BLOG about PAINTING

Too windy to paint outdoors. The sky was quite bland with very few distinct clouds, and I guess I just needed to do something different. It turned out pretty bland and boring nonetheless, but at least I was playing with paint. (I think it was just that kind of day. I used to hate Sundays - a holdover from boarding school, when all we did was go to mass, study and write letters home.)

If I was going to do an imaginary fish, at least I should have made it REALLY imaginary, don't you think?

Here comes the rain from across the valley.

Went for a walk in the morning and ran into some lovely people. I had already met her at one of the 'women's get-togethers' and had heard a bit about her husband. Well, he's just as nice as she is, and he's a birder to boot! He gave me all kinds of great information about local birds, including the aptly* named 'Morepork' - a small owl not unlike our Barred Owl. He's also going to be lending us some bird books while the couple are away in Europe over the next several weeks.

In the afternoon, I tackled more skies. Hmmmm.

The clouds kept changing far faster than I could paint. I don't mean that individual clouds were moving; I mean the cloud patterns kept shifting from light on dark, to dark on light, and back again in mere minutes. As well, I don't have the skills to get the edges right, though I'll keep trying. (Not only does practice make perfect, it's all about process anyhow, eh?) Funny thing, though. The skies are still a struggle, but I do think that the LAND part of the pictures is becoming more painterly. Ha. Ain't that so true? Very Camino-ish. Life answering the questions you forgot to ask.

*Guess the call of this little owl. Yup. MORE PORK. We'll have to make a point of listening at night.

Spring starts on Sept. 1 here. I guess they don't wait for equinox on the 21st. Yesterday, RNZ played all kinds of 'spring' music from Vivaldi to Vaughn Williams to whatever. It was really quite nice.

Speaking of spring, Victoria, BC had worse weather than us today. It must be rather hard to go from 30C to 15C with showers virtually overnight. We, on the other hand, are heading out of winter and seeing lots of sun. Yes!

Triplet

The herons are coming in for the night. The White-faced herons, which are smaller than our Great Blues, love to come into the field in the evening.

TODAY'S TIDBIT

Twist ties are a very rare commodity down here. They don't skimp on the plastic bags, but there are no twist ties anywhere in the produce section.

Today we went to Mangawhai Heads. That's pronounced MANG - a - fie, by the way.*. Another amazingly beautiful place.

Getting there was interesting. We headed north on Hwy. 1, the main/only highway north of here. We took the turn-off to Mangawhai. Turns out it was only the first turn-off, and it definitely took us the scenic route. But we got there in the end, and it was well worth it.

There's a great circle walk. You can go in either direction, but you need to account for the tides because half is on the top of the cliffs, and the other half is along the shoreline, some of which is impassible at high tide. No problem. We arrived with at least four hours of accessibility.

We did the shore bit first. It was a mix of glorious, hard sand, bouldery beach, and rough volcanic rock. Thank goodness we had on our hiking boots. (Mind you, it sure was tempting to take off one's shoes and socks and walk barefoot.)

The sand beach had the most amazing patterns of pale gold overlying black, glistening sand (magnetite, perhaps?) Gorgeous.

When we got to the turning point, it was up, up, up to the top of the cliffs. (Think the bleak back staircase to Mordor, but without the bleakness. It was a really good workout for the legs.) Then a lovely walk back along shady glades and open clifftops with incredible views. All told, it took close to three hours, but it was well worth the effort. We may very well go again!

Mangawhai Heads

TODAY'S TIDBIT*

"Wh" is pronounced "f". Must be from the Maori.

I worked outside today. Not in some exotic place (that's for tomorrow), but right here in the garden. The climate here is quite a bit warmer than Vancouver Island, and therefore the veggies that one can grow without a greenhouse is rather different. And rather than parsnips dug out of the snow in winter, there are far more exotic things. For example, here's one of Jude's garden plants:

NZ Winter Veg

It's great having these spicy peppers. I've been throwing them into my curries for some extra pizzaz. Yum. Though it's rather hard on my hands. The skin where I sometimes get a bit of eczema stings like mad. Ha.

And I finally put some cattle into one of the sketches. I usually don't include animals. Partly it's because I'm not great at capturing their 'gesture', especially with a largish brush at such a small scale. And, in this one, I got the perspective/placement wrong. Oh, well, the point of doing these fast sketches is to loosen up and not be precious.

TODAY'S TIDBIT

Apparently, a lot of New Zealand's sheep herds are being traded in for beef cattle. China is NZ's major trading partner, and the Chinese want beef, not lamb. I wonder what the change will do to the landscape. It's pretty well already denuded of native trees, thanks to the depredations of sheep. Will cattle make any difference? Better? Worse?

We seem to be getting one bad day and then one good day. Today, we got everything all in the same 24 hours - several times over. Relatively clear when we went to bed last night, pouring rain and windy when we awoke, sunny intervals this afternoon, then grey again.

After seeing some lovely field sketches by Alison Watt (boy, can she draw!), I decided to attack my own sketches a bit more quickly - and, hopefully, more loosely. Lightly go we...

Olive Grove

I maybe should have put a bit more thought and planning into the composition and the distribution of lights/whites. The clouds don't have to be exactly where I saw them when I began. After all, by the time I've finished, they've disappeared and most likely the sky has completely changed!

TODAY'S TIDBIT

Unlike BC, where the speed limit on any stretch of road is tailored to the engineering and conditions of that particular bit of pavement, here in NZ there are just two speeds: 100 kph on the highways and 50 kph inside the towns. If you are driving along a road that passess through villages, there will be a speed sign at the beginning of each town - a circle with a 50 inside. However, when you exit the town, all you usually see is a cirle with a slash across it. This means, "Resume speed". Ironically, the symbol looks an awful lot like the symbol that is used for 'Do NOT... whatever" back home.

Well, the wind dropped out, the sun shone, and it was gorgeous.

The house overlooks a valley (the one that I keep painting). Apparently, it's reclaimed land. There's a small creeklet that flows out to the ocean through a culvert in the dike. The birds just LOVE to hang around, especially when there is lots of standing water. With all the recent rain, they're in bird heaven.

The main suspects are the Pukeko (the geeky, gawky, chicken-like character in the Aug. 12 blog), Lapwings, and gulls. These all have one thing in common: They are definitely not songbirds. They SCREECH. Loudly. Whenever they are disturbed, such as when a Harrier comes along. It ain't pretty, but it sure works as a warning system to everyone in the neighbourhood!

Boy, did it blow yesterday! Some gusts were upwards of 40 knots, and the rain was blowing sideways. But it was warm. Go figure. The garden furniture got blown across the yard, and a lot more fruit self-picked from the citrus trees.

I was a weather refugee, driven indoors by the wind. Wind is one of the main triggers for my migraines, so there was no way I could venture out. There weren't even any good clouds to paint. So I made up for it today, painting skies. I'm really struggling with these. Partly it's my failure to 'see' and remember the shapes and the colours of the clouds, and partly it's my not having the necessary watercolour painting skills. For example, I don't know just how long to let any particular layer dry before I bleed in a bit more colour, how to soften edges without getting washback, etc. (I really should have taken Clive Powsey's course at MISSA.) But that's what practice is all about, eh?

There was an accident just south of Warkworth yesterday. My Beloved was being treated to beer at the venerable Puhoi Pub, and he and his host got caught in the traffic hold-up on their way home. Shades of the Malahat Drive on Vancouver Island - just one road heading north and south, and any glitch can stop the traffic dead in its tracks.

Another indoor day today. Not that I don't get outside. I did go for a walk, but when I got home I had to hang my raingear, shoes and hat near the fireplace - after they'd done their dripping in the laundry room. Thanks to my Beloved for having a beautiful fire going.

Then I tried a sketch from a photo I had taken at Scandrett Park. We've been there a few times, but it's so exposed that if there's any wind at all, it's next to impossible to work en plein air. Not only do I have to worry about triggering a migraine (bane of my existence), but I don't know how many times I've had the watercolour paper flip over or even blow away entirely. (Remembrances of standing out in a field in Metchosin, holding the canvas on the easel with one hand as I painted with the other). Thing is, when the paper moves, it usually collides with the paintbrush, and I end up with lots of unintended marks. On the other hand, working from photos is just not the same. You can't see the subtleties of the colours. It's too static. And you aren't surrounded by the smells and sounds that somehow add so much to the piece.

All of that having been said, I have been wanting to paint the folds of the hills at Scandrett ever since I first saw them. So, here goes, in abesntia:

Scandrett Park

TODAY'S TIDBIT

It seems that table salt here comes in two sizes: large, coarse grains for salt mills, and very, very fine grains for salt shakers. I keep undersalting or oversalting. It's surprising how hard it is calculating the amount you need when the grains are not the usual size.

Dreary day today. The driz started early and gradually evolved into a pretty steady downpour. Definitely not a day for doing field sketches. That was OK, because I had a failure from yesterday that needed to be tried again.

Aside: I woke very early (3-ish) and couldn't get back to sleep because of monkey brain. Now, if I were back home, I'd probably crawl out of bed, lie down in front of the woodstove (remember, it's winter down here) and do a round of relaxation yoga. That usually works at sending me back off to dreamland. But there's no way I can do that here in this house. I'd freeze. So, instead I lie there and let my mind race.

Now, you'd think that with all the upheaval in our plans lately (Cornwall on; Cornwall off; France on; France off; new Cornwall on?; France back on agenda?; etc.), that I'd be lying there fretting about where we'll be in a few months. But NO! Not this time. This time, I was lying there thiking about painting! This is HUGE. The whole point of this daily practice of sketching has been to get me back into 'art' head. And it's working!!!

So, anyway, this afternon I tackled the scene yet again... and again. And, third time lucky, I guess, I can live with the last one. It's 'pretty', rather than the dramatic rendering that I'm looking for (my ongoing curse), but at least it's acceptable.

The Bach at Pakiri*

TODAY'S TIDBIT:

*That wasn't a typo. A vacation home here in NZ is not called a 'camp' or a 'cottage' or a 'cabin'. It's called a 'bach' (rhymes with 'latch').