Another Day

It  was a difficult show to hang with most of the works being such small paintings and I decided to hang them in "clouds".

Here are some snaps of my exhibition opening with fellow artist Anne Holliday, at the Real Tart Gallery, New Plymouth.  

Paint Cap - Nickel Titanate Yellow Oil on gessoed card 50x50mm $80

Another day and I feel like another futile attempt to achieve what I'm after. I am struggling and getting no further forward. Full of doubt and a deep-seated sense of inadequacy...

I wasn't very happy with the painting last session and feeling frustrated I did some work on it from memory afterwards. Felt a bit more contented but I fear I've given poor Anne a black eye in the process..!

Postcard From MDS - Homage From PJH Oil on gessoed hardboard 210x210mm This is a small painting I have been working on over the last few days. It is for a calendar and fundraiser auction for the Taranaki Womens Refuge. The theme was to be a Taranaki one and I felt that none of my so called "postcard" paintings - http://postcardfrompuniho.blogspot.com - were suitable. I'd been looking at this postcard reproduction of a rather famous and well known New Zealand painting by my friend and mentor Michael Smither, and I had the idea of doing a painting within a painting kind of thing. I stuck the postcard on my studio wall with bluetac, and put the old bottle with red pencil in front. I've always liked the apparently incongruous, and almost surreal bright red tactor on the skyline, that contrasts so dramaticly with the cold grey Taranaki stones in Michaels painting, and I wanted the red pencil to echo that. The little Walt Disney figurine of Pluto, has already rece...

Another session yesterday. I started by applying some thin glazes on the left side of Anne's face trying to add a bit of depth to the shadow areas. Then I worked into that, using slightly more impasto paint. Last week I was struggling so much in bad lighting conditions that I turned on an electric light to give a bit more ambient light to her right side, and I quite like it so we've decided to keep it. I've added cadmium orange to my palette. It is a strangely cool orange that I've never been able to duplicate using cadmium yellow and red and as a tint with lots of white it makes a good colour for flesh lit by electric light. The same goes for alizarian crimson or rose madder tints. The left side of her face is picking up the natural light from the windows on that side and I'm using terre vert, raw umber, mars violet and ivory black. I was still not happy about something and I came to the conclusion I had the eyes too close together. Much to Anne's const...