Monday 15^th February 2021

I’ve been thinking about doing some collage work as a regular thing.  Maybe set myself a challenge of 100 pieces of collage compositions.  That seems doable.  Can too many challenges be too much of a good thing.  I already have three on the: of painting in blue, 60 days of painting every day and 8 weeks of exercising 6 days a week.

Its funny that the first one just happened and then I start wondering how I did it and it suddenly gets really difficult!  The gluing annoys me too.  How do you do the gluing?  I think I need something like a chopping board that I can just use to glue on.  I find the whole process a bit play school!!!  Learn to love to play, Anita!

 

Tuesday 16^th February 2021

Working on my stepping stone painting today.  I love abstract but am always finding myself making things just a little on the realistic side.  Is this an issue?  No probably not.  There is no rule that says that they are mutually exclusive.  You can have realistic passages in abstract paintings and I need to remind myself of that daily.  You are allowed to do both!

Note to self – use the shape of the rocks as guide for boat shapes – I feel some boats coming on!

 

Wednesday 17^th February, 2021

I had a wonderful conversation today with an old tutor of mine, David O’Connor, whose work I have always loved.  His sculptures are beautiful in their simplicity and his paintings are of one of my favourite landscapes in England, Salisbury Plain and the Wylye Valley.  Wonderful to not only catch up but to have him endorse what I am doing and give me loads of advice on approaching galleries and presenting work.  I must get on and name my paintings and catalogue them.  Check out his work here

 

Thursday 18^th February, 2021

I started today by listening to Gabriel Lipper’s second free class from his three day workshop.  His approach is very interesting and during the class he showed his progression on a painting that started as a face and ended up being a tractor in a field.  His use of a Zorn palette appeals to me.  I love a minimal palette and using an off primary palette would give me that.  You can substitute two of the primary colours for example yellow and blue and use yellow ochre in the place of yellow and Payne’s Grey in the place of blue.  Only keeping the red as the primary – whether it’s a cooler red (alizarin) or a warmer red (cadmium).

With only a week left to finish off my month of exploring blue, I’ve been wondering how to apply this off primary palette to my work to help in my exploration.  In the current picture I have been using Coeruleum, Cobalt, Cobalt Turquoise, Payne’s grey and orange.  My primary is the blue (I should probably simplify that to just one!), I have been using parchment which is creamy white so that could be my yellow and then Cadmium Orange as my red.  It will be interesting to see what happens with the new painting thinking in this way about colour.

 

Friday 19^th February, 2021

 

Set myself a timetable today as I had so much to do.  Managed to get my collage piece done for the day.  They really are not as easy as you think they should be.

Worked on my webpage for hours, but still don’t seem to be any further forward with it.  That is a lie.  I have two gallery pages set up, one for landscapes and one for seascapes.  I managed to title all the images – what a nightmare and get the captions loaded with the sizes of the paintings.  I can’t believe I used to teach web design at University level!  I think I must have forgotten more than I ever knew!  But I am a step forward.  This weekend I want to have those live on the site so now I have to figure out menus.

Slaved over paintings, one is coming along, the other one is just, well, I don’t know what it is.  It is what it is!  I need to think about where I want it to go.  I can’t wait for this thirty days of blue to end so I can mix some other colours.  A little orange is beginning to sneak in!  Having watched day 3 of Nicholas Wilton’s 3 day free workshop for Art2Life about colour, I was fired up to harmonise the colours on my palette.

Ordered a tripod that will screw onto the table so I won’t have tripod leg issues in videos in the future.