Red reflections

This is a another study of a pond, with lilies and red reflections after one of Stan's (natureluv from Flickr) photos. I read that Degas sometimes steamed his pastels to create an impasto effect. Well, I tried to steam them in my bamboo steamer on the stove. It wasn't a success. They just crumbled and were too dry still. Seems like something needs to be added in the form of a binder. The hunt is on.

Pastel on Canson Mi-Tientes Tex, 40 cms x 27cms.

Water lilies.

I was blown away when Stan, aka-natureluv from Flikr gave me permission to use his photos as a reference. Still shaking head in disbelief. His photos are some of the most beautiful photos I've seen. My favorites are of his ponds, the water and reflections with light playing with the ripples. He is like Monet with a camera. Wonderful mind blowing images. Thankyou so very much Stan.

At the moment I'm enjoying the immediacy of pastels over oils. No mixing nor cleaning up after of brushes and palettes (only pastel dust). No waiting for layers to dry. So I continue my learning.
This pastel of water lilies I prefer to think of as a study.

Pastel after one of Stan, natureluv's photos. On Canson-Mi-Tientes Tex, 40 cms x 27cms.

Willows at Hever Castle

I worked on this pastel yesterday for about 3 hours. I did a water color under painting, laying in the darks and left some of the water color free of pastel. I didn't do as many layers as in previous pastels and didn't feel the need to fix any of the layers. I was trying for an impressionistic feel.
I see this piece in my minds eye as an oil, big, 6' x 4 1/2...maybe even bigger.
The reference photo can be found here http://paintmyphoto.ning.com/photo/hever-14

The photo is by fellow artist Michael Yates, Hever Castle, Kent, Uk. Michael has some stunning photos. Thanks for sharing them Michael.
Pastel on Canson Mi-Tientes, 45 cms x 35 cms.

New Growth

I recently went through Kinglake, a town which suffered horrendously from the bushfires of 2009. The fire in this area was the most destructive, with over 1,800 houses destroyed and 159 lives lost in the region.
On Saturday 7 February 2009, as the day progressed, all-time record temperatures were being reached, 46.4 °C (115.5 °F) in Melbourne, the hottest temperature ever recorded in an Australian capital city and humidity levels dropped to as low as 6%. The bushfires destroyed townships, homes and 173 people died.

On my recent trip through the beautiful hills around Kinglake I felt an eeriness and a profound sadness. The bush is recovering. Blackened trees are bursting with life again. Green shoots and leaves are sprouting from the trunks, hugging the trunk like fuzzy woolly sweaters. There are no branches...just green woolly, fuzzy; blackened trunk hugging foliage.

It is this remarkable, beautiful new growth that reminded me of an artist, a sculptor and painter who made his home and gallery at Marysville, Bruno. Bruno spent most of his adult life creating his art and sculpture garden. There are many life size pieces of work and there are over 115 pieces. These works are beautiful, some whimsical, the fruits of life and the essence of being, stories told through expressions and a connectedness to the environment abound in Bruno's work.

Bruno lost his home and gallery in the fires. Marysville was nearly obliterated. Premier Brumby described: 'There's no activity, there's no people, there's no buildings, there's no birds, there's no animals, everything's just gone. So the fatality rate will be very high.' 34 fatalities were eventually confirmed in the Marysville area, with all but 14 of over 400 buildings destroyed.

Bruno and his family were so very lucky to have survived the fire.

Bruno took photos on the day him and his family were allowed to return to the sculpture garden.
These photos can be found here http://www.brunosart.com/aftermath.html
Unbelievably around 60% of Bruno's sculptures were intact and some were repairable.

On Bruno's web site you can find images of the gardens and his sculptures before the fires.
http://www.brunosart.com/index.html
He also writes of the aftermath and the rebuilding. There is one particular image of the aftermath of a sculpture of a man's head laying in the ashes with his mouth open in only what could be called a scream. Brings tear to my eyes.

Bruno with the support of family, friends and the community has reopened his gardens 10am-5pm, 7 days a week. A truly remarkable story of new growth.

Bruno's Art and Sculpture Garden

51 Falls Rd

Marysville VIC 3779, Australia

Get Directions

(03) 5963 3513

An online Artists's Community

I love reading about artist's lives. Who they painted with, who they had lessons with, how their relationships or lack of influenced and or enabled them to work.
Artist's colonies and communities, where techniques and passions are shared are an important part of an artist's life. From lessons, to schools of art with different schools of thought, to working plein air in groups, to working in shared studios, to artist's retreats, artists-in-residence programs and finally, to online communities.

This post is about an extraordinary on-line community that sprung up via a blog.
The blog is http://differentstrokesfromdifferentfolks.blogspot.com/
by Karin Jurick a prolific and talented artist. This blog isn't Karin's main artwork site, however, it's a blog with a difference.

Karin began the blog September 2008 when her dog Jack passed away. She put online an image of Jack and posted a challenge for artists to paint Jack. 56 artists took up the challenge and their work and tribute to Jack can be found here
http://differentstrokesfromdifferentfolks.blogspot.com/2008/09/photo-of-week-my-jack.html
I found this so endearing. Most of us have loved and lost special furry friends and in some way artists from around the world came together and acknowledged Karin's pain and wished her well by painting their tribute of Jack. A community had sprung up.

Each week Karin would post a photo and artists would take up the challenge. For 54 weeks artists took up Karin's challenge. December's challenge of 2009, a repeat of 2008's December challenge; Karin asked artists to email her a photo of themselves. In return they would be emailed a photo of a fellow artist to paint. 180 portraits were produced and are online. It would have been an enormous logistical effort undertaken by Karin, of co-ordinating, emailing and posting all the artwork. In January 2010 Karin needed to focus on her work for up coming exhibitions and so informed everyone that she needed time out from 'Different Strokes for Different Folks'.

In February Karin writes...'Oh my dear God. It's not every day I wake up to snow and never have I woken up to 119 different portraits of myself...'.
How did this come about, well, Jill Polsby had secretively contacted the online community of artists, setting the challenge to paint Karin's portrait as a form of appreciation for her time and effort. Imagine opening those 119 emails. Totally blows me away!

Fixing the darks

Avenue of Trees:- Pastel, 38x27 cm's after one of fellow artist Robyn Lovelock's photos. Photo can be found at http://paintmyphoto.ning.com/

Robyn has some sensational photos of the Australian landscape. Thanks Robyn for sharing them.

My learning journey: to plan more before just jumping in. So truer a word has never been spoken as 'we learn by our mistakes'. I just read Richard McKinley's recent post http://pastelpointersblog.artistsnetwork.com/ about fixing the darks, just the darks. This is why I have more layers than I wished for because I fixed after laying in the darks and some lights...well the lights took off and darkened and needed to be subdued and re-lightened and so I ended up with more layers than I hoped but a lesson was learnt.

Bright- Victoria, Australia.

'Bright':- Victoria. Pastel based on one of fellow artist, Robyn Lovelock's photos of Bright (a country town In Victoria, Australia). The photo can be found at http://paintmyphoto.ning.com/
It's on Canson Mi-Tientes Tex, 30x23 cm's.
It's a start of learning the layering process to achieve the illumination I desire. Also, in a small way it's a token of my respect for Clara Southern and her women contemporaries.

Earlier this year I bought on ebay a set of Rembrandt soft pastels for $80. What was remarkable about this purchase was, it was the set of 225 which came in its own beautiful wooden box. This set of 225 retails new for around $1, 400 Australian dollars...I couldn't believe my luck. I wondered at the time why people weren't bidding. Other pastel sets were being bid on. The photos intrigued me. It was because the photos weren't very clear and in parts looked like each pastel was half used or missing and that two sections were empty because the whole tray was a flat dull lemon color. I googled Rembrandt pastels and searched till I found an image of the pastels with their wrappers on...yes, the photo was blurred making the tray look empty. The pastel box wasn't mostly empty is was almost full! Only one other person bid and so for $80 Australian dollars I became the owner of a set of nearly 225 Rembrandt pastels. I remember opening the wooden box and gasping each time I removed a wooden layer revealing colors all lined up in hues and tones and sighing with content and excitement.

My excitement was somewhat dulled the first time I used them. I felt like a fish out of water. I usually paint in oils. These were dry; was I drawing, was I painting, was I achieving anything? I felt awkward, flailing, like learning to tread water. I was only using pastel paper which comes in pad form and doesn't have much tooth; a term I wasn't even aware of yet. Will upload an image in another post. So I begun a foray, a ravenous soak of pastel blogs, art forums, looked at images, watched youtube clips, subscribed to the pastel journal, went to more exhibitions. My passion was roused and I felt as if I had come across a latent, at times lazy, vibrant, passionate, calming, forgiving and exciting lover who came in the colors of the rainbow and left a mess in my studio, a dusty mess at that, a love affair had begun.

A month or so ago I bought some serious pastel papers/cards with tooth, some Art Spectrum, a velour one and a few Canson Mi-Tientes Tex. The difference is beyond belief. The tooth allows a process of layers to evolve, creating contrast and depth. I was in love.

I also found and joined a sensational site http://paintmyphoto.ning.com/ a site where photographers share their photos with artists. No more pulling out hair looking at photos on flickr, unable to use the images because of copyright infringement. I now had a plethora of wonderful images, I could use freely at my finger tips. It's with immense gratitude to Roy Simmons for establishing the site and to the many photographers and artists who make up its community.