Two Americans emigrate to New Zealand from Colorado,
USA.
We share our Kiwi immigration story and talk about
our new life in Nelson, New Zealand
Living in New Zealand has really enabled a relaxed lifestyle for both Don and I to pursue everything we enjoy doing in our free time. I have always wanted to paint with oils and started in Colorado before I moved, never with much success for I am not very artistic. But, I enjoy the process and sometimes the outcome. Since moving I picked up my brushes again and am even in a regular class at the adult community classes at a local college. Take a look at how I've progressed.
I also have several more in progress, it's good when using oils to have several to work on as the oils don't dry quickly. Keep watching.
I grabbed a booklet by this artist when in Santa Fe so that I could practice by copying.
If you think it looks sloppy, the original looks sloppy, it's not just me! It was a very gestural type work in the colour blocks, but I found I had to copy it in my own seemingly detailed style.
My tutor tells me that everyone apparently tends to a detailed style or to a gestural style, and I want desperately to be a gestural painter but am not. So I copied this layer after lay in detail as much as possible. I'd put up the picture of the original I worked from but that's probably illegal. It's pretty close, but definitely was an uncomfortable experience as layer after layer I just felt as if I was making a mess rather than creating form ... and then at some point the form started appearing and all was good.
This is my friend Jade's 2007 wedding. She used this lovely picture (see below) on her thank you cards and, yes, the clouds really looked like that in the picture!
I thought it was a lovely picture and spent soem time working on it during my last term, with a bit of help from my teacher on the wedding veil, a tough one even by her standards!
Here's the card, so you can see what I was copying, with a little colour licence as I'm not nearly good enough at mixing colours.
This was just an exercise in blending colours, inspired by some of my varigated yarns.
I initially had this image above posted here, but after taking my adult painting course I decided to go back over it to make it more vivid and that one is to the right.
In the early days when painting at the house in The Wood I did this 'beach' scene from my head, and it was one of the better things I did.
I threw away a lot of other stuff that disappointed, but this one I have always liked.
This was an exercise in painting class, and I decided rather than use black and whites to use my prussian blue, which could be my favourite oil colour. I think it turned out splendidly, other than my seeming habit for making everything crooked - I think my eyes must be leaning off to the left or something as I have seen this habit on display many times!
I have done another layer on this one since I took this image, I need to get my shadows right but have also been inspired about the shadows from the Monet exhibition we went to in May in Wellington, how he did water shadows, so I may experiment on this painting too.
You can tell I am still using smaller canvases, but that is changing now with my painting class.
Probably my most 'accomplished' work so far, I painted this in class over six weeks and in multiple layers of paint from a photo I took at our house in The Wood when we first moved here. It had this bright lime green fence and in spring the flowers from the neighbour's house started peeking through. The photograph I painted from was a bit crooked, and I think I took it a step further with my painting too! I have got to get a handle on the crookedness and make sure I have a level horizon.
