Third time lucky for the roses

I've been looking at my painting from time to time, and concluded that it was just too bright and happy. The day I painted it was bitterly cold, and I'd intended to convey that frostiness, but the colours got in there and drowned out that thought....but how to push them back?

At the beginning of this month I thought I'd try some multi-media additions of tissue paper, just leaving the red roses peeking through, but the tissue I had was too thick:

However when I pulled it off, it had left some fabulous textural marks with the diluted white paint I'd used to attach them to the surface...so there I have it: the marks made by the tissue give just the amount of opacity I wanted. A very happy accident!

I'm still deciding whether the trunk on the left needs the same treatment, and I think I'm going to emphasise further the red of the roses - they may even get enormously enlarged, then I want to do something to strengthen the iron ring top left to balance them.

Otherwise I've been in the garden, getting very excited about seeds that are sprouting, so any art has been a bit neglected of late. But a trip to London is sure to inspire me......

Escher and the Alhambra tessellations

A small exhibition, also in the Alhambra, showed some of M C Escher's prints, and a short animation someone had done based on his Metamorphosis series, where a chequerboard turns into birds and fishes, or newts, or frogs. They'd linked them all together and the result was very lively.

See the official websie of his work here. The Metamorphosis prints are at the end of the page in Picture gallery entitled "Recognition and Success 1955 - 1972".

So much of the Moorish pattern making was based on tessellations of multiple shapes. I marvelled at the skill of the craftspeople to keep the repetitions aligned.

I also found this site, http://www.mathacademy.com/pr/minitext/escher/#tess which explains Escher's methodology, and his inspiration from visiting the Alhambra.

A week in Spain

It's taken me a bit of time to appreciate all that we saw in a week. The inland plateau of Spain is so very different from anywhere else in Europe I've been to. It reminded me of Australia - the dry red earth, sparse vegetation, big blue skies - or the mid West of the USA - wind eroded rocks, empty roads, ramshackle half abandoned villages. Then as we got further south, there were olives as far as the eye could see, making mathematically precise patterns across the hillsides. I did a few Doodles on my iPod Touch:

The last doodle is my impression of our last day - we had a long drive back, but within 15 mins of setting off we hit quite heavy snow, crossing a high plateau on small country roads, the car started to skid and I thought we were lost!

The highlight of the visit was the Alhambra in Granada. The workmanship in the Nasrid Palace was just awesome! Every surface was decorated, with intricate carvings in plaster or stone, and tessellated ceramics on the floors and lower walls.

 

I was a bit confused to read that originally all this decoration was coloured red, yellow and blue. That would have made it overpoweringly sombre, whereas now, the pale ivory walls give texture and light. The busyness of the incredibly complex patterns is calmed by the uniform colour of the  plaster.

Aparently a British architect called Owen Jones studied the decoration of the Alhambra palaces in detail in the 1880s and was very influential in persuading Victorian interior decorators to adopt the Moorish colour schemes.  

I was interested to find patterns in the pebbled courtyard which reminded me of Celtic patterns: 

I want to do something similar on our terrace now, but I need to find some good pebbles...

red roses - week 2

Back to Maureen's garden with plans to tone down the ochre and create a more wintry feel to the whole canvas. Also working on modelling the branches etc and creating greater depth. It's still not finished, but it's going in the right direction (I think).

And I added the roses in, as the last thing I did, but they need to be brighter. Roses in January....I've also got a strawberry ripening in my garden....it must be global warming. But today we've got snow, so I think that will finish off the roses and the strawberry....we'll have to wait till later in the year.

Wickerwork bird feeder

Sometimes it's good just to get the fingers working...I went to a workshop to learn how to make a bird feeder using traditional basketmaking techniques.And here's the result:

We started with 7 thick hazel twigs to make the structure of the base, weaving lengths of willow through them to create a circular platform, then adding and bending up finer hazel twigs for the sides, tied at the top, and with a central ring of woven willow to keep the shape of the 'cage'. I'm not sure how much the bird's appreciate the design; they're more interested in the fat ball hanging inside.

Out of practice

It's been months since I took a brush in my hands, but a new year, and new intentions, plus the enthusiastic encouragement of Maureen, and here's my first very quick attempt to get paint on canvas...

I'd been struck by the small bright red roses still blooming in Maureen's garden, against the greens of the hedge and the otherwise wintry feel of the weather. With little more than an hour's worth of time, in bad light, with no preparation, the result is an overly complicated composition, lack of tonal range, and any number of other issues. And I didn't even get to the red roses!

There's not much to be proud of here, but I stick it up to make me work on improving it, so that there'll be a 'before' and 'after', and hopefully the latter will be more interesting than the former...

Doodles

I'm trying to keep up with technology. A great excuse to buy an iPod Touch, and to find a free App called Doodle Buddy. It's got a very restricted palette, the screen is quite small and you have to use your fingers to 'paint' so before you even start you know that we're talking rough marks and approximations. But hey! It's not called Doodle for nothing!

I've found it great for a spare 5 mins, when the sketchbook and pencils are somewhere upstairs, and it's just a quick visual memo of what we've been doing. Here's a few of the results: