Mistakes are just a chance to learn something new

I took a photo with Instagram and added a filter, I love how it looks with the amber glow. This feels like its getting close to its final state

I started to apply warm tones to areas of the white wash. I was working the middle white space and it just kept moving around. I found other areas doing the same thing. Something was wrong. I thought about why and realized that I have used a bunch of different materials and haven't thought about them working in harmony.

I primed with Gesso and sanded and repeated three times. The surface was so beautiful and smooth. I started with melted oil pastels. I used turps to move it around and create areas of transparent colour. I used more oil pastels and painted in some acrylic with gel medium and some mixed with varnish medium (for acrylic) .

Layering over this and that, scraping back, varnishing sections and smudging oil pastel with turps with no apparent plan or consideration of material compatibility has caused the whole thing to be unstable. Bits and pieces chipped off, peeled off and just didn't work.  I started to feel like this painting is a metaphorical self-portrait.

Being a Virgo, I couldn't stand it and I made the drastic decision to start again. I began to scrape back all of the layers...

 

 

I'm glad all of this has happened. I like cropping the painting with photos, it focuses on details and I often think of making a series of large paintings from the photos - almost like a physical, historical remnant of itself, a visual history of the paintings past lives.

The other amazing thing is that I am committing to know my materials so that I can use them all together. I'm going to have to start recording the process in a journal... yay :)

Colours pop with a wash of white

I kept wanting the white space so I lightly washed over the blue and I like the visible  brush strokes and the different textures... Still working on the harmony. I know I have to make choices

Colours of blue are making me happy

In my last post, which was so long ago, I wanted to head in the direction of blue/green. Since then I decided that I didn't want certain areas any more so I marked out (with a black wax crayon) the areas I wanted to keep, mixed up the colour I wanted to use, and painted it out.
I'm still not happy with the harmony of the colours and I keep wanting light white space

Colour Makes Me Happy... Still

Since returning from the Glenelg River neutral, natural tones (mainly yellows and green) have infiltrated the previous lolly pop colours and the whole thing is starting to settle down. I will keep some of the really vibrant colours to represent the greens, oranges, reds and pinks that show up in the bush after fire and rain but the move is towards "blue and green should never be seen unless there's a colour in between"...This painting has no deep meaning or direction other than what comes next. It's an exercise in familiarizing myself with the way colour works and how paint moves with other media.

The interesting thing (to me) about doing this is that there is still so much that doesn't work or tie together in this painting yet but its still out there

Refelctions of limestone and tea tree on the Glenelg River

These photos were taken on a recent three day canoe trip up the Glenelg River.  We paddled 14 kilometers a day and camped each night in the National Park either side of the river. Traveling by river is the perfect way to see the landscape from a different perspective. You move along fairly slowly and its totally quiet apart from the bush noise. I loved getting lost in the intense greens, the limestone cliffs and the reflections in the water.  The bird life was amazing, we saw some rare cockatoos and lots of black cockatoos.  We were even lucky enough to hear a koala calling for a mate.  I would have said wild pigs but I am assured it was a koala. We didn't see it though.

Another thing that is interesting on the Glenelg River is the River Shack (that's what I'm calling it). There are dozens of these shacks. Some of them look as though they're lived in and others look like they're being swallowed by the river. You can see them for yourself when I post them in a little series.

Already these photos have influenced Colour Makes Me Happy. I have been working on it again since my last post about it but it has already changed again due to the influence the Glenelg River

Colour Makes Me Happy...continued

Each image is a detail of the work in progress: Colour Makes Me Happy. I haven't included a full version.  I have spent some time playing with the balance of colours and at times I think I don't know what I'm doing.  I like the process of adding and subtracting colours, shapes and layers.  Its a little bit like Tetris trying to create harmony within the colours and shapes in a way that they will inevitably sing a tune that is joyful and light.

Murray River Afternoon Light

A recent trip to the Murray river has inspired me.  I want to paint the landscape but in an abstracted way that eludes to the play of light and colour through out the day. I was busy looking for new ways to look at the world around me through the lens of a camera and came up with these images...