Days 1 to 16 ICAD2022

 

Days 1 to 9

Days 1 and 2. It's funny where inspiration comes from, something that's just at hand sitting in front of me on my art bench, an image from an art calendar. In a way it doesn't matter what the subject is, but just to be getting my paints or pencils out and making a little time in the evening for art.

Days 3 and 4. Again loosely based on images on an art calendar.

Days 5 and 6. These are much more like my usual paintings, based on my walks at the water gardens and the beach, I work from memory sketches and bad photos! Very happy that the one on the right then inspired a proper painting which would never have happened without icad bringing up ideas!

Days 7 and 8. Again these ones are of the nightcliff foreshore, the bike path through the trees and looking out across the mouth of rapid creek, the same composition as day 6 but trying more muted colours.

Day 9 was back to the art calendar!

Days 10 to 16. I felt like I floundered around for subject matter this week, and wasn't that happy with what I produced, on the last 2 days I worked from an episode of gardening australia pausing the video on interesting compositions and sketching from that. The figure in a garden is definitely a subject I'm interested in, and I have continued on this theme through days 17 to 22, and possibly beyond! I'll share those next time!

Best wishes to all, and if you're having a go at ICAD I hope you're having fun with it.

ICAD 2022

 It's been a long time between posts! If you follow me on instagram you'll know I've been painting pretty steadily for the last year and a half. 

When I started this blog my kids were still little,  I had one free morning a week with no work and no kids and that was my painting morning which inspired my blog name - what I did on Friday! 

Over the years I've sometimes had more time, but found it didn't equate to more creativity, in fact it usually meant more procrastination. For the last year or so I've set aside Sunday morning for painting, and I get my paints out no matter what, often I only have an hour or so before I have to drive someone somewhere, but it's enough time to get a little painting done. I also try to go out walking and sketching through the week, tiny fast 5 minute sketches help me to really look and give me subjects for my paintings. 

And now to ICAD!

ICAD is an index card a day challenge which runs through June and July it's the idea of @gypsy999 (on instagram or daisy yellow blog) you can find out more info there including daily and weekly prompts...which I will probably ignore and go my own way. I'm excited to be carving out a little bit of time in the evenings to do my icad a time of day when I'm low energy and usually in front of the tv. 

 

These are my warm up cards done before the 1st June, I will post again soon with my icads from the first week.

Lots and lots of little paintings

 Since the xmas craft fair at the end of November I have tried to make time for painting every Sunday morning, even if it's only for an hour or so. I work small - on 4x4 inch canvas boards, now and again expanding onto 5x7, which feels huge in comparison. Over the 4 months - December through March - I've done a lot of little paintings.... they are all painted at my verandah table at home. When I'm out walking I often take (bad) photos or do little sketches that I use for inspiration for the paintings, but I haven't been brave enough to paint outdoors.

So a bunch of the paintings are of the place where I sit when I go for my walk at the beach. The view out to sea across the rocky shore off sunset park at Nightcliff - it's wonderful to see storm clouds and dramatic skies at this time of year,  the wet season, and I've tried to capture some of that, the same view in different weather.

A couple of the paintings are of sunset park, the shady trees and glise of the sea beyond, and people enjoying it someone reading, someone walking their dog.

A Nightcliff landmark is the jetty, and It has made an appearance in a couple of paintings!

Another group of paintings are still life's, which I do paint from life - a twig of gumtree flowers I picked up at the park, a new pot plant...

The best painting sessions have been when I knew what I wanted to paint, if I don't have a clear idea the painting doesn't go well. That seems to be the opposite of the nugget of wisdom about not waiting for inspiration to strike, to just get on with it.

I feel like this wave of painting is coming to an end - perhaps it's the change of season. The dry season is approaching, I feel the urge to get out walking more often and get back into the garden. These things will 'fill the well' and inspire the next wave of painting. (The idea of filling the well is from Julia Cameron's book The Artist's Way.) 

Also the first craft fair of the year is coming up at the beginning of May, so I need to get prepared for that. I feel very lucky that these events can go ahead almost as normal in Darwin, while so many other parts of the world are still in lockdown. For those in the northern hemisphere I hope that spring and the easing of restrictions is bringing a little joy :)

The thing that made me do lifebook this year!

 I've taken lifebook before in 2017 and 2018 and I enjoyed it, but also missed a lot of classes, I probably only did a third of what was on offer, and felt that it was aimed at someone with less experience than me... I've been paintin and drawing pretty consistently for the last 40 years!

But back in late November I think, there were some taster lessons that ran for 2 weeks. It's a busy time of year so I only watched 4 of the short classes and only attempted 2 of them. 

One was this wonderful art journalling lesson with Pia Rom - combining paint, collage and words to find a story. It felt like such an interesting and easy way to build an image. (By easy I think I mean sidestepping the inner critic) It seemed to open doors in my mind for how I might approach artmaking and journalling. That one lesson convinced me to try lifebook again, that there are new things there for me to learn and new inspiration.

Do take a look @piaromsart on instagram, her journal pages are stunning and now she's playing with little clay figures too.... looking forward to doing her full lifebook lesson!

Happy new year and Lifebook 2021

 I have treated myself to the online art and wellbeing course Lifebook for this year. I have tried it befor in 2017 and 2018, and enjoyed being introduced to so many different artists/teachers and new approaches and techniques. I also remember being overwhelmed by so many lessons, usually 2 a week (plus other bonus material) there can be hours of video which I don't have enough time for. So I'm doing it my way, as much as I can manage on a smaller scale than they suggest - I'm doing mine in an A5 journal , not loose sheets to be bound at the end. Also I'm not taking part in the facebook group, I don't enjoy facebook (to put it mildly) and don't want to waste time there or be too overwhelmed or influenced by other people's work.

Here's my first piece for the year! A warm up, I followed the instructions fairly closely and enjoyed the layering, stencilling and markmaking. It includes my word of the year - renaissance- along with the dictionary meaning "cultural or artistic revival." That's what I'm really hoping for this year, after beibg so focused on the kids finishing school for the last couple of years, now it's my turn!!

The other week one lesson was called Goddess of Light, I didn't watch all the videos for this one but used it as inspiration, a jumping off point for this journal page which is still in progress. Both these lessons were with Tamara Laporte. (You can find out more about lifebook at her website willowing.org or Instagram @willowing). I will skip week 2 for now as the week 3 lessons will be out on Tuesday.

Happy new year and best wishes to you, take care of yourselves especially those back in lockdown, hoping things improve as the year goes on and vaccines are rolled out.

Back from a looong break!

 It's been a very long time between posts, mainly because I stopped making art for a big chunk of the year...from May to October really. 

When the pandemic arrived and exhibitions and craft fairs stopped, there was little motivation to make work, and then I discovered that I liked the peace in my mind without that critical voice that always questions whether my art is any good, whether there is any point in doing this. 

So I enjoyed my time gardening, I got good at growing basil from seed! And I focused on my twins in their final year of school, driving them here and there, being around to talk to and make snacks!!

We're very lucky in Darwin, we've had very few cases of coronavirus, we had a brief, lockdown in April/May after that life gradually returned to fairly normal except for restrictions on travel. So the thing that got me started again art making was the xmas craft fair. I decided in October to take part, and then had 6 weeks of madly getting prepared! The craft fair was at the end of November, here's the paintings I took along.

Since then I've set aside some time on Sunday mornings to paint. I hope I can stick with it and enjoy it without getting into that critical headspace again. I've also treated myself to the online art course Lifebook 2021 to keep me playing and trying new things. If you're curious about lifebook there are some taster sessions which I think have been reopened to try for a week, go to visit willowing.org to find out more.

Sending my best wishes to you, I'm sorry if you've had a hard year and I hope 2021 will be better.

A strange time for a digital detox

Hello, I hope you're safe and well where ever you are. We are living through strange and unexpected times, and because everyone's experience is quite different I thought that there's value in writing down how it's been for me.

I want to acknowledge that I'm very lucky, I didn't lose my job. I live with my partner and 3 kids so I haven't been lonely! We are homebodies, so it wasn't a big change to stay mostly at home. In the NT we've had only 30 cases of coronavirus and no deaths (so far, who knows what will happen when the borders re-open).

But I've been worried about my mum who lives alone in England, and I wonder how long it will be until I can visit her. I've been worried for my twins who are in their final year of school, how much harder it's going to be for them to find a job at the end of the year.

I don't usually look at the news, but as the situation blew up through March and into April I started checking the news several times a day. As soon as I realised the May craft fair wouldn't go ahead I dropped all the things I was working on for that - stopped making art altogether for a while. I spent more time than ever on instagram and felt a bit jealous of people in lockdown who were producing beautiful artwork, baking, crafting, and more. And I felt overwhelmed by all the free online content that was suddenly on offer, I didn't have time for any of it.

By good luck I reread Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport in April, and decided to have a digital detox in May. No more looking at news apps, no instagram except for half an hour at the weekends. I checked my emails morning and evening and tried to keep off other than that - only going on to check specific things, how to get somewhere on google maps, how to deal with ants on the veggie plants, etc. I don't do facebook, pinterest, or twitter, so they weren't a problem.

Overall, I stuck to it pretty well and it made a huge difference to how much I could get done on my days off - more gardening, more baking and more art. The pictures in this blogpost are artworks I made in May.

In the last week I've been less strict and have been going on YouTube and listening to some podcasts. I think I get bored of the same stuff that goes round and round in my head, and sometimes I do need a distraction and to just chill out and watch an art or gardening video!

I noticed that spending time clicking about online makes my energy and motivation drop. If I get up in the morning and have my brekkie and then get on with something, whether it's gardening or getting the paints out, I'll get so much more done with my day than if I get up and go online. I think to myself I'll just go on instagram for 5 minutes, and an hour later I'm still there checking somebody's blog, or some course that I'm never going to do. And then I feel bad that I've wasted the best bit of the day, and everything goes downhill from there...

So even though it's June tomorrow I won't be going back to my old habits. I think restricting my time online is a way I can take care of myself through the stresses of the coming months.

I hope you're finding ways to be kind to yourself. Best wishes everyone and stay safe.

New year, new little paintings!

I always find the end of the year a bit too hectic for my liking! In November I'm madly getting ready for the xmas craft fair, and once that's out of the way I have to think about xmas presents, putting the tree up, Kriskringles and xmas get togethers...this year I got the flu at the beginning of December and took weeks to really get over it, so xmas was pretty low key at my house (my kids are almost adults, so they didn't care as long as there was good food to eat!).

So thank goodness it's January, life goes at a slower pace now, and I can make time for some painting. I'm working on tiny 4x4 inch canvas boards, so far they are all of evening in the suburbs, based on the odd photos I take now and again - I go out to the washing line, or to water the garden at dusk, and notice the sky is doing something amazing, so I run inside to get my tablet and take a photo or 2. Most of the time the photos are not that great but they help me remember. I'm enjoying working with more reference material after previously working mostly from imagination/memory.

I hope your new year has got off to a good start. Thanks for dropping by :)

I do like Atkinson Grimshaw!

Last year I did a blogpost - Little things that are making me happy- One of those things was an artwork-a-day desk calendar, I loved it so much I got another one this year, and this was the artwork for the day a week ago.

I love the little surprise each day when the new artwork is revealed, and this one made me say 'oh gorgeous'. When I looked more closely I found it was painted by John Atkinson Grimshaw (1836-1893), an artist I'd dismissed as a teenager. Grimshaw was from Leeds (like me), and there are several of his paintings in the Leeds Art Gallery. When I used to visit I'd walk quickly through that room in search of something more 'modern', wishing there was a Matisse or a Gauguin in the collection!!

Grimshaw was a Victorian realist, mostly painting urban scenes often at night or evening, big canvasses in oils of gas lit streets and misty waterfronts, they seemed very old fashioned to me.

This painting is watercolour and gouache on paper, which is different for a start, and it's a country scene not the city. But what grabs me is that wonderful sky and the bare winter tree on the right. It doesn't feel old fashioned to me, if anything it feels timeless, and it makes me want to go out with my paints and capture the sky at dusk and the shape of trees against the sky.

Apparently this painting is in the Leeds Art Gallery collection, I don't know whether it's on display, but hopefully next time I'm in England I'll get to see it in the flesh.

Sketching wet season skies

Hello blog friends..... Wow, it's a long time since I posted. I never meant that to happen, it makes it hard to jump back in. Why now? There's nothing special to write about, but I'll just write something and hopefully get back in the habit.

One of the good things that happened last wet season was sketching regularly at the beach... For years and years I've said I want to paint the wet season clouds, skies can be so dramatic at that time of year. About 10 years ago I bought myself a beautiful moleskine A4 sketchbook for this exact purpose. Needless to say it was too beautiful to use, and is still on my shelf it's plastic wrapper unopened!!

So what made it happen this year? One thing was the terrible weather - it was relentlessly hot and humid with little rain to cool things down. Usually I go to the beach to walk, but I realised I was getting home so drained I was worn out for the rest of the day. I thought I don't have to punish myself like this! But I still wanted to go to the beach so I took my sketchbook and a chair instead!

The other thing that helped was sorting out a small sketching kit that worked for me - an aquabrush (no need for a waterpot and extra brushes) a couple of watercolour pencils and a dried up watercolour palette - I squeezed out tube watercolours onto a small palette rather than taking a big watercolour set.

I went sketching a couple of times a week from Xmas to the end of March,  and made around 30 sketches. They are tiny 10x15cm in a little cheap sketchbook. Some are good and some are not so good, and that's ok because it was really about the process; about spending time looking, about playing with watercolours a medium I rarely use, about going back again and again for another try, and in the end achieving something I'd wanted to do for a long time.

I'm still here!!! And new lino prints!!

I can't believe it's three months since I posted here, I didn't mean to leave it so long.

I haven't done any more of the life book lessons, but by the end of July, and the end of the index card a day challenge, I had some inspiration of my own, and started chiselling my first lino in over a year. I've done 4 new linos so far and started making them into cards. They are all inspired by plants in my garden, ferns and flowers. I've played around with some multicolour reduction prints, as well as hand colouring black and white prints. It was so exciting to peel back that first print, it felt like coming home. I've added a couple of my new cards to my Etsy shop, and I'm hoping to do an Xmas craft fair this year!

I'm trying to keep the ball rolling by making small actions each day - they might seem tiny or pointless but they gradually add up. For example, I got started by going hunting for a packet of coloured card I'd bought over a year ago. The next day I worked out what size I wanted the cards to be and cut up a few sheets, the next day I cut up a few more sheets. It was a few days before I sat down and drew a design onto a piece of lino.

I feel like the universe is giving me a helping hand too. In June I was made permanent part-time at work, so my hours are much more predictable than when I was casual, it makes it much easier to schedule in time for art making.

I feel like there's much more to say, but I'd better post this before another month goes past. I am posting some of my art and garden photos on Instagram @fernyhoughkate, but I don't want to stop blogging... hopefully it won't be three months til the next post!!

Getting stalled and getting restarted

Since I last posted I have ground to a halt with lifebook - the yearlong online art course I'm doing. I did a couple more lessons, week 12

And week 14.

Then I jumped ahead to week 20, because it was a lesson with Mystele Kirkeeng an artist I've followed on Flickr for many years. I was really keen to get some insight into her art making process. It was a lesson with lots of layering and markmaking, using lots of different materials to build up a wonderful abstract underpainting. I loved the freedom of this part of the lesson, but when I got to the point of trying to find a figure in all that wildness I was really resistant to covering up what I'd done and losing it. I worked on 2 pieces, doing one while the other dried. It took weeks to do all the layers, just spending half an hour here and there on it. Then there was a week or 2 of wrestling with myself about the last part of the lesson, and wondering if I was done or not...

By then I'd lost all my momentum, not to mention feeling like I'd failed at the lesson I'd had the highest expectation about.

In the meantime it rolled around to the month of June and the index card a day challenge (ICAD). You can find out all about it at daisy yellow blog or on Instagram @gypsy999. It's a really doable challenge of doing 'something's on an index card everyday through June and July. So 61 cards in the end. It only takes 5 or 10 minutes to doodle a mandala, or collage some bits and pieces from a magazine. Getting back into a creative habit is much more important than the pieces of work.

When my kids were little I used to make time in the evenings to sit at my desk and do a bit of drawing or writing after they went to bed. Now my oldest is 20 - still living at home - and the twins are 15, they all stay up later than me!! And there isn't really a time of quiet - unless I make it happen. It has to be said that the internet especially Instagram can be very distracting/time consuming, and though I don't usually watch a huge amount of tv, I'm hooked on the current season of (Aussie) Masterchef, which is on 5 nights a week and gobbling up too much of my time!!

Well enough of the excuses, here are some of my index cards, many are drawn from paused YouTube and Iview videos. The musicians are from NPR's tiny desk concerts. (I used to dream of coming back in my next life as an opera singer, but now I want to be a Scandinavian violin player!!) The tv shows I've drawn from are Gardening Australia and Endeavour. It'll be interesting to see where I grab inspiration from for the last couple of weeks.

Here's a little thing I wrote about the lifebook lesson that stalled me.

Lesson 20

The artist says
take an emotion
and express it with paint
on paper, then a layer of pastels
then collage, more paint
then wet it and scrape it back.
Hold on, I think,
I'm attached to that patch
of turquoise and that circle of red
and the dark blue that bled
with spidery marks
I've been careful not to
cover up.
All this layering and losing it.
How can I hold it lightly.
How can I take it seriously but carelessly
let it go.

Little things that are making me happy

Here are three little things that are making me happy.

Number 1. An artwork-a-day desk calendar. I bought this half price in the January sales and it gives me so much pleasure. I'm being super strict about not peeping ahead, so everyday there's a little surprise. Some days are an old favourite like this - Vermeer's Girl with a pearl earring - but often it's an artwork I've never seen before by an artist I've never heard of. I love the contrast too, one day a sentimental Victorian painting of a child and her dog, the next day a hard edged abstract piece... I'm also looking forward to when the year is over and I can glue the pictures into journals, cut up, collage and use for inspiration.

Number 2. A pot of flowers at my front door. This time last year I was in England in spring, the tulips were out and blossoms on the trees. We saw some gorgeous gardens in York and at Harlow Carr in Harrogate. When I came home I was discouraged about my overgrown, chaotic, tropical garden. I longed to have an English flower garden. I don't really think that's achievable! But I can have a pot of flowers by the front door and enjoy them every time I go in and out. These are vincas, the come in a range of pinks and reds, right through to dark purples, the are very hardy in Darwin's hot sun, and handle my not very green fingers!!

Number 3. Fruit in the park. The dry season is here,  (that's  a BIG reason to be happy, not a little reason!) The temerature's dropped a few degrees and the humidity is way down. So instead of rushing home from work to collapse under a fan, these days I stop at the park for 5 minutes and eat a mandarin, and try to relax and notice whatever's going on.

The dry season means more things are happening around town. This Saturday is the Seabreeze Festival, with stages and stalls all along Nightcliff foreshore. Then the last weekend in May is Wordstorm the writer's festival. I'm hoping to get to both!

How I'm going with lifebook - April 2018

This is my 2nd year of doing the 'art course' Lifebook, I wasn't sure whether to take it again as last year I pretty much dropped out of the second half of the year. The thing that swayed me was lifelong access to the lessons, so even if I don't complete things through the year I can go back anytime and watch the videos and have a go.

One thing I'm doing differently this year is I'm not visiting the facebook group or posting my work to it - though I am posting on instagram. So I'm less influenced by the work other lifebookers are doing, and I'm not comparing my work to theirs. This year I'm much more on my own journey. Sometimes I follow the instructions closely. Sometimes I watch the first video and then go off on my own tangent and never watch the end of the lessson!! What matters to me is that I'm doing some art and trying new approaches.

I'm lagging behind, I've just started my week 12 piece, when the week 16 lesson is now available, and there are lots of lessons I've missed, some because they needed equipment I don't have- a gelliplate, or encaustic wax materials - some because another lesson grabbed my attention more. Some weeks there are 2 lessons. So as the year unfolds there's a real smorgasbord to choose from, you'd have to be very dedicated to do them all!!

The week 6 lesson was one where I went my own way - A heart full of happy with Tamara Laporte- was a whimsical girl in w/c and markers. The face was in 3/4 pose and I have a photo of my mum in that pose on my desk, so I used that as a reference for my piece, and it turned out very different in style and feeling to the lesson. Sometimes I think I'm just contrary, and that if the lesson had been to work from a photo of a family member I'd have decided to do something completely different.

The week 9 lesson - Friends are the flowers in life's garden with Effy Wild- was one that I followed closely except I left out the lettering.

Week 10 was a lovely lesson with (Aussie!) Laura Horn, laying down a loose background and then drawing in natural elements in ink using a satay stick. I loved the unexpected expressive mark making that reults from drawing with a stick, and I've been inspired to make some cards and do some sketchbook work based on this lesson...it's exciting to feel inspired!!!

The week 11 lesson was Grateful Heart with Annie Hamman. Annie was probably my favourite teacher from last year, and this was another lovely lesson. It's a very simple composition, but the texture and layering bring such richness to the piece. Her philosophy is to allow the piece to unfold, that once you start intuition and the expression of feelings will change the direction the work goes in. As she says - let's be brave and go ahead.