September 3- Waiting….

Waiting.

All my life I waiting- for,

what it is I am not sure.

Every day I feel as though

there’s something more, what- I do not know.

Waiting for Winter to end,

so then comes spring and again

waiting for summer and warm sunshine

while waiting on autumn for colourful times.

Waiting for something to be finished cooking,

spending my time for recipes looking.

Waiting for the washing cycle to end,

so I can hang out a load and start again.

Waiting for inspiration for some art,

waiting on knowing where to start.

what supplies to use today?

Just let loose and have a play!

Seems to me I spend my life,

waiting for something, Oh! I’m a wife!

I guess thats what my job description is-

Maybe I should have stayed a Ms!

#poetember

#sketchaton I’ve always wanted to have a try at painting on one these four season paintings. Clearly I needed more practise lol

And then we have #29facesonjunk todays Coffee Bloke! Is on a recycled coffee box. I am amazed at him! I rarely do men, they’re hard! Not telling you women anything new there! But sometimes I just hold the pencil and go along for the ride, and look what fell out of my pencil today!

I was like “Whaaat?!”

He’s good for me! Clearly he’s not technically perfect but it’s not about perfection for me, its about setting a goal and smashing that goal outta the park! And as one art teacher told us “If you want perfection, take a photo!”

I am SO happy with this guy, no idea who he is I found him on Pinterest!

Happy September!

Today is the start of spring! Yay! Winter is over! In this months arty challenges, we are focusing on #poetember #sketchathon as well and also #blogfest. But this post is about #poetember.

So I am going to be attempting to write poetry, I can’t tell you its going to be good, but some of them are ok! I started ahead of time to prepare because Im slow at writing poetry! But to start off the month I thought I would share with you one of my favourite poems.. there are a few favourites and I’ll share them throughout this month as well.

Today since Grand baby number five who is just four weeks old Rafiki Jack Hine Is coming to visit I thought I’d share with my my favourite poem by Ruth Hulburt Hamilton called “Song for the fifth child” I have five children so this has been my mantra throughout the years!

Rafiki Jack Hine- born 29th July 2018. With his proud Grandpa!

Song for a Fifth Child

◦ by Ruth Hulburt Hamilton

Mother, oh Mother, come shake out your cloth,

Empty the dustpan, poison the moth,

Hang out the washing and butter the bread,

Sew on a button and make up a bed.

Where is the mother whose house is so shocking?

She’s up in the nursery, blissfully rocking. Oh, I’ve grown shiftless as Little Boy Blue

(Lullaby, rockaby, lullaby loo).

Dishes are waiting and bills are past due

(Pat-a-cake, darling, and peek, peekaboo).

The shopping’s not done and there’s nothing for stew

And out in the yard there’s a hullabaloo

But I’m playing Kanga and this is my Roo.

Look! Aren’t her eyes the most wonderful hue?

(Lullaby, rockaby, lullaby loo).

The cleaning and scrubbing will wait till tomorrow,

For children grow up, as I’ve learned to my sorrow.

So quiet down, cobwebs. Dust go to sleep.

I’m rocking my baby and babies don’t keep.

Okay time to go cuddle a child! I’ll be back later with my poetry and drawing!

Two pieces today!

I forgot to tell you in yesterdays post about the newest challenge I am doing. I find when I schedule myself to do something I tend to get them done. So each day in my journal is a check list of things I want to get done at the moment it looks like this….

1. Bible study 15 minutes (with a little box that I can tick off as its done)
2. Drawing- 15 minutes
3. Water- 3 x 800mls= 2.4 litres
4. 10,000 steps
5. Shedding the weight Meditation
6. Read at least one chapter of current book.

So it seems silly to some people but for me if I don’t hold myself accountable I will put these things aside, and so what if I don’t read a chapter of my book? Well, I won’t finish it and then I wont hit my end of the year reading goal “Read 40 Books”

Its been said that if you do a thing for 21 days it forms a new habit, so by scheduling these things and ticking them off I am helping myself create new habits. I am so bad at drinking water, so that is an important one. I also track this on my Fitbit app! Shedding the weight meditation I am doing with Oprah and Deepak Chopra, its to help us change our thinking and to shed the weight by shedding thoughts and feelings that are negative and I am enjoying it, but by the time I have time to sit down and do the meditations, sometimes I am sleepy and cant be bothered, but then I don’t want to look at this list before bed and see that I haven’t checked it off! So I force myself to do it, it ends Sunday and I’ve only missed one day which I did the next day anyways! And the drawing reminder, well, research shows that if you do something for as little as 15 minutes a day you improve at that thing, and who doesn’t want to improve their drawing skills? Bible study is pretty self explanatory as well. I do an in home bible study afternoon each Wednesday but if I don’t do any for the other six days its a bit pointless.

So this week I found a new challenge, my Bloke says “She loves a good challenge” its called the “100 days project” and the goal is to chose anything at all, to do for 💯 days and take a photo and post it on Instagram with the hash tag #100daysproject I figured that while I am doing this art course and posting that online I might as well make it a little bit more exciting by making it a challenge!

Speaking of art… today I finished two pieces, both of which I don’t actually love, but I didn’t avoid them, or put them off, or worse still skip them! I did them and I am moving on!

Lesson 13- Teacher- Toni Burt, Subject- Berthe Morisot. It was a collage piece and I felt like I had gone back to preschool, having said that her face turned out really well and I loved that! I called her “Alice the music teacher” because I used sheet music for her dress and hat and the song was something about April!

Work in progress.. I am super happy with her face which was a limited colour palette in pastels.

I lost momentum with her dress and so just gave up.. isn’t that just what some of the impressionists did?!

Then lesson 14- Teacher- Jun Toyama, Subject- Nicolai Fechin. We used charcoal, I don’t actually mind charcoal its messy but its also nice because you cant be too fussy. We were supposed to use a live model, I didn’t and Im not sharing the photo of who it was supposed to be, it’s disappointing maybe I’ll redo it sometime!

I still need A LOT of practise with my angles! But like everything, practise will help me improve!

So thats me for this Thursday! This also means that I am now officially up to date with “Lets Face it” next lesson gets released on Monday, so that means, Friday, Saturday and Sunday I will work on “Soul brush sessions” and “Better drawing bootcamp” both of which are course run by Carrie on her website Artist Strong 💪 both of these course are run Free, so maybe you want to have a look!

I almost forgot to tell you about another challenge on Facebook, its an art group called “Weekend Challenges” each weekend we are given a photo and we have to recreate it as close as we can, or alternatively anyway we want. I’ll probably give that a go tomorrow, watch this space…..

Art- week 12’s lesson.

You know that “Evil inner critic” you know the one!

That voice that is inside you telling you “You can’t do that or this or the next thing” I know I am not the only one who has one. Well I know mine personally, up close and dangerously. I’ve listened to her through out my life and even now she’s dead I still hear her, there are several key phrases she likes to repeat to me, but just lately, and I think mostly it’s to do with my Bible study and councilling I’ve been having, that “Evil Inner Critic” is starting to loose her power!

Now when “She” starts in and starts telling me “You can’t do that!” I am starting (at 50 years of age!) to reply back, “Well maybe I can’t do that but I won’t know if I don’t try!” And by finally talking back to her and then actually doing what she tells me I can’t! I find I am stepping put of my comfort zone and into a whole new level of ME!

Last week was a classic example… with doing the Mary Cassatt piece, I decided to use the real Mary’s face as my model, I know parts of it were wrong, and sure enough in comes “Evil Inner critic” to rudely point out “That chins not right, paint over it and do it different” and then “There’s something wrong with her eyes” and so finally I put my paint brush down and walked away, nope I didn’t argue with her or get upset like in the olden days, I walked away, for quite a few hours, I told myself “I am waiting for the paint to dry” maybe I was and maybe I was running, whatever it worked, because when I went back, I could see what the problem was and I had an idea of how to correct it. In the mean time, I had shared a photo of the piece in Carrie’s group “Artist Strong” on Facebook, and complained how I had ruined her. Carrie replied ” it’s closer than you think” which gave me courage to have another look and see where I could improve it. The best bit about that day was when my cousin who hadn’t known I was using Mary’s face as the model, saw the painting of the Girl in the blue hat which Mary had painted and we were to recreate and the photo of Mary, my cousin asked “Did you take these two photos and morph them into one!” Why yes I did! Which means that my painting must actually have resembled Mary somewhat! I was so excited! It means that someone else had seen what I had set out to do.

So now fast forward to this week, Lesson 12 B was with teacher Tanya Cole another Aussie lady, and her subject was Monet and so in her lesson she wanted us to try and recreate a flower loosely like Monet did his flowers and then to add a portrait of Monet. I felt the prickles of apprehension run down my spine and then I recalled my cousin mentioning the “Morphing” of the two photos in the other lesson, so I wondered if I could do it again. I think, by George, I’ve done it!

Tanya used a hibiscus flower and a portrait of young Monet in a black beret. I like hibiscus 🌺 they remind me of tropical islands, but when I read “Monet” immediately I put him with water lilies. My husband took me and my Mother-in-law on a “Date Day” and we went to see the Monet exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria a few years back, and it was beautifully set up, but I remember that I was so so so disappointed at seeing these famous paintings up close. They were terrible up close, some art is much better from a far, his edges were unfinished and some of the brush strokes were lumpy and messy, I left there disappointed. Then speaking to people and learning about his failing eye sight and the whole “Impressionist” movement I eased up on him a bit. Doing this course has helped me ease up on him a bit more.

Anyways, So I decided to deviate from Tanya’s painting and do my own, Kara tells us to put a bit of ourselves into each piece of work we do. So I did! I painted water lilies and an older I think more handsome Claude Monet, not my painting is more handsome but that Claude was the older he got! So here is my version of week 12 with Tanya Cole and Claude Monet!

He turned out better than I had hoped! The water lilies leave a lot,to be desired BUT its impressionist after all!

Sorry it’s been a while

Here’s a quick update on my art! It’s going amazing! I am so happy with how well it’s going.

Lesson 8 was”Lady of Shallot”Teacher was Deanna Strachan- Wilson. Subject- John Williams Waterhouse loved it!!

I love how sad the Lady of Shallot looks my favourite poem, song and painting.

Next lesson number 9- Teacher Juna, Subject- Rembrandt and we used Charcoal.

I was a little disappointed with how she turned out until l looked at her again the next day. That chin! Beautiful!

Lesson 10- Teacher was Sharon Harkness-Dobler. Subject- Henry Ossawa Tanner, and l copied Henry’s original painting and l had a ball! I love this one!

Henry’s original painting on my computer screen, Sharon’s on the wall in yellow and mine next to it! First time doing a still life!

Lesson 11- Impressionists are here!

Teacher- Kara Bullock, Subject- Mary Cassatt, loves this lesson too and lm going to frame her!

Mary Cassatt l used her face to recreate her painting, happy with how she turned out. I almost gave up!

And then there was lesson 12- Teacher- Lucy Chen, Subject- Matisse we had to do a Fauvism style painting a selfie! Not my favourite!!

I don’t love this but l did it. I’m finding when l push past “I don’t like it” l feel prouder of myself for having done it!

So that brings us up to date on my “Let’s Face it” course!

I am currently away camping in Brim Victoria, we are doing the Art Silo Tour, it’s over a 200 kilometres stretch and the unused unloved wheat silos are being transformed as giant canvases! Here is the Brim one!

I’ll come back tomorrow and post some more of them.

Happy Easter everyone and spare a thought for the reason behind the season. Jesus died for our sins.

This week in art…

I only got two days of art done this week. But l was so happy with what l did.

Lesson seven was Carrie Brummer and she was presenting Dorothea Therbusch, to get into understanding Dorothea’s work Carrie had us do a “Selfie” l don’t even do good “Selfies” with a camera let alone trying to paint myself so l put it off and avoided it and dreaded it. I had promised Carrie l wouldn’t cheat by tracing myself which would have been easier because oh gosh was it hard!

I tried to disassociate myself from the piece telling myself “here is an oblong shape (nose!) then this shape has a round bit and an oval bit (eye)” etc etc but then l would slip and say “Gosh my mouth is a weird shape in this photo” l got to a point where l thought l was done so l asked my husband (Quality control, engineer, design Bloke) “to have a look” he points out in his nicest way that the angle of my cheek was not quite right, so l handed him the pencil and he adjusted that. Then l asked him to look at whatever else and then finally we decided that the eyes were wrong so l rubbed those out and re did that. Then he re did the whole mouth 👄 finally we were both “happy enough” with it and so l decided to colour it. Carrie did hers in lead pencil but l wanted a splash of colour, so here is my version!

Looking at it now l can see errors but considering l was avoiding this lesson lm going to call this done.

Then lesson 8- I’ve been waiting for this one for ages “The Lady of Shallot” teacher was Deanna Strachan Wilson and subject was John William Waterhouse. I immersed myself in this lesson l listened to the song by Loreena McKennit which has always been my favourite and l love the painting too, l was surprised at how easily she fell out of the pencil! I used acrylic paint for this one Deanne used mix media but l was so happy with this step l stopped! So here is MY “Lady of Shallot”

I’m still trying to decide whether to add the written element which l like on Deanna’s version.

I also brought myself a frame and framed lesson number one!

And finally here is my little art gallery. I never put my own art up in the wall but this is my Corner and so here is my gallery!

Great week of art!

I seem to have found my stride and since I’ve started my class, I’m progressing nicely. I think in my last post I told you I had skipped lesson three with Carrie Brummer it looks hard, I will go back, and that I was eager to get to lesson eight “The Lady of Shallot” I could of course have skipped straight to lesson eight, but I impose rules upon myself and insisted that I work in order.

So today I finished module 1- Renaissance period, the final lesson in that module was with Lora Murphy who does encaustic wax paintings. Another rule I’ve imposed upon myself is not to buy anymore art supplies until I’ve used all the ones I have. So far I have used some acrylic paints and acrylic ink, pastels, charcoal and even oil paint, I am not a fan of oils, but I had some so I used them. Listening to Kara who said “The materials are what she is using and are suggestions, use whatever you want and add whatever you want to own the painting as your own” so I did!

I really loosened up and so what if mine wasn’t as good as hers, its MINE! So here is what Ive been working on this week!

This is Lora Murphy’s lesson on Botticelli, we used a piece of his “Birth of Venus” to try and do Venus. Lora did hers in encaustic wax, I did mine is acrylic paints. Lesson learnt, centre your drawing better!

This is Kara’s lesson number six, we worked on Albrecht Durer’s style of sketching out his model in charcoal and then he would take that back to his studio and paint it at his leisure. The image is not a Durer painting, just an image that Kara liked and I liked it too so I did it as well. All in charcoal and since she told me to “own it!” I did and added a little coloured pastel. Lesson learnt- I like charcoal and pastels, but gosh they are messy!

And here is my girl gallery! Lesson one is the blue dress, lesson two is DaVinci, lesson three I skipped for now, lesson four was a failure in oil paint, so I added pastel and kind of rescued her, lesson five Venus and lesson six PomPom hair. It’s been a very productive week and Im so happy with what I’ve created and even more pleased, that while I ignored my art for more than 12 months, it never left me!

Life drawing- week two… new attitude

So this week was week two of “life drawing class” and after having had a week to think about it I decided that I had to go again for a few reasons, mainly to get out of the  house and do some art and also to get past the shock and horror I felt the first week.. pushing myself out of my comfort zone.

I’m going to let you in on a little secret.. I have anxiety issues. I rarely go out of the house on my own, I know when this started I know why it started and I’ve had counselling to help with it, but unless I am very firm with myself I can stay in the house for weeks and never leave. So I felt like I needed to push myself to go to draw naked people again.. PLUS as a side bonus I was emailing the class teacher and he gave me some great tips and hints and I felt like I wasn’t totally hopeless at figurative drawing..

So this week I went with a better attitude or maybe I was just more prepared…

We did the usual one minute sketches which were ordinary, then the five-minute ones our teacher Sean shuffled things up a bit..

One we had to draw without looking at the page… hard!

One we had to draw without looking OR lifting our tool (charcoal for me)

One we had to draw with our non dominant hand which I “thought” was going to be impossible and which was actually more fun than I imagined, and it happened to be the best piece of the night I did. That was a 10 minute piece.

Next we had a 15 minute sitting so I started off with my left hand and then swapped to my right and I still think the side with my left hand is better.. I think I am going to explore that option more.

We had a female model this week Bronwyn. Some how drawing her felt less intimidating than the male.. it’s just all in my head I’m sure.. or am I turning into a prude in my “old age” LOL

This is the piece I did with my left hand I felt that her torso was more in proportion than previous pieces which made me really happy. I still have to work on proportions A L O T! But Sean tells me that somewhere along the way about week 3 or so it should “click into place” in the meantime I can practice at home if I want to. It’s more like if I have time to!

 

So I started this one-off with my left hand and then switched to my right hand, this is my pin-up piece of the week, I know she’s still not in proportion but there’s something about her that I love! Her legs are not long enough and her heads too big, but she’s a bit like me cute and quirky!!

Sean tells us he has some more fun learning techniques coming up and so for now I will keep going to life class on Mondays

Almost as soon as I stand at the easel I can feel my shoulders start to relax and my mind goes blank and I am in a little bubble of seeing and drawing and getting filthy with charcoal and I realize I am in BLISS… there’s really no other word for it but BLISS… It’s like a shock when our teacher Sean tells us “that’s it ladies and gentlemen, see you next week” it’s a let down with a thump!

bliss (blĭs) n.

1. Extreme happiness; ecstasy.

2. The ecstasy of salvation; spiritual joy.

Phrasal Verb: bliss out Slang.. To go into a state of ecstasy.

YES!! See I did choose the right word.. its my spiritual joy to do this art class…it’s my freedom from the house, it’s my freedom from children and I am MISSING it so much. Having so much hands on contact with my grand babies is great but I really miss Me time which equals Art time!

More art!

I didn’t really realize how MUCH I’ve missed my art.

Yesterday my cousin and I had an art class, it was on “drawing faces” we both didn’t know what to expect so we went in with an open mind.

It was very loosely drawn and I’ve realized I am a bit more regimented… so I struggled to follow in the artists style.. but anyways here they are ….

This one was where we had to take three different faces and do one eye of each face.. I had “thought” I was OK at eyes and then I realized I really am NOT... or am I just that out of practice I need to work harder. I spoke to the artist at our lunch break and she said “keep an art journal with you at all times and when the babies are quiet for a few minutes draw something, anything, just draw” My number 1 daughter gave me a nice “type” of art journal for Christmas so I will take that with me.

Next practice was, we had to do three different faces.. just pick any of the ones on the sheets she gave us and draw, be quick! she says that when we take a long time we “over think” the process and then our brains start telling us “Oh that’s terrible it doesn’t look like an eye!” yes! I am guilty of that!

Next we had to do this “Grandma” and we had to draw it and then paint over it with Solvent which takes off the shine and blends the lead around and basically smooths things out a bit.. she is the one I am most happy with. The main purpose of this piece was to show us that there are very darks and medium darks and light darks and then lights… and I loved this one.

More darks and shadows, she wanted us to do this “surfer dude” and then add only two little bits of colour but not “Colour it in” we had to choose a warm and a cool colour.

This was done in Charcoal and chalk pastels I discovered I don’t much like Charcoal. This was a big piece and we sprayed it with fixative to stop it smudging, and had to lay them on the floor to dry… well, some one went home with mine.. so he is now gone forever.. as much as I didn’t like him, I didn’t want to NOT have him. I suppose on one hand it’s a good excuse to do him or something similar again, better than he was..

Our final piece was a small child, taken from a larger painting, she was an adorable little girl and we used pencil charcoal and pastels with solvent, I hated it and her!!

Here she is and above her is the teachers piece

 

here is my sad version!

By the time we got to paint her, we were tired and it had been a long day.  I will definitely attempt these excersizes again in my own time and place.

Next art class.. well I am excited to announce my cousin and I have joined a Monday night art class, so each Monday night from 7.00 pm- 9.00 pm, we will be doing “Life model drawing” I’ve never done anything like that and it’s $15.00 per class and everything is supplied, so I a excited to get started with that.

I’ll be back to report on that! These three faces equal number 3,4 and 5 of the 29 faces for February.

 

Yay! I did some art!

I had forgotten all about my art, okay, well, not really I put it out of my mind because I am so busy I feel guilty for not doing it.. so I pretend it doesn’t exist, stupid really.

I even went as far as to delete my Facebook art page because it was making me feel bad and sad and lazy… who needs that stress? Then on Facebook I realized it was that time of the year again “29 faces” (February only has 28 days most years so being the shortest month its a good month to start a habit, last year I did the whole month) the idea is to draw, paint, sketch whatever you do.. a face a day.. it’s a little thing but it’s great for me to get back into the habit.. so I got out my pencil and I started. I didn’t realize how bad I was.. how not using it I was loosing it!

So I decided that since I am starting “afresh” why not experiment with different supplies and styles..

This one.. I did with Oil Pastels and pencil.. and gold glitter..it’s a copy of Klimt’s “Golden tears“

Then I decided to go back to the Acrylic paints.. and come up with this Klimt “Adele” but in his painting Adele has her hair up..

Neither of these are my “usual” style if I even have one, but these pushed me out of my comfort zone and so I liked that!

I havent started day 3 or 4 yet I started late, by accident I saw another arty friend had started and realized “oops I missed the start” only by a day but now I am running on American time a day behind. ‘ll get those two done today after my Doctors appointment.