Goodbye Not Forgotten

I am loving making digital collages! This little goodbye is a temporary farewell to the land of blogging as I venture off to Victoria for a long awaited family visit. I wonder what it will be like down there after the bushfires? Guess I will find out soon enough as I leave in the next couple of days. I will miss all the inspirational blogs, and the discipline of blogging myself (it really does help me to be more creative more often when I give myself a focus like this). But I am looking forward to seeing loved ones. So goodbye for now; I will see you all when I get back. Keep dreaming, keep creating and peace to you all.xx

Softly Love

Softly Love, Acrylic and paua shell on canvas, 30x30cm

I had these bits of paua shell sitting around for what seemed like forever when I had the idea to finally do something with them. The words that go with this came to me unbidden; what a blessing! And I was reminded of something someone from my childhood used to be fond of saying, that 'love is like an elusive butterfly'. (I have no idea where the quote might come from). In this piece the butterflies represent the soft, fleeting nature of love. The shells remind me of how real love can weather many storms and tears, yet still endure, and retain it's beauty too. Go love!

Things Art Taught Me

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Lately I have really been enjoying my digital art adventures. It's so much fun messing around on the computer and I have noticed a recurring pattern in the process of these creations.

Since I usually work fairly intuitively in this medium I don't often have a set plan. I open a few files, cut and paste a bit and generally play around with whatever colours and images take my fancy. Often I will have a broad theme but nothing is ever etched in stone.

What often happens is that I hit a wall. I reach a point where the whole thing seems yuck and seems to be going nowhere. And I start to get frustrated. But this is the best bit, and the part of the process that I am growing to love. Because once I move through that block, then the piece usually comes together, often by going off into surprising new directions. I love that wall! Now I get really excited when it all seems messy and 'wrong' because I know that I am about to have a breakthrough, a little leap forward.

Which leads me to imagine what it would be like to apply that to every single challenging life situation I may encounter. What would happen if every time I encounter an obstacle, or frustration, instead of fear or worry I get really excited because I know that I am about to have a leap in growth? Every frustration would be merely opportunity in disguise and life would be pretty exciting.

It's such a blessing to walk a creative path, because when I pay close attention I notice that the path is strewn with many gifts, even if at first glance I mistook them for rocks.

Portrait in Progress

I haven't posted for a couple of days because I have been enjoying reading other peoples blogs too much, and have been hard at work on a surprise portrait I am doing for my Nan's 80th birthday. It is fairly safe to give a preview here because I am pretty sure she doesn't read this blog. (Not that she wouldn't if she could, she seems fascinated by the net, especially any site that allows photo sharing and would let her keep up with the grand kids comings and goings) So here it is, very unfinished but at least started.

This is a study to see if I can still even remember how to paint a portrait, seriously, it's been that long. So long that I am pretty sure this is my first ever acrylic portrait, previous ones were done in oils and charcoal. (I switched from mostly oils to mostly acrylics about five years ago)

So I just tried to replicate how I work in oils and followed the good advice of one of my teachers. For any painters out there here are a couple of good tips for portrait painting which were passed down to me and have served me very well in everything I've ever painted.

The main thing that has stayed with me is to do the whole thing in black and white first. Get the tones right before you introduce colour. Since I was working from a black and white photo this part was fairly straightforward and worked well.

Then, when you have the composition working tonally, start introducing colour glazes. Just build it up in thin layers. And really look at the skin and notice all the nuances of colour. Not just the flesh tones but the blues and greens too (yes, they are there). This was a bit more of a challenge as I am working just from a photo so I have had to improvise a bit. Which is alright for this project because I wanted to eventually end up with an effect similar to one of those old sepia colored photographs anyway, but a bit more challenging if you are trying to get a very realistic finish. As you can see I am struggling a little bit with getting a nice even flesh tone. But if you just keep building it up thinly you can experiment a bit because you always have the black and white under painting as a guide to keep you tonally on track. Even if you glazed the whole thing blue it would still look ok if the tone is right underneath. (I thank my teachers every day because they saved me years trying to figure this stuff out on my own).

Another thing I found intriguing about this project is that I never really knew Nan when she was this young woman in the photo. In some respects it was like painting a stranger, though I see traces of the grandmother I know now. Usually I prefer to paint people I know, and this exercise is causing my mind to go off on all sorts of tangents wondering about the woman she was then, and what it must have been like to have lived eighty years ago.

So now, after having done this study I am fairly sure that I now want to make a larger portrait, kind of a collage type painting with historical references from the year she was born, some happy birthday text and maybe a smaller, more current photo - a kind of then and now portrait. It also has to have a lemon tree somewhere (!), because she has always wanted one and that will be my main gift to her. The canvas I have chosen now seems woefully too small to accommodate all of this at only 18x24xcm, but at the same time I do not want to do something too large that would dominate any space she puts it in as she lives in a fairly small place. Lots to consider before I resolve this one.

Anyhow, I will post the finished product as soon as I get it done. And did I mention that it has to be fast because her birthday is this month and naturally I left it until the last possible minute to actually start the process of getting the ideas out of my head and onto the canvas? So for now, it's back to the canvas I go.

Another Thank You

This is my latest digital design for my Zazzle greeting card range. I seem to have a thing lately for butterflies, angels, and giving thanks! This one is a thank you for the gifts of spirit, and for the way that grace comes on us lightly, like the kiss of a butterfly. It is such a gift. Just like the beautiful butterflies are a gift from mother nature to us. How blessed we are to live in a world with beauty, spirit and joy.

Happy Mardi Gras!

It's mardi gras weekend, woo hoo. Happy mardi gras groovers!

Do Elephants Make Art?

Like many artists I draw much of my inspiration, and subject matter, from the natural world around me.

So it concerns me when I hear that habitats are under threat in many parts of the world.

Today it has been brought to my attention that the largest population of Asian elephants is under threat due to planned development encroaching on already shrinking wilderness corridors.

Environmentalists are addressing this issue and there are many ways to help. Currently there is a campaign targeting the relevant Indian government officials via email.

For more information about the plight of the elephants, or to send your own email, visit http://www.rainforestinfo.org.au/e/appeal.htm. The friendly folks at the Rainforest Information Centre have even drafted a sample email which you can copy and paste, or better yet, you can write your own. (There are many other groups that are elephant friendly and I have put together a list of links below for anyone interested.)

But what has this got to do with elephants making art I hear you ask? Well one of these groups, the Asian Elephant Art and Conservation Project, has come up with a novel way to raise funds for elephants by selling artwork made by yep, you guessed it, elephants.

Whether you agree with the ethics of this practice or not, the work is worth seeing because guess what? Elephants make pretty good artists! And they are fetching pretty decent prices for their work too. Could this be a novel marketing ploy for human artists? i.e. I am an endangered species of artist, please buy my work so that I do not become extinct. (Just kidding)

But seriously, it is not surprising that elephants can do this given that they can live up to around eighty years and must have accumulated a wealth of visual information to draw upon. Knowing that elephants can make art makes it all the more saddening to me to contemplate that around a thousand of these magnificent friends could be facing such a serious threat to their continued survival in the wild.

So if, like me, this concerns you and you want to help, visit the Rainforest Information Centre or one of the sites listed below and help a fellow artist today.


Wildlife Conservation Society
http://www.wcs.org/

Elephant facts and information database
http://www.elephant.se/

Wildlife SO S
http://www.wildlifesos.org/

Friends of the elephant
http://www.betuwe.net/olifantvriend/

Asian Elephant Art and conservation Project
http://www.elephantart.com/

Seeing is remembering..or is it?

Learning to surf in a faraway garden,
coloured pencil on paper, A5.

This pencil drawing is one of my favourites because it captures the excitement of going to new places and seeing new things; it was done while I was on a really great holiday. Everything seems more vibrant and colourful when we see it for the first time.

Making art is like a mini holiday, where you get to challenge yourself to see in more heightened detail than ordinarily you might. It can be easy in day to day living to let our mind's eye go a bit stale, so I am setting myself a challenge this week to see everything in a fresh way. My environment, art practice, situations in my life, relationships; everything.

I am setting the intention to keep my 'artists eye' switched on more often, not just when I am making art. This means that a lot of preconceived notions will have to be thrown away, and my mind opened to create an innocent eye.

A fun way to play this game is to imagine that you are an alien, just landed here for the first time, without any previously formed meanings attached to the things you see and do. How would you interpret the things you see? Would they have the same meaning for you?

It gets you thinking about the connection between our thoughts, and how they affect what we are seeing, and how we perceive what we see. So much of our looking is habitual, more memory than looking. To really see something requires the humility to put aside our own associations and open up to being receptive to the thing we are observing.

A good example is the way we see other people in our lives. Do we really see them, as they are in the moment, or do we mostly just see them based on our ideas about them? Are we relating to them from the present moment, or from our habits formed from an accumulation of all our previous interactions with them?

It's the same thing with making art based on observation. Accurately drawing something requires being really present in the moment and not relying on memory or habit. It requires us to bring our alien eyes with us wherever we go.

What events, places, situations could you look at with a fresh eye?

Trust

As artists it is easy to take detours down the roads of self-doubt and lack of self confidence. It is too easy to compare ourselves with other artists, both living and dead, and also compare our performance with that of yesterday, last week, month or year.

When we step out of the present, we step out of clarity in the moment, and into confusing back roads. When we worry too much about the outcomes of our efforts we sabotage our success in the moment.

That is why trust is so important. As we travel down our creative paths, it is important to trust in the moment. Like hiking, if we just put one foot in front of the other, take each step at a time, we will eventually reach our destination.

This digital collage is a reminder to trust in the moment, and trust in the abundance of the universe. There are enough ideas for everybody; we do not need to be competitive with ourselves, or anybody else. Inspiration, and success is all around us if we just have trust and faith. Trust in the flow of life, and life will reward us with a never-ending supply of all the creativity and inspiration that we need. Just trust. Create. And enjoy.

New bag!

After a night of possum mayhem- it woke me up at least four times...did you know they sound just like those Gremlins from the movie?- I wasn't up to doing much this morning in the way of painting. Which turned out to be a good thing because I made this new bag using one of my Zazzle designs. Pretty cool, huh?