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.

Tayla's oil portrait wip

Here are the work in progress photos from Tayla's portrait. I am not too far away from finishing this and I reckon one more good session will get it done. It needs quite a bit of refining and the values aren't quite right yet but I am keen to get stuck in and get it finished to be hung with Carter's portrait.

I found the reference photo more difficult to work from than the reference photo I used for Carter because the lighting wasn't so good and it didn't have a really clear light source which I think makes for a better portrait. But I'll play around some more and get this finished and see how it goes.

Oil portrait - Carter

I finally finished this portrait of my son Carter. I started this with the grisaille underpainting back in December but left it for a few months. Over the past week I have had a couple of good sessions with this and can now declare it is finished!

The initial grisaille with burnt umber and solvent.

The initial transparent glazes.

This is when I started with more opaque pigment in the glazes and got the ghostly look.

Got stuck back into it. Had to stop at this point as the background was wet and I started to pick up the green and blue when I was doing his hair and I though green hair wasn't a great loo.

I am really happy with this. It went through some really ugly phases and I had reached a point where I was scared to continue because I had invested so much time in it up until that point and I was concerned with stuffing it up. Then I had a night last week when I just wanted to paint and I didn't even think about it not working and it flowed.

WIP - carbon pencil

Here is another drawing that I did on Saturday night which kept me entertained while half watching a DVD. I still need to refine areas but will leave it for a few days before going back to it to get some distance. I only used carbon pencils for this.

Couple of carbon pencil portraits

Here are two carbon pencil drawings on A4 HP Arches I did back in February for my Mum's birthday. I really struggled getting decent scans or photos as lighting wasn't great and I only had one shot as I had to get them posted.