Portrait of Tayla

Another drawing I forgot to load last time - my daughter Tayla again, this time in charcoal and some red chalk on A4 Arches HP paper.

Work from the last few months

This is one of the photos I have been taking recently and playing around with on photoshop elements. Once I am off this loan laptop and get access to all the other photos, I will add more. I've been enjoying taking flower photos.

Here is Ngatahi in all its glory. It is 1.3m x 1.3m and was the 2009 collaborative project for the NZ Art Guild. I was heavily involved at all stage including sourcing the timber, drawing up the original design. My husband assisted with the cutting up of all the pieces and he built the frame. Each piece was individually painted with the blue and green before sending it out to artists across NZ. I helped with all of that and with the packing up of all the packages and instructions for the artists. I was also responsible for photographing each individual piece as prints were offered of the individual artworks. I also glued down each individual piece onto the black frame and assisted with transporting it around Auckland for photographing and hanging. Huge amount of work was involved with this.

Here are four of my resin pieces hanging at the annual NZ Art Guild exhibition. The 3 small pieces all sold on opening night which was great.

Here is a close up of the larger piece, however the turquoise does not photograph well and looks quite different in person.

Here is a charcoal and white chalk sketch I did of my friend's son Ryan. It is A3 size.

This is a drawing I did using Derwent tinted charcoal. I plan on painting her one day. I took a series of photographs of these beautiful headstone angels.

More photos to come once I have my laptop back....................

Tayla's portrait completed

Here is the completed portrait of my daughter Tayla - not the best photo but will try and get a better one at some point. This is 300 x 300 x 40mm oil on canvas.

WIP2 - figure painting

Here is more progress on my figure painting - a long long way to go but I am enjoying the process of slowly building up the figure so not sure how she will turn out but thinking about some symbolism to include in this as I do have a degree with a double major in History and Feminist Studies so I think it would be good to create a story for this one.

wip - my first figure

I have started work on my first figure based on one of my drawings from the life drawing workshop I attended in March. Long way to go and I had to hunt and buy a image from a life drawing website off a similar position so I can get the hand right since I didn't draw that with any details at the time. Enjoying this and I keep changing my mind about how I want the background to look so I am guessing this will look majorly different in a few weeks time.

resin galore

Here are some of the resin mixed media pieces I am preparing for Cafe Apollo where I display my art. Very hard to take photos of these and the turquoise ones just really don't come out but hopefully these photos give you a bit of an idea.

They are lots of fun to do and I am using mainly acrylic inks now for the glazes which are yummy yummy yummy to use.

I have also started some resin experiments which involve painting with ink on layers of resin so once I get a little further with that, I'll upload some photos.

Ngatahi - NZ Art Guild collaborative project 2009

Each year the NZ Art Guild does a collaborative project in which a whole pile of artists (62 this year) each do a tile which is then put together for one large piece. See this link for the one we did last year called Reach Out. Last year and this year, the proceeds from the auction of the artwork, goes to the Mental Health Foundation and last year they used the image of Reach Out for all their posters for Mental Health Week in October.

Because I am one of the organisers of this project along with Sophia Elise who manages the guild, both her and I each did 2 tiles this year to make up the 64 pieces we needed for the final image. These are my two pieces. Each one is approx 150 x 150mm.

My husband (who very handily is a builder) gets roped in each year to help with the practical stuff including the building off the frame which I have been painting and preparing today so that tonight all 64 pieces can be glued in. Here you can see how big it is - I think it is approximately 1.2 x 1.2m but I haven't done the final measurement yet.

This year the piece which is entitled Ngatahi, will be auctioned off on the night of the opening of the Art Guild annual exhibition at the Bruce Mason Centre in Takapuna. The image of the artwork will go out this week in press releases which is different from past years when we unveiled on the night and then auctioned off on Trade Me.

I've spent lots of hours on this over the past few months as you can imagine preparing the image on the board, cutting it up, painting on the base colours and mailing these out to everyone. It's a lot of work but the result always looks fantastic and the MHF are so pleased to be working with us on this and it is a fantastic charity to support this way.