I hope you've had a wonderful long weekend!

Here are a few shots from my studio - a bench on the veranda - there's a still life painting in progress. I've used cut out paper shapes of the plant pot and vase to play around with the composition. It's kind of an imaginary still life, but I did bring a plant in from the garden and a vase from the kitchen for reference.

The painting is for the Don Whyte Framing offcuts show. It's an annual fundraising exhibition which I try to get involved with -tho I blew it last year! If you're in Darwin it opens next Saturday and is always a buying frenzy!! There's a great write up about it here.

Here's a shot of the painting in progress, and the finished work, below.

Wet season garden

Here are a couple of photos of m poor neglected garden. In the wet season I don't have to walk around with the hose, so I forget to walk around at all! The weeds are taking over, some thngs thrive and some get drowned or strangled.

Here's a pawpaw that self seeded - I love the shape of their leaves.

Here's some thai basil, we son't eat much because the kids don't like it, but the purple and white flowers are beautiful (and much more successful than the gazania flowers I did plant - the packet says they grow like weeds, but not in my garden!)

On the front fence are some sword beans or poor man's beans. I got the seeds from the local church/ charity shop/ community garden - people bring produce and seeds to swap on Saturday mornings. I got an envelope of 4 seeds and they have grown like the proverbial bean stalk!! As soon as they sprouted I realized the pots they were in were too small, but I was advised not to disturb the roots, so I cut holes in the pots and planted them pots and all in the ground in the front yard. They have grown like crazy over the fence, over a small tree, and along the gate - threatening to tie the gates shut overnight!! I've had to prune it back a few times so the postman can still get to the letter box! It's producing plenty of flowers, a lot seem to be falling off, but there are a few bean pods. If anyone knows at which stage to pick them and how to cook them, please let me know.

and a garden drawing :)

sneaking time in the studio

After sitting for a while I did get back to those 2 canvases I posted about a few weeks ago. Here they are, I think they're finished now.

I've been trying to do a little bit of painting in the evenings, ( some weeks it happens, some weeks it doesn't). When I paint on Friday mornings I have lots of time, I get everything out on the dining table on the verandah, books and magazines for reference and inspiration, several canvases in various stages of progress, and squirt every colour of the rainbow out on my palette and settle in for a luxurious couple of hours of painting.

When I paint in the evenings it's on the run, maybe 20 minutes between the kids showers and packing lunchboxes. I work on a corner of the bench where some of my art supplies are sored, and just squirt out a couple of colours to work with. I usually work on backgrounds, underpainting fairly loosely. I've always felt that I needed a big chunk of time to get any painting done, but these little sessions are helping to keep the momentum going. Here are 2 more I finished on Friday that have come out of that process.

Coming up next Friday 6th March is the members show opening at DVAA - small works 12x12cm in the small gallery and life drawing in the main gallery. If it's not pouring with rain I'm aiming to be there!!

Walking in the rain

little sketch I'm doing a lino-cut of

On Monday afternoon at 4.30 it was pouring with rain. There's something stubborn in me that wants my walk home no matter what. So I turned down offers of a lift home from work, waited for a lull in the rain and then set off in my raincoat, umbrella, bag packed in a plastic bag. 

It had been raining heavily for a couple of hours, so paths and gutters were awash. Traffic made bow waves, and drenched myself and a couple of brave cyclists as we waited for the traffic lights to change. 

Walking up the hill my arm ached from wrestling my umbrella against the wind and rain, I was hobbled by my wet skirt clinging to my legs, and my feet sliding about in sodden sandals!! It seems like madness even to me - maybe I still think I'm 26 and newly arrived in the tropics, reveling in warm rain after a lifetime of cold grey English drizzle. At any rate it seems necessary to get well and truly drenched at least once a year. 

At home I discovered rain had managed to get into my bag, the only casualty was the sketch book (I carry all the time but rarely use) which was damp right through and half the drawings have washed away - maybe it can have a new life if I gesso over the ruined pages and start again! 

new cards from last months lino prints

Fear of mucking up

Last weekend I did a bit of playful painting on two 5x7 inch canvases. They already had the beginnings of paintings on them that I didn't like, so I worked over the top. I like how the previous layers still come through to a certain extent, adding interest to the paint surface.

The last version of what was on them sat there for a week or two because I didn't like them and decided not to go on with them. Ironically these have sat for a week untouched because I like them too much. I'm scared to work into them and muck them up!!

I've done a foam print version of each, in the hope that it will let me be more playful when I get back to the canvas with paint. I have the idea down on paper now in the foam print, and can do as many different version s as I like working over the prints. It means I don't have to be so tied to that idea when I start painting, I can let it evolve the way it wants to.

I'd love to hear any tips or tricks you use to get around that fear.

new lino prints for cards and a walk at the beach

Here are the little lino prints I carved in the christmas holidays, both are based on paintings I did last year - I love that, when ideas hop from one medium to another.

I had a lovely walk at the beach on Friday evening, glorious wet season clouds!!
And I remembered to take my camera, here are a couple of photos.

One more week of school holidays to go and then back to more normal routines, which is good and bad!! I am looking forward to having my Friday mornings back for painting without interruption!!

Welcome 2015!

The monsoon is here at last, rain has been steadily pouring through the night and morning, frogs are croaking the pool and wheelbarrow are overflowing. Apparently we've had 140mm so far, approx 6 inches of rain. We're under a blanket of thick cloud, this morning it was like waking up in a kind of twilight. The temperature is 24 (centigrade) instead of 34, what a relief!

It's a lovely day to be at home chiseling a lino. This year I want to focus more on art, it's so easy to be sidetracked by demands of work and family...all those chores are not going away, but I can put half an hour of art first rather than doing all the other stuff and seeing if I have the energy for art at the end... I'll be keeping a time diary for a little while to see where I can squeeze more art in!

I'm almost at the end of my two weeks holiday, I've been walking at the beach as always and doing some quick sketches. I've also done a couple of new lino-cuts for cards which I hope to print before next week. Too much of the holiday has been spent at the shops - food shopping, last minute xmas shopping, and then the sales... To balance this out there's been copious amounts of tea drinking and having a little lie down with a good book. I'm reading 'The Silkworm' by Robert Galbraith (J K Rowling) a murder mystery and just loving it.

So I hope you're having a lovely day to start the new year, and hope 2015 is a year of kindness and creativity for us all.