Wendy gave me some flowers

She gave them to me because I photographed some of her art work and put it on a CD for a gallery. She brought them round & said ' here's something for you to draw'. Don't ask me what sort of flowers they are, because I don't know. They are different from each other too - see the leaves?

Don't be confused. There are two Wendys. Me and Other Wendy.

So I drew them. I haven't drawn flowers for a long time. I used to paint flowers a lot, before I went to art school. I painted them because they are beautiful. You can see some of them on my old website on this page. At art school they have a down on flowers - they prefer art to be innovative. Sussie said, what's wrong with art being beautiful'. I agree.

I'm not going back to painting flowers. I've learnt to look around me and find beauty in a lot of other things since then, but I do think that to decide flowers are 'uncool' and turn your back on them as a subject for painting is just being pretentious.

Something architectural - urban landscape

These two drawings are from my local area. I plan to paint some urban landscapes and these are pre-work, from some photos I took. I can't seem to mount the colour cartridge in my printer, so I printed the photos in black and white, and drew them in pencil, just to start getting a handle on the subject.The first image is a disused factory that was being used as artists' studios, but is currently being upgraded. I think it's interesting how I inadvertently got some three-point perspective happening on this image. I wasn't worrying too much about the verticals, just the tonal values.

The second image is the back of the shops on the main street of Newtown. I've gone round the back alleys taking many photos of urban landscape, and plan to paint some acrylics.

Casper

Last night when I got home from teaching at the evening college, Casper sat on the end of the bed. On Monday, at the supermarket, I found a pack of 'magic pencils' and I drew him with one of them. I really like the colours in this one. And I'm pleased with the drawing because it looks just like Casper.

Red on red

I decided to continue with the theme of drawing in one colour only. I bought this red chilli to make a curry, and I thought I'd better draw it before I chopped it up. I found a piece of red paper to sit it on.

I am using a normal cartridge paper visual diary, so it only takes so much media before it gives up. I was using watercolour pencils, and I would have liked to put more colour on, so instead, I wet it with my Japanese brush with the water well in the handle. I also sprayed it with workable fixative, but it still won't allow me to put more pigment on the page. I hope to finish this book by Christmas and then I will have a Stonehenge visual diary.

Drawing on black

Oh I wish I knew where my white charcoal pencil could be!

That was going to be my media of choice for this drawing of my frying pan on my black Matisse apron (thanks David). I found some Conte crayons, and used a white one of those instead. Now it will be on my mind till I find my charcoal pencils.

Sun Triad experiment

Over the last two days I painted this A5 ( about 5.5 x 7.5") watercolour, using the 'sun triad' from Dory Kanter's book Art Escapes . I used EDM Challenge no 18, which is the view from my kitchen window. It was a challenge, all right, because it was primarily greys and I was painting them with magenta, cerulean blue & new gamboge.

The drawing is not wonderful and the watercolour looks too played-about-with, but I was concentrating on getting the tonal values right. The brightest part of the scene was the tin roof.

The house I painted is 'across the paddock'. Although I'm only 4km from the absolute centre of Sydney, there's been an empty block there for years. The house that was there burnt down long before I came to live here in 1984.

Painting with Acrylics - new camera phone

These are works in progress, done by students in the class I am teaching at Sydney Community College. Last week I bought a camera phone. I had been thinking for a long time that I need a camera to carry with me - my other digital camera has a large Leica lens, so it's not for carrying in the handbag.

Last week I saw a student walk out the door with a newly finished Diebenkorn style painting - a really GREAT one, and I instantly regretted not having the camera. I bought this camera on Friday 'learnt'

it over the weekend, and took photos last night. It was a small class last night, but they all had two

paintings on the go and were making amazing progress.

Star Tassel book

This is the little book we did some extra skills for, during the Star Tunnel Book class. The students were so quick that we needed something else to do. We did another, more accurate way of making a concertina, and we each made a pop-up panel. Now they should be able to go home and make their own version of this book.

Star Tunnel Books

Last night in the class I was teaching at Artwise we finished our Star Tunnel books. They looked fabulous in all the gorgeous colours the students had chosen.

We even finished early enough to learn some more skills to make another version of this structure, and the students were given another pattern so that they can make it at home.

I'll be posting a picture of that one soon, - as soon as I've taken the photos. I took 47 photos of the star tunnel books last night, including some action shots of the works in progress.

We plan to do some more classes soon with new interesting and unusual structures.

Drawing something white

The idea to draw something white came from the wetcanvas 'Artwork from Life' forum's Scavenger Hunt. I find it fascinating how much colour you can put in an object and still have it 'read' as white.

Watercolour pencils, no water.

Draw something square

This is my response to the challenge to draw something square. It is the square jar that normally holds my parmesan cheese to go with my pasta, but as I'm trying to be 'good' and cheese is 'bad,' I washed it out last night and it will have to find a new function.

Watercolour pencils but no water.

Two blank journals

These are two new blank journals that Rosemarie from Artwise Amazing Papers taught me to make. They have soft covers and beautiful cream pages. In the case of the gold one, the endpapers are the same chiyogami paper as the cover. The green one has a green Florentine design Italian endpapers. The hardest thing about making these books was to get the slits in the cover to line up with the slits in the endpapers. Worth it though. They're lovely to hold.

New Matisse primary colours

I'm really on a roll with using triads to paint watercolours. Two weeks ago I was given all seventeen new colours of Matisse acrylics and I'm still trying them out. Three of the new colours are

• Primary Red


• Primary Blue


• Primary Yellow

This is what I've used to paint this little 'watercolour'. It was on a Montval watercolour pad 4" x 6", but I've cut it down, because I wished I'd zoomed in more. Chillies, red curry paste, and baby green peppercorms - something hot.

Matisse acrylics can be bought in the USA through Jerry's Artarama, though I doubt if they have the new colours yet. The press release only came out two days ago in Australia. There are several new transparent colours and they are just AMAZING for glazing.

Matisse acrylic paints & Micron Pen.

Primary triad - my herb pot

I don't consider myself a watercolour artist. In my new book "Art Escapes," the author uses three colours only - the 'primary triad.' I used this triad to paint this small watercolour this morning. The colours work well together I think, so I will buy the 'sun triad' next.

This was prompted by an online challenge to draw my herbs & spices. Please note, although it is not quite a faithful realistic reproduction of what I saw, I did draw the weeds.

Primary triad watercolours & Rotring pen.