Nellie Windmill

The painting I’m working on at the moment has turned into an homage to childhood. I say “turned into” because as with much of my art, meaning has emerged as the piece progresses rather than being consciously imbued from the beginning. The colours in today’s recipe “Just Taller Children”, is the colour scheme I’ve chosen for this painting. “Just Taller Children” is a lyric from a David Bowie song, and it pretty much sums up how I feel about being a grown up.

I’m not a natural talker. I avoid phone conversations the way some people avoid the dentist. I used to worry that my mind must be devoid of thought because everyone around me talked so much I wondered at how much they had to say!

We’ve officially missed our flights back to Europe from Australia. Deliberately. Friends and family and the forest have proven to be impossible to leave a second time around. Read on to catch up on the unforeseen (aren’t they all?) happenings of the last few months.

I’m frequently asked about the inspiration for a piece and I can’t answer in any satisfying, coherent way. People seem to be really disappointed by this, which makes me think that maybe artists also need to be storytellers. The interesting thing about this sketch-soon-to-be-painting, is that after I drew it a very clear link could be made between it and The Inspiration.

It’s that time again, where I introduce you to an artist who makes me yearn and covet and turn a particularly unflattering shade of chartreuse. Suddenly I want to work in oil on ginormous canvases. Until now I’ve been utterly, illogically, intimidated by large canvases, despite the fact that it’s easier to work big than small.

Painting “Winkle & Tonk” was an exercise in restraint. I’ve often seen selective colour paintings or photographs – that is, when most of the painting is in a neutral colour and only portions of the painting are coloured – and resolved to one day give it a go. I’m not sure if I forgot or was doing an Orwellian double-think trick, but I almost painted Winkle purple before I remembering.

Remember when I mentioned that I bought a whole new set of acrylic colours, having left most of my paints in Europe whilst I galavant around in Australia? This of course meant me doing an enormous amount of research so I could buy the most optimal combination of colours. I hope you, my gentle readers, are as massive art geeks as myself and will enjoy these resources I found.

Do you know what excites me most about my latest painting? It’s the first time I’ve ever seen my artwork hanging on a proper wall. It somehow looks better, more polished, as if it’s posing on the red carpet.

Hmmm, a link sharing post after months and months without any posts at all, let alone new art or an explanation about what the hell I’ve been up to. Am I stalling? Maybe.

Usually when I write about being a self-taught artist, I write about the lessons I’ve learned along the way. This time around, I’d like to share some of the issues I’m still fuzzy on, despite having been aware of them and having pondered them a bit here and there, for quite some time. Maybe my gentle readers have found their own answers to these questions or maybe the process of writing about it will help clarify my own thoughts on these matters, as so often happens.

It is possible to create a beautifully unified color palette by adopting any (or all) of these three techniques:

This week’s word for Illustration Friday is “stretch”, hence the illustration. This is the first drawing in the sketchbook I bought when I took a month just to draw, around this time last year. That was a glorious time. I’ve still got dozens of drawings from this time saved in my vast “potential paintings” folder in Evernote.

It’s been three years since I began this blog and three and a half years since I unsubscribed from society and embraced my vagabonding ways. Yet, I suspect these are the first photos of me in my studio nook. As you can see, my table is rather petite, approximately 70x70cm.

I am really feeling this piece that I’m working on at the moment. I’m intrigued that the protagonist isn’t human (this wasn’t pre-meditated, it just happened). I don’t fully understand the feeling I’m about to convey so this might not be entirely coherent. Sometimes I feel a bit distanced from figurative artwork because I don’t know who it is in the painting. Sort of like if you were to frame a photograph of a stranger and put it on a shelf. I think this might be why I’m drawn to non-realistic representations of people — they’re much less challenging on this level.

I basically froth at the mouth with giddy delight when it comes to colour selection and colour mixing. An especially exciting moment for me is when I select the inspiration for my next colour scheme from my immense store of images. I imagine it’s a bit like the excited anticipation of finding out the sex of your baby, but more-so because there are only two (maybe three) possibilities in that scenario, which is totally lame compared to the vast array of colours and combinations therein.

I had no idea what I was doing when I was painting these tree swing pieces. I was using both new techniques and new mediums, which was probably ill-advised. On the one hand, I’ve now several techniques under my belt which I will definitely use again. On the other hand, I kinda wanted to die when I was rendering delicate branches in pastel pencil.

Good god, I just remembered someone once told me I look like Chelsea Clinton. That’s completely unrelated to this blog post. More relevant is that I’m participating in the Owl Lover Calendar project again this year.

As you all know, I’m enamoured with the notion of things flying that really shouldn’t. I’ve decided to once again delve into this theme after my brief tree-swing diversion. I like to think the protagonist of this painting is flummoxed yet delighted.

Sometimes I feel like there’s nothing on the internet. Like one of those people who say there’s nothing good on tv — the same tv that brings us Dexter, Doctor Who, and Downton Abbey! Sometimes I think I’m bored with using the internet recreationally and other times I find tasty morsels like this:

I had a light-bulb moment the other day. I realised that churning out paintings and experimenting with new techniques are mutually exclusive (for me). Last year, I decided to focus on just a couple of techniques and this year I decided to add a couple more techniques as well as a new medium. Oh, and I’ve also been experimenting with colour mixing this year! I feel like my productivity has really stalled to a crawl this year, buried under a groaning mound of experimentation. Too much new makes Katherine decombobulate.