I allowed myself a leisurly two weeks to complete this image.  On the side I was able to complete some knitting and baby projects also.  I used a full sized A3 page with this one, figuring I needed  a bit more room to explore things with this one.  I Did enjoy the extra freedom this allowed.  I had fun playing with the reflections on the water and relaxing into it and not letting myself be tied to the reference photograph I had taken.   Overall I am rather pleased with the result.  It ended out being somewhat casual while still exploring a traditional realistic style.

The exercise gave me a change to explore glazing colours over the top of the image to play with foreground and background while also creating a depth and shadow to the buildings and water.

I have also been working on getting my journal properly organised and sorted.  I have a million things that need to be glued in and put in a proper place.  I need to make sure I keep this resource up to date rather then just being all over the place.

I have decided I am going to put my deadlines on hold until after the baby is born now.  Sitting in one position and leaning forward is become difficult.  Plus It is difficult to focus when I am thinking of all the other things I feel like I urgently need to do.  So I think I might get myself into those knitting projects and hopefully come up with a few cute x-mas gifts.

I think a New Years Resolution will be in order for my next lot of artistic adventures.

For this weeks painting I decided to rework another of the older images I had that I knew I could improve on.  It was an image I had painted probably four years ago as a gift.  It was probably half the size of the new one and on what I have now decided to be my less preferred paper.  The below image is also not of very good quality as it is a photograph of the image whilst it was behind glass in a frame.  It was more for my own records then to accurately represent the painting.

I have enjoyed using a more subtle process with this image.  The colours are softer and more blended into the image then they have been in recent paintings.  I was able to explore white open spaces in the image also.  Leaving the fence, parts of the gravel and sky bare paper was very valuable experience for me.  I have found myself over saturating an image with colour and not leaving myself much room to darken or lighten the image.  So this excercise was a good way for me to take a closer look at this.

I feel that this image is a good indication of where this challenge has taken my use of watercolour.  I have become more more confident and decisive while painting and follow the process relatively quickly.  I am feeling like I can now take on larger and more detailed images confidently.

This one is just a very simple exercise. Two colours, basic image and not a lot of time. I used a few different brushes with this one and played with different techniques. I started with no real plan but the idea of silhouette and the sky which I was kind of trying for with the previous pine tree image, however that went in a different direction. I am hoping to come up with the 10th image this weekend so I can be completely on track with paintings for the amount of weeks this challenge has gone for.

I am also looking at using my last few pieces of paper on A3 sized images to complete the challenge. I have a few images in mind and I think it would be a good way to end the challenge. Then I think I will spend the rest of the time before baby to play with some illustrations and cute acrylic paintings.

For a long part of the process I thought this image was just going to be a scrap or study image.  But to my surprise it came together in the end in such a way that I consider it to be complete and another addition to my collection.

It was pretty loose and random by the end and I didn’t try to replicate much of anything except for what I thought was going to work on the paper.  I just knew I had the idea of silhouettes of trees in front of a setting sun and that pine trees always make me think of the Queensland coastline.

I think I may be ready for some larger sized images.  I’m thinking of trying some waterscapes and such and my confidence is greatly increasing with this medium.  And you know what If I waste a sheet of delicious paper I can always get some more..  remember that sister.

I just happened to be watching ABC Sunday Arts on the weekend. This is not something I tend to remember to do but I got lucky and was in the right place at the right time. Luckily for me there was a segment on Goya and his series “The Disasters of War”.

It really hit a nerve for me, not only because I have a bit of a soft spot for dark and gloomy etching, but because It reminded me of something that had been sleeping in the back of my brain somewhere. It reminded me that we had actually had an excursion way back in high school, I think it was 1998. And I had actually been fortunate enough to see these etchings in the flesh.

This series is known as one of the most disturbing and graphic to date. They were left unpublished until after his death, and finally surfaced in 1863.

Long story short, Goya had seen the atrocities of the war between the French and the Spanish, lost his hearing and then his sight, all whilst in a downward spiral of torment and despair. His work got darker and more “disgusting” as he seemed to sink further into madness almost as thought he had seen too much of what the world really is and could not turn those images off in his mind. Something like the sun burning death and brutality into your retina.

I certainly found these images interesting as young teenage girl, interested in the arts and always slightly unusual. I’m sure it is the sort of thing that any young person who doesn’t quiet fit in might gravitate towards.

But what interests me, as a now 27 year old wife and mother, is how big of an impact they still have on me. I realise now, after having completed my degree, majoring in the printmaking area where we were constantly exposed to the etching process, that that one series of work may just have had a hand in choosing the direction my life has headed in.

And sometimes, as masochictic as it is, I enjoy a bit of torture and despair. And to admit that things are not all rosey and you can’t just put your head under the covers and pretend the world is perfect. But that being said, Goya lost his balance and was not able to climb back out of his negativity and it seems was forever lost to the abyss.