Life drawing class

This was my first attempt at doing a life drawing class. I need to do a lot of feet and hands and faces! I need to work out proportions better and do more on foreshortening as well.. My last two were done on full size paper and so were not able to be scanned and by then I was freeing up a bit. Our model was beautifully pregnant which also makes for a bit more of a problem I think. My arms are pretty woeful but the first one was a 5 minute sketch and you cant get much done in 5 minutes, the second was a far more challenging pose and was I think a 10 minute sketch. The hour and a half went very fast. An interesting exercise and I would like the opportunity to do more but not so easy in a small town.

Glory vine leaves

I sat outside after lunch relaxing and looking at the various colours of the leaves on the Glory vine so collected my watercolour pencils and tried to capture them. I dont think I had realised how many different shapes the leaves have as well as the tones of colour. I am afraid it isnt brilliant but it is my last weeks challenge for Everyday Matters, for those in the northern hemisphere the challenge was Spring
Great excitement today as when I went in to the Post Office to collect the mail there was a complimentary copy of the American magazine Cloth Paper and Scissors with an accompanying letter saying that I was an "artist" in this issue. Wow!! I must say I had about 4 pages of the ATC RR pages I had made in there. Incredible.

Museum window

I sketched this very quickly the other evening while waiting for John to go back to the car, probably only had about 7 minutes so it is a bit rough but I rather liked these windows, they make the building, I must go back with the camera and try to take a photo. The museum is on North Tce and there are a row of rather lovely buildings along there.
I spent many happy hours in the museum and the art gallery when I was a child, the childrens library was behind them in another lovely old building facing the armory lawns. My father was a professor at the University of Adelaide in the 1930's 40's and 50's, he died in 1959, the year I was married, but as children the university, which in those days was very small was a second home. How it has all changed now, I hardly know my way around it.
One of the things that the art class over the week end has taught me is to take more photos of our buildings, and sketches if I can find the time.
Autumn has definetly arrived this morning, moist wet earth smells, the glory vine is turning and the little Nyssa sylvatica I have been nurturing for years in the orchard is a flame of colour, I think it has finally decided to get its roots down and live.

Textile page

Unfortunatly this isnt showing up very well, I have tried to fix the shadow but it wouldnt work. This is a fabric page I am slowly getting together of memories and women, this is my mother aged 18 on her wedding day, she is now 93. The lace is a tiny piece of Honiton Lace I bought when I was in Honiton a few years ago as my mother wore a Honiton Lace veil, which has long since disapeared, the pink lace is actually some of my mother in laws stuff i found in her work basket when I married John, she had been dead for 10 years then. Wrapped up is a shrunk down copy of my mothers wedding certificate and the pearl buttons are all old ones I have collected over the years. All done on a piece of cream silk. The other button is a copy of an old one and the frame is a scrapbooking one I found.
Today has been a bit messy, made a large amount of rattatoulle to freeze and use in stews over winter. I have washed and ironed, fiddled with some textile stuff I still have to finish and had a blood test (8 am, no breakfast!)
Felt almost like winter today, cold and dark but it has suddenly cleared up so I will walk the dogs tonight before going in to beading.

Study of clouds

This was one of my cloud studies, a bit of a mess in the left hand corner but not too bad. Done on Arches 300gsm watercolour paper.
I will compare it later to the ones I did earlier in the week.
It has rained through the night and we have had over an inch so far, now the problem will be, do we start seeding or not? John has got some seed this morning, and after he left it poured again and I had trouble feeding the ponies, all done now. I think we will put a bit of seed in the lower paddocks and hope we keep getting some rain, really we wouldnt expect to start until mid April but we can do with all the feed we can get, and the earlier the better. Even on our deep sand this may be a posibility as rain and showers are forecast for the whole week, then we dont want it to get too hot! Farmers worry all over the world!
I think I have a not so full on week this week so hope to get back to some textile stuff.
I have just been told that some of the textile pages for the ATC book we did as a round robin with Patti Culea's stargazetome group have been published in the Cloth Paper and Scissors magazine and some of mine are in it. Cant wait to see the magazine. (Probably about 3 weeks or so before I do.)

Painting in shadows

I had a very interesting, and tiring week end in Adelaide going to the painting for travellers workshop with Peter Bok. The area he lives and has his studio in was one of the least fashionable areas in town, now transformed into modern townhouses etc but his is a lovely old bungalow with garden. Any way this was one of our exercises, using a photo (yes a photo!!) of one of our local churches this was to get angles and shadows in and I found it a very interesting exercise to do. Not that this is in any way right but it has taught me a lot more about where things should go. Again using 3 colours, although this time burnt sienna. yellow ochre and ultramarine. I am stil having trouble laying down my colours but felt much more condident as the week end went on. (And I have to say felt I had a better handle on it than at least half the class!!) I will probably get more up through the week.

Another from the watercolour class

This was the very early morning scene on the last day of our class. The Island and the Bluff seemed to be floating in the air as there was very little difference between the sea and the sky when I did this.
I am now back to getting onto the computer at all times of the day. I had a 9 am eye appointment this morning, the cataract in the good eye is thickening, hence the smeary feeling I am getting, but not bad enough to do anything about yet, wait 12 months unless it really gets worse.
Yesterday was a full day/evening in Adelaide, dentists, I am still not cleaning enough for him, oh dear I may well be dead before that happens. Very hot in Adelaide, i did get a rather lovely and quite expensive brush for my washes and some paper. Saw my mother and one of her carers who is a very slim swish young lady who teaches singing, just what I think my mother needs, filled her up with a brandy and soda!
We then went on to the reception for the Clipsal 500 car race at the Armory lawns, while waiting for John who had forgotten our entree cards I sat on North Terrace and sketched the windows in the museum, I will put them up another day. The reception was very interesting, they had some of the jugglers and acrobats from the Adelaide fringe festival performing, I made some more very quick sketches. Some lovely oysters and other nibbly food, a glass or two of bubbly and caught up with a few people we knew then drove home, still very hot until we neared home when it got cold, so a good nights sleep.
Tomorrow I head back to Adelaide for a two day sketching for travellers class.