I'll be painting at the Art Bazaar at Booragul Sunday 10th March

Here are some details about the Art Bazaar. Its a lovely location right on the Lake and near the Lake Macquarie Gallery and Cafe so you can get a nice lunch or devonshire tea too!

 Come along and say hello and watch me paint! At the moment I'm planning to be  painting an Oil dog portrait on the day. I'm chasing up photos now.

 I'll have sample portraits for you to view or purchase and cards from my original artworks. There is an ATM on site.

Trent - an experimental 2.30 unfinished portrait from life

Yesterdays practise portrait from a model.The portrait painting group is where I go to experiment and be radical and learn. Lately I have been getting really conservative so I decided to push myself out of my comfort zone yesterday and go more colourful.
It's unfinished and I'm not happy with his forehead colour but I like the zap it has. Here is where I can try different colours and note which works and what doesn't . It's easy to tone down colour if necessary but much harder to paint in a colourful manner and still get a realistic / convincing result.

With this experimentation and practise I then have a bigger bag of skills for when I am doing a commissioned portrait. Unless I am asked for a colourful portrait I then use more subtle variations of what I have learnt . A portrait painted with this knowledge will still be more realistic and colourful than a photo.
 Cameras don't record all the colours our eye can see which is why photos of people are often quite bland and a good portrait so much more interesting and alive!

After the rain

We had over 100mms of rain in 2 days plus gale force winds. here are a few photos I took. I missed the worst of it. with the camera.

 Australia!
It's hard to imagine that a few weeks ago we we had the cars packed to evacuate due to a heatwave and bushfire threat!here are sheets of water flowing into the dams which are full and overflowing.

From the studio window.A river flowing down the paddock.

12hours after the rain the road in still has water over it. It would have been a torrent during the rain!

Our big dam is full and overflowed in a few places. we could have kayaked the overflow!

The Joker

The portrait painting group I paint with is having their annual exhibition at studio 48 New Lambton in March - April 2013.

This year we have to create a self portrait with at least one hand included and also a portrait of another member of the group who we  selected by a draw out of a hat.
I got Cliff. It took me a little while to decide how I would portray him in a portrait.

I went out and took photos of him.He is a volunteer member of the Lake Macquarie marine rescue so I thought that would work well.I got some photos of him in his uniform which would have given a good portrait . I also took photos of him painting and decided that this angle would allow me to show his personality , the side I know , better..

 The group can be quite a fun group with several members joking around. Cliff and Kevin often have running jokes and try and outdo each other.

 The photo I chose showed this side of Cliff and I new I could enhance this in the portrait.

Finished portrait

The joker

30 x 40cms 

 Framed oil

Early blue stage

I started with a more finished acrylic blue version than usual as I wanted to make sure I got a good likeness and the expression before I started on the oil colour. Even though I spent longer getting it pretty accurate at this stage I still made a lot of changes as the portrait progressed refining the likeness and expression.

The 'finished' blue acrylic paint stage

 

I approached this portrait differently than usual . Instead of painting the whole painting at once I went straight in and did his face first then his hands and the rest. Not the best way to paint as you play catch up trying to get the whole portrait to hang together.I just wanted to get the expression etc plus it was the fun part!

 Now I had to paint the rest of him and tie it all together..I made his head a bit shorter and rounder.You can see the final version in the first photo - the finished version

Now to create my self portrait. Now that will take a while. I have me and Zeuss to paint and it's larger.

I better get into it as I only have 4 weeks until they have to go in!

Newcastle Herald Article Saturday 16th February

What a diference 2 weeks make! From bushfires & heatwaves to lush and full dams!

It's hard to believe 2 weeks ago that we had both cars packed ready to flee from a local bushfire, the place looked dry & dusty and it was 45 degrees!
 Today it's 16 degrees all the dams are overflowing and we don't really need any more rain as the paddock is boggy as after 250mm of rain!

 I didn't really take many photos of the dry as it was depressing. Here is one of the 45 degree day about 2 weeks ago.We have about 100 roos on the place but only a few are cluey enough to get in the dam to cool off on such a hot day. Note the level of the water.

The same dam full earlier this week . It is even lusher now. The roos in the previous photo were at the RH corner.

Lovely & green again! The grass isn't very thick but it's getting there.

On our front ' lawn'. There are a lot of dead areas that are going to take ages to grow back.