure how this will work, but I think if I submit your email address, you can get in automatically.  I hope this new step I am taking doesn't sound too aloof or pompous as I truly appreciate everyone who arrives on my blog whether they comment or not.

I intend to work on a series for a while on a subject that for me is truly the most painterly, most beautiful and yet, most difficult of them all. More later, but I leave a clue in the lower photograph. 2012 is going to be a year of depth for me even though I shall still be without a studio, but who knows what will happen?  My purpose is to generate my own unique work for a change.  I also intend to do more still lifes, slowly executed this time, to keep my technical skills honed.  More later!

"Blank Canvas"

"Le Clue"

Adieu 2011

Well at least I have some work 'on the go' is all I can say tonight. I have been on our annual Christmas Break for nearly a week now and I have only managed to get halfway with a few projects which is frustrating, mainly because I think I could have completed them. I have just been so mentally tired that chilling out became more important than creativity. I have another two weeks of annual leave ahead of me, and if I can get "my act together", some extra work should be on show here. A few weeks back I was seriously contemplating 'sequestering' this blog, until I had made up my mind about whether I even wanted to continue painting and drawing, but in the end, I decided that was just a passing mood and had nothing to do with reality. I am so constrained time-wise that I have to be more accepting of the fact that I cannot 'churn them out'. For weeks I had been genuinely upset that I hadn't painted as many paintings as I had done in 2010. However, I hope to complete this work in a few days and I also have a semi-finished work for Sherry's "Art History Challenge Blog" which is delightfully more challenging than any other 'challenge' blogs out there. If I don't post a work tomorrow, I would like to wish everyone, especially my blogging friends, Sherry and Charlotte, an absolutely magnificent, peaceful, healthy, creative New Year for 2012. That should keep y'all going for a while.

"Studio Table with Work in Progress"

"No-Show"

A whole month has gone by without any work being posted on this blog. The reason is obvious - I haven't finished any work worth posting. I have been so incredibly busy at the day job that coming home to paint was just too much for me, coupled with the fact that when I did try to get some work done last weekend, it just didn't work out because I am 'out of practice'. The gouaches I had started ended up in the trash.  It's absolutely amazing that for each challenge I intend to do and end up not finishing, I feel enormous guilt. I can only assume this is a hangover from school or university with their penalties and demerits for not meeting deadlines, to the extent that those memories are ingrained in my DNA. However, I do periodically forget that I am challenged for time and I walk into an art materials store and come out with a 'little something' - shown below. So weak! I had also hoped to paint an Advent Calendar - one Christmas-themed work for each of the 25 days of Christmas, but again, I couldn't manage it. Next year maybe? I hope to have three weeks' annual leave at the end of the year which will give me a long stretch with daylight and that might make up for this tiresome hiatus on my blog.

Anne's Bargain Brushes

Experiment 3.

Last night I was desperate for a reference to work from to continue my weekly experiments and I couldn't find anything inspiring from my recent photographs. I always keep my camera with me wherever I go and lately I have been taking really weak photographs, so I searched my Picasa files for a reference and found a Henri Fantin-Latour flower painting. Nobody can paint flowers like Fantin-Latour and I don't know what came over me but I thought I would try and copy this work. I feel most of the time this genre can go no further and no additional flower paintings are necessary, but I became totally absorbed with the technical challenges and forgot about any latent snobbery I have towards realism. Obviously I couldn't pick up many of the nuances in his work because I was working in gouache, but I adored the murky effects of the stems and foliage in the glass vase and I think this work of mine has turned out quite well. One thing I have noticed is that I haven't quite captured the elegant spaces between the flowers in the original work as mine are a bit too squashed together. It has been a revelation to observe how he captured flowers, a subject I have never had any ambition to paint, but even doing this small "Experiment" has taught me something important about placement of objects in space. I could add a few more brushstrokes here and there to lift it up a little, but I am leaving it in case I go too far and end up with mud.

"Sketch - Homage to Henri Fantin-Latour"

Gouache on Watercolour Paper - 8" x 7.5"