How sweet it is

I have been thinking about using honey as a paint medium ... yes it does make a really sticky transparenty mess by itself ... but then i read this, and tried adding some bricklayers oxide (used to colour mortar and cement) ... the honey takes up the oxide beautifully and it dilutes done to some a wonderfully natural colour ... the washes take a while to dry but that only makes it better to work with ...i think i am onto something wonderful here, but like so many of my discoveries the old master where onto to all this ages ago.

new palette

pastel over watercolour wash on paper
I've decided I needed to change my watercolour pallette, both the palette itself (the new one is a lot bigger) an the colours, with a cool and warm version of each of the primary colours. my aim is to get better washes under skin tones. whilst this sketch is finished with pastel the underpainting is watercolour washes in my primaries 9see the bar/test strip at the top of the sketch. indian, red, crimson and ultra marine all very dilute ... then some cad yellow in with the indian red as a slightly heavbier glaze

the radiant rose

pastel over watercolour wash on paper

loving the feel of pastels

i showed a couple of artist mates the open shirt ... and we quickly got in a deep technical discussion about using pure pigments over a wash ground ...and the importance of the pastel pigments, and their bindings ...ok i wont bore you ...what i discovered is already well known ... pure pigment pastels, and being australian, i use naturally art spectrum range, over a coloured ground is essentially mixing the colour on the art work itself .. it adds to the vibrancy ...mixing the same colours in paint on a palette first tends to muddy the colour, the more contributing colours in the mix, the more media used the duller the resulting colour. Using thin washes and glazes of one colour over another is another way to achieve this but no where near as rich as the pure pigment results



ok i'm not claiming to be einstien or anything ... its just nice to be able to understand why and how the colour works ... so here are a couple of videos I found on You Tube to verify that what I stumble onto is legit art, and already know by the real artists ...maybe its a my right of passage, or something similar, into secret artist business ... as Gauguin once said with the research comes the ecstacy and satisfaction of art

the open shirt

exploring the power of colour as tone, ...colour as passion and arousal ...the open shirt with its glimpse of the desirable must become art for arts sake

adoring the colours

Instead of trying to reproduce exactly what I see before me, I make more arbitary use of colour to express myself more forcefully ... To express the love of two lovers by the marriage of two complementary colours ... To express the thought of a brow by the radiance of a light tone against a dark background. To express hope by some star. Someone's passion by the radiance of the setting sun.

thus explainded Vincent Van Gogh

...could not have expressed it better myself ... but maybe what i enjoyed most was getting my hands dirty again

refinding the lines

things are still somewhat blurry and strong back lighting is both a painful to look at and so beautiful to see.

blogging again

after what seemed an eternity in the darkness I am back on the road to recovery, just impatient to actually do stuff and live my life ... eat drink (sketch) and be merry .. that kind of stuff ...dark glasses, darkened rooms and just pens and scrap paper aren't really living ...buggar it time for a decent coffee ...and buy some art materials

from sketch to paint

same model & pose as my previous 3 minute torso

red rose

watercolour on paper

the painting class

bedroom eyes

watercolour on paper

(3 minute) Torso

I'm back out in the open air and wanting to paint ... so i thought I'd start off with a two minute torso exercise... well it took more like three ... but such is life

Fauv'ing it up

my first foray in paint .. well paints and crayons, was turning very boring ... then cincy's webcam went kind of solarized and changed to aqua-bluish tones ... it gave me an idea to paint her as two side ... one hot ...one cool ...ok ...and then the colour got away from me ...a fauve moment!

bodyscape

retracing a few steps

my vision is returning in jumps and start ... maybe fogs and mists dispersing is a better description, but my right eye is still very prone to infection and clags up frequently ...this is an excellent excuse not to go shopping (yet again) ... so yesterday .... or was it the day before? ...I found myself trying my arm at sketching from the web once more ... was fun, even though the sketch was hazy ... I felt I was back on the way to being creative again

my big day out

i have finally done it ... gone out by myself ...even used public transport and no one seemed to notice my bleariness ... it was such a big thing ... means i am on the mend

I don't mean to be ungrateful, i have been looked after very well ... i;m just yearning for bloke stuff ... not shopping malls and endless conversations about relationships ... just a beer and a yarn about sailing or sport ...and meals with meat!

well i made it got to my destimation and home again :) life can be a series of small steps.

watching art grow

if you are into trhe performance of painting ... there are a few good "time lapse" videos of works in progress ... and Paul Cumes does a few good ones (like this). Just not sure why he needs the glove?

Second sight

No doubt you have noticed I haven't been uploading a lot and I'm very quiet on flickr ... you see the problems is I have gone,at least officially, blind... and yes it is totally horrible ... i hate it ...but i can see ... dark and light in a very blurry and disconcerting way ...if i look long enough and squint I can sometimes make out people versus objects ... so I'm not really blind I just can not see what I'm expected too ...my world is confusing to say the least ...AND now I hate the bright lights of the medical specialist and the "how many fingers am I holding up?" question ...I just see a blur with fingers appearing and disappearing at will, sometimes it doesn't even resemble a hand in front of my face ... I don't know how many so just stop asking thank you ... just fix what ever you can!! please and do it soon!!

Well it s only 70 days since the real problems started and what a 70days. I last paid $1.69 per litre for petrol (before I had to stop driving). Whilst fanny and freddy had essentially collapsed and been picked up, the banks were still sitting mum and no one I knew was traking about a global financial crisis, heck interest rates where still high. Ok so a lot has changes but why does everyoine have such a gloomy, sullen disposition. It is nearly christmas, the coffe is still good and the shops are open and people are buying christmass presents. Just remember, it is now the time for some

"Peace on earth and good will towards men"

why is the blindman sketching?

Today I noticed a little girl watching me ... well I felt it first ... but she was watching me intently ... and eventually she asked her grandmum "why is the blindman sketching?"



The answer is because i can ... and secondly i'm still a long way from being trely blind ... my vision impairment might make me "blind" from driving a car perspective but I can discern a few things in the blurred out glare I take for site now ... what more I don't think seeing and drawing are all that closely related ... maybe more on that later when I learn to type better in this mist and/or can understand when the narrator is stumbling on pronounciation or its really a typo! c'est la vie

(scanning and loading this sketch has taken forever ... still it was a tiny victory for independance)

Yummy Mummies its time to stand up

With the rapid loss of vision I have been confined to being a pedestrian and there is a limited place I'm allowed out on my own (very long story there that will remain untold)... anyway I am allowed to meander around the shops and coffee houses of maling road ... it an upmarket shopping strip beside canterbury stations ... deep in the inner east of melbourne ... not the haunt of old blokes, or even bohemians though.... is an expensive shopfest for yummy mummies ...these poor stressed out folk have the expensive clothes the silver four wheel drive and lots more tpo boot but they are terrorized by their screaming off spring ...its a conspiracy ...all the coffee shops have deep glass counters with the sweetest pinkest, sugar coated glittery, creamy with hundreds and tousnads-ist delight just at toddler level ... as soon as the spoilt brats eye lock on the content its tanturm time, scream, stamping of feet and a genuine looking set of tears for effect ..a flusteredf mum then grabs for her purse and orders the sweatly coloured goo "oh! and a baby'chino with that".... its all a bit distressing ...but I have some sound advice...

Yummy mummies learn to say NO!

getting there ...one ping at a time

this ease of access stuff in vista is starting to make sense ... but i'm almost ready to turn the narrator off, especially microsoft anne she just rambles on and on ...some highlights though are trying to listen with the LH michelle syntehic voice trying to read twitter ... it side splittingly funny

the pity is most other parts of the web are just lots of stuttering and noise ... ok google itself and google mail are clean enough ...trouble is i am rapidly loosing the motivation to blog, tweet and post my art ...you see the real world is still full of delights, food, strong liquor, music, dancing and perfume ...and i don't have to listen to a scatter brain voice to be able to join in ...life is for living

:) haha anne speaks emote

Just what I didn't want ...

I think like many other flickr'ites the new home page snuck on me up like a horrible nightmare ... well a bit fright at the very least ... my scare was heightened by the fact that my vision id dissapearing and I had just got a new PC running vista and a lot vision impaired aids to help me fill in the bit I can not see well enough including a sad lady that reads webpages in monotone of misprouncication that make kath and kim sound like custonians of the queens english ... now not only have the whole layout change it have become cluttered with srange noise I can not even being to understand. flickr was once a clean and tidy place to look at photos and other images ... not quite a on-line gallery but close enough ...now it is a kitch clone of yahoo groups, myspace and facebook on all the worse of bling, glitz and gadgetry of glamourless me-too-ism ...so sad

luckily the email end of flickrville is still nice and clean and I got nice invites to groups like I say no and we all hate the new homepage.

damnation

complications ...is not a word you want to hear after surgery ...so damn damn damn ...i knew why i try to avid hospitals ... ahhh such is life ...but my vision is important and using computers is straining my already frustrated self ... so I'm going to give them a break ...take all the medicine and be a good boy

.... but I reckon you won't be able to stop me drawing, sketching or painting ... even though they might be tending to the abstract

concentration

watercolour on paper

reckless in charge of a pencil

I have been having to visit the big smoke ... the eye & ear hospital regularly and I haven't managed to find a good coffee shop (...cafe) nearby so i have become a bit promiscuous, for a coffee drinker, and have been drinking around... well this morning at a chain-style cafe I was told I had to stop sketching and would I like to leave...What the?

This is the offending sketch... its a little dirty because a latter charcoal effort has rubbed off onto it ... such is life ... not sure what the problem was ....it was just two girls in shorts ... ok they were very short ... having a ciggy outside and joking around ... they are not in some kind of embrace ... just having fun out in the sun ... all pretty innocent to me ... maybe itis the sketching itself that is the bad habit ...in the same way that you can not take pictures at the nearby train station ...maybe terrorist have taken up sketching and I was comprimising national security.

Well I wont be drinking there again so I'm still looking for a nice cafe at the top end of melbourne between parliment station and the eye & ear hospital? ...all recommendations welcomed.


...thought i needed to add the aussie crawl song reckless, one of my favs ...she don't like kinda behaviour

less can be more

i'm struggling ... i'll admit that ... not just on the eye front, my work if frustrating me ... i am wrecking more and more works, i just can't stop overdoing it ...i need to remember that I don't need to glaze and put thin washes over eveerything ... sometimes it is the very fewest of shapes and lines and colours that gives the strongest emotions ... and the time to stop!

I'm not really cranky ...more like frustrated

my artist output has been considerably ham strung over the past few weeks for good reasons i had an eye operation, my scanner is on the blink and I'm getting frustrated with myself ... simple things are getting habits of both taking longer than i think and worse ...not always working

still i am fairly patient ....ok i have made three ladies cry recently ...but there were circumstances and they all know to come the officious, bureaucratic procedural crap on me ...what i meant to say was that I will persevere and keep going till they job gets done .... to my satisfaction ... which can be long after most others give in ...the bitter pill with my sketching was that laboring over a painting, specifically watercolour, just results in an ordinary composition and muddy colours... just as i was learning to be quicker and more spontaneous, suddenly my eyes where letting me down ...then I wasn't choosing the right colours or tones either .... this sketch was a case in point ... it started out a while ago ... I ruined it with too many washes ...so i simply washed then back, rubbing them & soaked them away ... then I added more ... ruining it again, more washed and some gouche ... more rubbing ... then charcoal ... layers of goodness followed by mistaken strokes and colours ...and all the time cutting it back, simplifing focusing on the feel ...the result is nice and mellow ... I have lost the focus in the curves and light in the necklace but there is a charm in all that reworking and strength in the curves... kind of like being a frustrated and cranky old bloke who is starting to worry he will be stop being young at heart .... but that is just silly creating good art keeps you young!

30 thousand visitors

apparently i was wrong ... i was thinking it would be nice to celebrate having my 30,000th visitor to this humble sketchblog... something that is likely to happen tonight. i was shown the error of my ways by a very young and very net savy daughter of a friend who investigated my site rathertha watch the final episode of doctor who ... ok she did watch when captain jack was on the screen ...but what she discovered is that I have lost my loyal followers ... most visitors where where not return visitors ... i had become promiscuous ...my pulling posers where diminissing ... big deal i said .... and that was a big mistake ... did i get an ear bashing, and I have to admit a lot made sense ...i wamnerd around all over the place art, techy junk in poor grammar and i wont even mention the special criticisms of the illustrations ... so young net savy folk, sorry this place will remain bit pedestrian but i am sorry if I have bored anyone with my art .... that is one area i will diligently continue to work on improving ...so if you are a regular reader please tell me what draws you back so I might strive to improve that as well.

PS opps my eyesight must not have been on the ball yesterday (when I wrote this), still another 1000 to go ...still no reason not to seek feedback and what you would like to see my blof focus on.

something deeper

just rene

Watercolour on paper

don't blame the messenger

this is a promotional clip from a new ABC/tripleJ program called the Hack Halfhour, you can download a vodcast of the first show here ... i think whilst it may not answer all the questions ...it does ask the right questions ...what is the implication of "sharing" personal stuff about our lives on-line ...it is a complex issue and yes there are dangers, but there is so much to gain ...instead of hysteria about youtube being responsible for the finish school shooting (btw it wasn't youtube it was the gunman that killed!) we urgently need more open discussion about what powerful tools social network gives us today ... tools that can be used to solved the many problems that face our society today

two interpreations

Two variation on a flickr friend's portrait, convetional watercolour on the left an artpad "sketch" on the right, click here to watch the on-line painting process.

talk about pork barreling

well this is about the most perfect justice for all the overhype of the USA pork barreling and such ...

the artist name is pricasso (if you look carefully on his site you will find his real name and if you ask nicely he may do a portait of you)

The gates of baku

watercolours on paper

I sketched these a few weeks back ...had almost forgotten them ...these are just two simple quick sketches i liked ...i think they captured the day and the feel of the place.

bigger must be better ...right?

I have to admit that i am a tad dissappointed with my vision particularly up close ...well actually my arms are no longer long enough ...so detail paint strokes are a strain further and even more distressing is the ability to mix just the right colour and keeping it separate on my palette ... lots of buggers and other french adjectives ... so I've taken the bull between the horns and bought a much bigger pallette with lots of space and I think I'm on the right track again.

Ink Blots - trying out art.com's artpad

Ink Blots - trying out art.com's artpad, originally uploaded by Paopi.

i have had a bit of fun trying out art.com's new tool artpad ... my first effort is not quite up to paopi's wonderfully beautiful ink blots (see also her blog)... still it is a lot of fun and the saved image capture all your brush strokes, so that the entire painting process can be viewed at any time by others ...how a art work is created lets you see the roots of its beauty, and feel the life develop in it. Click on the gallery image on the right and see what I mean.

serious artistists take note: ok there is a downside art.com own everything you save and do on their website so you are signing away your rights to arkworks by using it, You give art.com a royalty free license.

is easily amused

Not sure why? ...i`m well o'er all th' shipmate and pirate jokes on accoun' o' me eye patch ...but i jus' love this shipmate speak translator... perhaps its th' big boys an' new toys thin' ... but its a blast ... an' I be shpore I`ll bore all on twitter an' utterli well before I get tired o' this.

Don't panic and no need to look up your daughters its just international talk like a pirate day.

technology on art

technology can get into art also

bolder, firmer, lighter

Bold in pink

Watercolour on paper

My experiments with watercolours are continuing ...I love the medium ...butI think I am going to start disagreeing with the conventional wisdom that watercolour is an unforgiving medium ... sure i have ruined a lot of my own work ... but i don't thoink blaming the medium is the right approach ... watercolours live the paint crawls and pools and diffuses across the page in many ways sometime horrid but often in the most beautiful ways ... so the painter, ...the creative control, needs to use and guide these natural forces ... to me that was a big revelation ... be confident and bold with the brush strokes and let the medium calm down the drama and pull it together ... use washes and glazes to let the viewer's eye mix the colours ...don't obsessively muddy my palette & the paintin with too many shades and hues ... let the colours run and blend and dance

getting into the loop

Want to become more intimately involved with my art?


Regulars who read this blog will probably know of my passion to get original art on technology ...beginning with all those screens that all of us look at everyday. Why not start with your phone ...So if you have a mobilephone or iphone with WAP or WiFi access, point its browser at the following address or use the QRcode. That's all that is required.

http://art4all.tumblr.com/mobile

problems with the unauthentics

I administer a few groups (perhaps to many) on flickr ... mainly grown up groups (18+) that mainly allow nakedness and this seems to have become a honeypot for folk with fake ID, stolen photos and anti-social behaviour ...I'm starting to worry that there are a lot of weirdos on the web ...but it is going against my general opinion of what social networking and web 2.0 are all about ..in fact i have for the past couple of years been quick to jump to defend the social networking phenomena ...normally locking horns with those peddling the broad generalization that nude equals pornography and all old men on the net are perverts, and anything popular of the web must be porn ... because these things simply are not true.

There where a few signs, I should have noticed ... i fairly quickly didn't like second life, because everyone was so busy being something they are not ... and ending up being mass carbon copies of each other in an air brushed glamour/pseudo celebrity way ...that scared me away ... also myspace (yes I used to have a myspace page) became like that as well but in a kitchy glitzy (sorry bling) way ... i realized that was what younger folk than i wanted (they wanted to be noticed and accepted as part of the cool group ...the grown up folk that blogged and flickr'd and twittered still seemed authentic and original and nice to be with...but the door is open and some of the "look@me'ism" and fakr wanna bees are infiltrating flickr and twitter ... and it is so boring.

I for one don't think it is adolescent boys or dirty old men ...I think there are just lots of folk that are scared to be themselves ...& why do so many guys think using a "hotgirl" ID and posting stolen images is not strange?.... they are easy to spot but why are they doing it? surely ts not the small dick thing ...but why oh why must I spend time removing and blocking so many now ...grow up people.

Here are a few more sensible words on the subject of on-line authenticity from suze (a twitter friend)she has also started a promising podcast geekgrls

late afternoon at the beach

marie on the beach

watercolour on paper

out in the sunshine

pencil on paper

The beautiful spring weather is letting me enjoy the great pleasure of working in the outdoors, sketching and painting quickly, soaking up the warmth and delicacy of the light, watching the shadows dance and the whole world blossom

another melbournian beauty

Diane Watercolour on Paper

It is spring and the beauties of melbourne are venturing out into the sun ...letting their hair down, having fun ....and maybe frocking up as well for the spring racing carnival ...and life is good