“To live is to paint, it is to create; but while we are painting, we are being painted, being created as well!” Mehmet Murat İldan
Here is one final Southern Alps painting… for now, anyway. ‘An Approach to Sunlight’ completes the 16″ x 16″ trilogy. It’s a little wilder and more colourful than its siblings.
I think it’s time to move away from the mountains and do something else. I’m not short of ideas — far from it — it’s just a matter of deciding which one to tackle next. Any suggestions?
“The painter knew that color was not something you controlled but something you set free. He believed that color knew its way home.” Thomas Lloyd Qualls
I really like the idea that colour knows where it wants to go and the best thing the painter can do is relax and get out of the way. To not try so hard. To not worry so much about getting it right or wrong.
Looking back at the journey this little study has taken me on, I realise that I actually painted about three different paintings, each one over the top of the other. I’m quite happy with the final version with its blue and purple mountains and dramatic shadows, but I really could have stopped sooner and I would have been happy with those paintings too.
Late last year, I started several larger versions of this landscape but I stopped working on them because I couldn’t quite manage to get the colours I wanted. Putting the paintings to one side and taking time out to do this one has helped me to relax and stop worrying about them. And now I’m finally ready to put them back on the easel, move a bit of paint around and see what happens.
As we start the countdown to Christmas Day, now only a week away, I’ll be posting a few seasonally appropriate images that I created over on Polyvore. Wishing you and yours a very Happy Christmas, happy holidays and Happy New Year!
I’ve just donated my ‘Monarch’ painting to an art auction! The auction is being held next month at Art Metro in Christchurch (NZ) to raise funds for The White Room, a very cool creative space that brings together disabled artists, non disabled artists and interested people to share ideas, learn, and interact through their common passions and interests in the visual arts. I’m so happy they asked me to be a part of this year’s auction.
If you’ve read my last two posts, you’ll know that I am now involved in (yet) another social media website… Polyvore, a community that, in Polyvore’s own words, “disrupts the traditional e-commerce model by giving everyone everywhere a voice in shaping today’s trends and influencing purchases”. I discovered the site shortly after Etsy announced that it was going to take treasuries away (click here to see an old post that explains a bit more about treasuries). Over on Etsy, some of us were mad and some of us were sad, but there were also those who wondered what all the fuss was about.
Well, to some of us, the treasury was more than just a marketing tool; it was an art form. As well as promoting each other’s shops, we did things like A bird in the hand…
…and I Regret Nothing (one of my last treasuries)…
Going Going Gone is one I didn’t make. It was created by a team member in the Flash Mob who made personal treasuries for many of us as a farewell gesture. It features only my art! What an amazing gift. Thank you so much, Donna.
At some point during the final days of treasuries, the Flash Mob discovered Polyvore, a place where treasuries are called ‘sets’ and the old familiar 16-square grid looks more than a little old-fashioned. Now we can edit images, resize them, remove backgrounds, and make really, really creative sets. They can be fairly standard magazine-style editorials about fashion, beauty, or home decor, or they can be quirky and arty and just about anything you want them to be.
Like Etsy, Polyvore is very group and community oriented. There are contests with themes and items to feature, and so it’s surprisingly familiar even as we learn new ways of doing things. My first set was based on the ‘in situ’ illustration I drew for my ‘Moon Over the City’ painting:
Okay, that’s pretty basic, but I’m happy with it and I love being able to style my art in sets. It’s way too much fun (which goes some way to explaining why there hasn’t been a lot of painting going on in the studio this month). Below is an example of a fashion set for an ‘I Love Paris in the Fall’ contest — I couldn’t resist using my autumn tree drawing in the background:
The opportunities for creativity are endless. You can use the images already on Polyvore — and yes, quite a few are sponsored — or you can import your own from any website (like Pinterest, Polyvore preserves the link to the site that the image came from).
I’ll sign off today with a set that has nothing to do with anything, really. It was for a contest that had to feature our “first device love in the Technological Age” and, for me, that was my trusty old tape deck. Thanks for reading.
I mentioned in my last post that I’ve been revamping some of the images in my Etsy shop, so I thought I’d show you a few of my favourites. These were all created with digital trickery : ) and each picture is a combination of three different photographs: the original painting + my black travel easel + the photo that inspired the painting (in the background & slightly out of focus to give a kind of ‘depth of field’ effect)…
The other idea I’ve been playing around with is showing how my paintings could look on walls in different rooms. Because our house is not very big and much too untidy for a photo shoot, I decided to draw the furniture instead of photographing it. This is the first of what I hope will be a series of illustrated ‘in situ’ paintings…
One of the other things I mentioned last week was that I have discovered the wonderful world of Polyvore… but I’ll tell you more about that and how I came to be involved in yet another social media site (I know, I know…) in my next blog post. Thanks for reading.
Anna Cull ~ Art & Music 