Too tired to paint

Church renovation, work, taking advantage of Penguins unsolicited children's picture book submissions, cupcakes and birthdays.

We have been renovating a 100 year old church for the past two and a half years, waiting on council approval and then a bank that would lend to us was the most time exhaustive part.  It is looking amazing though.

mezzanine feels like land of the giants, everything is at a much higher level than would be practical for me.

I am hoping that all of the inclusions and fittings will be started soon, I cannot wait for this to be finished.

As I am focusing on all things creative in my life here is a paper doll project I derived from one of my paintings.  Enjoy.

Back at work and the one thing I didn't even realise that I missed...work spam.

Sick children, scones and painting

It has been a very productive painting day for me and my two little sickies.  My oldest ripped out three awesome paintings whilst my little one was napping.  Super sweet even though he has had some salicylate challenge foods over the past two days.  Some bad outcomes after lunch including zucchini with the skin on and a pear with its skin left on.  It's such a challenge to get it right.  He was at such a good baseline yesterday a bowl full of blue berries and strawberries had no effect but the extra little bits today just added up to too much.  I wish there was a weight and food calculator for salicylates.

And another one that I have started reworking.  This was one that I started and then had many little hands take over, it is again mine and I have been defending my right to paint on my own with this one.

Spiritualitree

Yes, it's one of those terms, hybrid terms that think they're very clever.  It's a tree filled with spiritual apes.  I did this sketch and started painting this many years ago and am really happy to have attacked and finally finished it.  I can't remember why I started this piece, what I was thinking but it has come down to just enjoying painting.

 Finally finished and pretty satisfied with this one.  Lots of intricate work and when it's back in its frame it looks good, complete, ready to hang at the Curtin Primary exhibition.

GCAP Exhibition

 Heading back to Canberra with a beautiful waxing moon in the distance above the wind farms near lake George.  Looking forward to making a trip to see these graceful monolithic turbines up close, with a picnic and a sketchpad.  A little bit hectic getting back to prepare for the GCAP exhibition.  This is my first exhibition since my deviation into the world of Unix, IT and motherhood.

 GCAP have a great little art space in the middle of suburbia in Harrison which opened with an exhibition of local artists on Saturday.  It was great meeting some of the Canetsy members and other Canberra artists.  Surprised that I wasn't more nervous to be putting my work out for public consumption, nice and relaxed atmosphere of artists happy to be coming together to exhibit in this new space.  Diverse works from local artists.

Painting - possibilities

So many possibilities when you start a piece, there is a particular idea, image, end product you try to work towards.  These paintings are more of the ones that I pulled out from a different lifetime, the life before children.  When I got into doing these ones I was getting so excited about how they were looking and suddenly every brush stroke seemed to just be ruining them.  Time for a break from them and some perspective.
Original sketch from around 2006.

 Added some definition with some beautiful Indian ink.  I have such bad luck with my beautiful Indian ink, one carpet and two other ink covered, child related incidents in this thankfully wooden floored house.

 Still pretty happy with how things are going at this stage.

 What have I done.

 

It's curled a bit but framing will fix that.  Every brush stroke I was adding with the pink was accompanied by "damn, what a mistake, white paint, damn".

I'm not sure If I like this or the other one in this series but I don't know what to do with either of them now.  At least I've got some high res pics of the original sketches.

Curtin Primary School Art Show

I pulled out a bunch of pieces today to finish and frame for submission into the Curtin Art Show.  I am really happy with how they're going and with having a look back on some pieces that I haven't seen in a long time.  I put everything away in my portfolio when we changed my art studio into the nursery and of course, being hormonal, had a good cry at the time of dreams and aspirations I thought lost.  It has been a very productive painting day and I can't wait to get started again tomorrow.