Where I am

Against all the odds (everything’s closed this time of year), we’ve found ourselves a rustic little caravan park in the heart of a charming mediaeval village in the far south of France. There are winding, narrow lanes of tipsy-topsy half-timber houses and a crumbling 12th century abbey looming aesthetically over the caravan park.

We had a really delightful surprise this morning when we opened Nettle’s blinds to a smattering of snow on the ground and a flurry of snow in the air.

What I’m doing

I’ve finally committed to opening an Etsy shop on July 24th this year! I dedicated January to developing a cohesive product line and organising a launch strategy and actually ended up filling an entire sketchbook with ideas. I’ll be providing sneak peaks of some of my favourite sketches, which I’ll be turning into paintings for the new series, in my inaugural newsletter!

Random Minutia

• I discovered that full moons have names! I love it when the real world gets its whimsy on. I find it so heartening.
• I now smell like an antique settee, a violin in the attic, and a satin corset (not all at the same time), thanks to this belated Christmas present from my lovely partner.
• We’ve embraced bag-in-a-box wine, also known as “cask wine”. We’re told this isn’t even a little bit bogan in France. I think there’s an algorithmic thingy that says anything done in France is 100% more sophisticated than when done anywhere else in the world.

– Susan Orlean, Adaptation

I had a lot of time off from making art at the end of last year and I used some of that time to think. I want to be really proud of my art and although I’m proud of the progress I’ve made there are some things bugging me.

Despite all the progress I made in technique last year I’m still finding myself no longer loving a lot of pieces after a few weeks or so. I got to thinking about what my pieces lack that art which makes me ache with envy has. So for a bit of fun on a long drive along featureless German autobahns one day, I made a list of the features my favourite pieces of art have in common.

Non-cartoony, illustrative style

I think my favourite art is probably split 50/50 between “fine art” and “illustrative art”. My art definitely leans towards illustrative. The style I’m drawn to in this genre seems to inhabit the space between realistic and cartoon – there’s probably a name for it but I’m not educated enough in the arts to know what it is. I’m not a big fan of cartoony illustrations yet I find myself consistently producing them! I think it’s because I keep settling for what I *can* draw rather than what I *want* to draw.

I’ve completely spontaneously come to really enjoy drawing these past couple of weeks and can’t seem to rip myself away from the sketchbook so I’m hoping my technique will develop substantially this year.

An element of fantasy, oddness, or improbability

Again, this isn’t true for all art that I love but it is a recurring theme. I think much of my art incorporates these elements but it could do more so. When I’ve got a fairly fleshed out design in mind I’d like to start asking myself, “How could I make this a little bit stranger, a litter more enchanting, a little more playful?”.

Neutrals and earth-tones with a touch of colour

This is a characteristic that I think might actually be 100% consistent across all of my favourite artists. I can appreciate bright, bold colour but the artwork that makes me weak in the knees is invariably natural, earthy neutrals with discerning splashes of delicious, elegantly muted hues. I’m thinking about experimenting with matt medium and mixing with neutral grey to this end.

And so I continue to whittle down the infinite realm of possibilities until I’m left with only those things which I consistently adore.

I finished my old sketchbook the other week and thoroughly enjoyed that exciting moment in an artist’s life of buying a new one. As I flipped through my old one I realised sketchbooks are like little time capsules. I was struck by an image of myself as a little old lady surrounded by stacks of teetering sketchbooks and thought how nice it would be to remember where I was and what I was doing during the life of each one. I bought my recently filled one in Tunisia, 2010 and my new one in Provence, France so I decided to dedicate the first page to my future self.

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When I grow up, I want to be an artist

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Have I mentioned I never wanted to be an artist when I grew up? I don’t think it ever actually occurred to me that it was an option. Even today, I struggle with truly believing it is an option, despite knowing full well that people do it. This puts me in mind of the TED [...]

My Other Life

07-17-2011

There are a few facets to my life. Most of you will already know that I used to be a social worker back in Australia before moving to Europe to live in a motorhome and paint like a vagabonding gypsy. What you probably don’t know is that I run an iPhone and Mac software development [...]

Wild, Precious Life

12-22-2010

Hello gentle readers. How long has it been since I posted anything about art? I spent a good chunk of today getting my ideas for arty blog posts in order — it’s been so long, they’ve rather mounted up! To kick things off, I’m beginning with posting one of the half a dozen or so [...]

1. I started finishing things

In January of 2011 , I confessed to being a serial project starter. I’d begin a painting of a toaster one day and the next I’d be all about velociraptors (*random subjects chosen for exaggerated effect*). Some people thrive when working like this. The problem with this for me is that my interest in paintings has a shelf-life. If I don’t finish them in a certain amount of time, they’ll never be finished.

It’s not just that I lose interest. It’s more that in the time it’s taken me to begin the painting then lose interest in it, my technique has improved enough so that I now scorn my earlier work. At this point, it’s not so much a matter of continuing with the painting and improving what I can but painting over the entire thing. All of which meant that I wasn’t finishing anything or if I was it was at a glacial rate.

A very unsatisfying state of affairs.

With this nugget of self-insight in mind I decided to sacrifice many beginnings and focus on a few select paintings at a time. My productivity and “job” satisfaction this year has been much improved.

2. I narrowed my focus to two techniques and a limited palette

This was the year in which I began to find my arty sea legs and produce work that I really like. I decided to take the two techniques I’d been using in these pieces and commit to focusing soley on them for the rest of the year. I’ve made quite a bit of progress in technique thanks to this decision.

I also discovered the magic of limited palettes in 2011 and have been working with them ever since. This means all of my paintings are now produced using three primaries, white, sometimes black, and occasionally an earth tone, usually burnt umber. This is all in the hope of discovering my very own optimal colour palette, as inspired by such sassy lasses as Amy Sol, Laura Berger, and Natasha Newton.

You see, I have a system. I have a warm and a cool of each primary colour and I’m cycling through every possible combination of them and recording the results. My hypothesis is that one of these combinations will be optimal for what I have in mind.

Of course, my optimal colour palette could consist entirely of hues I don’t own, but I’ve got to start somewhere.

3. I bought a couple of “Acrylic Painting 101″ type books

My pre-2011 painting days were full of all sorts of frustrating little niggles. Just simple little things stemming from my lack of understanding of the medium. I finally bit the bullet and bought a couple of beginner level books and now acrylic is my bitch.

And, in the interests of completeness, here is something I aimed to improve in 2011 and am having to roll over to the 2012 goal sheet because of utter failure:

I didn’t spend enough time in the studio

Mind you, I did get in more studio time in 2011 than any other year. Even so, I went for long tracts of time without painting. I’m going to have a bit of a sit down and ponder why this happened and how not to do it in 2012.

A Little List of Mini Victories to Honour the Small but Mighty

• I created a Facebook page for Nellie Windmill, which felt oh-so-grown-up and business-like.
• I overhauled the design of my blog in a gazillion little ways (and it still feels like there are a gazillion more to go!).
• After an obscene amount of failed attempts I’ve finally managed to stick to a blogging schedule, which is both frequent enough and manageable.
• I finally got the content on my blog under control and am blogging mostly about my art.
• My little owl in pants dude got himself in a calendar.
• A new artist friend invited me to show in an exhibition she runs in Exmoor next year!
• A curated online gallery expressed interest in featuring my work when I open my Etsy shop!
• A wee painting of mine was featured on Imaginative Bloom.

How about you? What were the best (and worst) things you did for your art in 2011?

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Shiny Pretty Things

12-16-2011

One of my favourite types of blog posts to write is when I get to share beautiful things with you. For sure one of the downers of living nomadically is having no address and no way of buying all the beautiful things I find online (probably for the best really). [Cue violins]. Original Art + [...]

Paris

We stayed in the outskirts of Paris for about three weeks at the end of summer/beginning of autumn. This was our first time in Paris with our bikes and I reckon zipping along the bustling Parisian streets on cute vintage bikes was the highlight of our time there for me. Although, the tiramisu we had at this cafe whilst watching hot young Parisians trying to look nonchalant, was a close second…

Then there was this cheese platter…

And seeing Sainte-Chapelle bathed in sunlight — just as spectacular as I remembered it from my first trip here as an itty bitty 21 year old…

We had a very silly and lovely time navigating the Louvre with an out of date Rick Steves’ audio tour (they’ve moved everything, Rick!). This little guy was my favourite. I reckon he’d look right at home on Etsy (astonishing how much primitive art looks like modern art, or vice versa).

We cycled along the Seine, which was surprisingly chaotic as bike paths don’t seem to be a thing in this city…

We ducked down further south into the countryside to meet up with a lovely American couple who’ve been following our travel blog for a while. They took us out on their little boat along the canals on Mike’s birthday. Such a serene and beautiful way to travel.

To Denmark!

This is when all hell broke loose. As we were making plans to meet up with our new friends again a bit further south, we were told by Danish immigration that we had to register in person for our visas. We’d checked several times with various people to make sure that we could do the entire process via the post!

Six days and 1500 kilometres later and we were in Copenhagen! I think about 50% of the places we’ve been during our vagabonding adventures we’ve arrived at buffeted by the winds of fate. Luckily, there’s only really been one place where we’ve struggled to turn this into a positive.

It turns out that Copenhagen is a very pleasant city and Denmark a very interesting country. Despite the tragedy of missing autumn in France, I’m really glad we were introduced to this culture and its people. Although I think it was the market with stalls selling cupcakes, fudge, and really good coffee that clinched it for me.

Also, there’s an old-fashioned theme park!

Our original plan was to register in Denmark then immediately return to France in the hopes of catching autumn. Our plans were foiled, as they so often are, by me finding another lump in my boob (the first was last year in Cornwall). My body also decided that now would be a good time to get a horribly painful infected tooth!

In a funny way, this was all excellently timed as everyone in Denmark speaks English and we were allocated a public health system doctor when we registered! Doctors and dentists appointments scheduled for a few weeks hence, we decided to leave Copenhagen and hunker down in the Danish countryside in the meantime. Happily, we did manage to catch some autumn colours whilst there.

Allons-y!

Minus one very bad tooth and with a confident diagnosis of astronomically-unlikely-to-be-cancer, we headed back to France. We entertained ideas of going via Berlin but after our long sojourn in Paris and our marathon drive to Copenhagen, we just didn’t have it in us. We decided that the south of France is to be our winter destination and made a bee-line there via some very pretty French villages.

And that my friends, is why I’ve hardly painted in the last month or so! These last few weeks I’ve had a lot of thinking time. I spent hours trundling across Europe dreaming of the Etsy shop I’m going to open next year, the children’s book I want to create, and the type of art I want to make. My involuntary lull in productivity has left me feeling rejuvenated and extra motivated to get back to creating lovely arty things!

We’ve settled in a corner of Provence for winter and I’ve gotten stuck back into things in Studio Nettle. We won’t be moving for a few months (tempting fate much?), so I’m really pumped to get an obscene amount of “work” done.

Original Art + Bags = Accessory Heaven

These delightful bags are the result of a very special alchemy between mixed media artist Cathy Nichols and Sherpani. When I first saw these bags I was immediately thrown into a longing daydream of one day having my own line of cute and quirky bag creations. That would be a dream come true.

Autumn Hued Stockings & Arm Warmers

Not the most timely of blog posts but I couldn’t not share these. There are a ton of yummy sock creations over at the appropriately named “Sock Dreams”. Once I’m back living in Melbourne town, I see regular jaunts into the city in many a sassy boot, skirt, and stockings combos!

Handmade Jewellery by Vena Amoris

I’m a big fan of organic looking jewellery. Vena Amoris Jewelry is the creation of Tesia Alexandra. Her designs are elegant in their simplicity and embrace the natural “flaws” of the precious stones and metals she works with.

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A New Pretty

11-29-2009

I finished my very first assemblage piece today and I just can’t stop looking at it and smiling. I bought the wooden frame in an op shop back in Australia, which was at the time, very daggy. I gave it a revamp with paint, crackling medium and distressing but was at a loss for what [...]

I’m not at all a morning person so at the moment my main goal is to aim to get up around sunrise to maximise my daylight hours. This is a real struggle for me and I’m not at all sure I’ll manage it so I’ve come up with a couple of strategies:

• We’ve moved the heater closer to the bed so I can turn it on from bed in the morning. I’ll set an alarm for 6am to turn it on and go back to sleep until 8:30.
• I’ve noticed that if I leave it too long between painting sessions, I either become very antsy to get back to it or at the other extreme, I can become very complacent about it. When the latter happens, I’ve found a beautifully simple silver bullet. If I pull out the pieces in progress and leave them out so I can look at them throughout the day I instantly get excited about getting stuck into them again.
• When the time comes when even the light during the day isn’t good enough for too many days in a row, I might get one of those fancy natural daylight lamps. I used to scoff at these as a newbie artist but after attempting to paint with regular light bulbs last winter, I’m a convert. I’d happily paint away with what I thought was a lovely shade of grey then take the painting outside into natural daylight to take some photos, only to find that it was a strange and not altogether pleasant shade of pale green!

What are your winter time survival strategies?

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Mixed Media Art Techniques with Acrylics, PanPastels and Ranger’s Distress Ink

04-22-2011

A few weeks ago, I blogged about finding my arty sea legs. I mentioned my plan to focus on two particular techniques and a colour palette I’ve come to adore. In this tutorial, I’ll introduce you to both. The first technique I adopted after reading about it on the blog of Natasha Newton when she [...]

Mixed Media Art Techniques with Glazes, Vintage Sewing Pattern Paper and PanPastels

02-20-2011

Holy Moly, my very first tutorial! Quite the milestone. If you care to join me, I’ll take you on a pleasant, matt medium scented journey through the making of the above ATC. I’ve had a few tiny canvases and ATCs lying around for a while. Not having had any inspiration strike, I began slapping on [...]

Download

I’m sequestering some digital scrapbooking goodies away for the sole use of newsletter subscribers (because bribery is a time-proven strategy), so sign up if you like free pretty things!

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Free Digital Scrapbooking Goodie: Number Seven on a Cobbled Italian Lane

04-24-2011

We were wandering the tiny winding lanes of some little Italian village when I took a snap of a gorgeously grungy house number which had writing scribbled all over it. I blended this photo with some stripes and voila! I’m sequestering some digital scrapbooking goodies away for the sole use of newsletter subscribers (because bribery [...]

Introducing Free Digital Scrapbooking Goodies!

02-23-2011

Last winter in our motorhome in Tunisia, I spent days and days working into the wee hours creating digital collage papers and textures. I learnt how to use Photoshop and took masses of photos of rust, unfinished paintings, and peeling paint, so I could digitally mix them with patterns and designs. I think it’s about [...]

I usually dread drawing because it doesn’t come easily to me, but the day I drew this was one of those precious, magical days when every line flowed effortlessly.

I’ll give a visual example another time and maybe even a quick and dirty how-to, but for now here’s my submission for this week’s Illustration Friday theme: “Vanity”.

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10-15-2009

My very first attempt at Illustration Friday . This week’s theme is “flying”. I was worried I wouldn’t be able to think of anything to paint but the hardest part was narrowing it down to just one thing!

Skinny

11-6-2009

This is my very first full-sized (i.e., not ATC) painting that I’ve actually finished. Thank you Illustration Friday for giving me deadlines.

As I mentioned in my post about my new laser-like focus, I’ve decided to only paint owls in all their glorious permutations for a while; hence the owl glut.

I’m really enjoying working on small PanPastel and ink pieces whilst tackling the larger acrylic piece. Working with PanPastel brings immediate gratification, which is in direct contrast to the time-consuming, labour-intensive layering technique I use with acrylics.

It’s interesting to witness the shift in my attitude towards colours since I’ve begun painting. A few years ago I thought of mustard yellow as one of those kacky baby-poo colours. Perhaps, if I continued to take it on its own I never would’ve warmed to it, but pair it with greys, warm, autumnal earth tones, or a lovely blue-green and instantly it transforms into something beautiful.

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Much Art In Progress

01-31-2011

I have a problem. I am a serial project starter. When I get a new idea or want to try out a new technique, I get excited and will begin something new despite how many paintings are already in the works. Or sometimes, a painting won’t work out so I put it in a cupboard [...]

In Progress at Studio Nettle

04-1-2011

There are people who take more satisfaction in beginning projects and those who take immense satisfaction in finishing them. Until recently I’ve been making art like the former, except it’s come to my attention that I am in fact of the latter persuasion! Taking this previously unidentified characteristic and applying it to the way I [...]