Places of Water, and Rainbow Ribbons. - Jan 2019

~ You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment ~ Henry David Thoreau

         Sea Lion                         

Close up of completed work.



These portraits, Sea Lion and Rainbow Ribbon, are the beginnings of another stage of my work. They are an attempt at doing a painting in two days or less. I need to have ways of working quickly to keep producing. I ahve been looking forward to paint in this way and to see the results. My second attempt, Sea Lion, is already better than my first, Rainbow Ribbon, and came more easily to me. The next post will be the entire image completed. 

My drawings of the past months were the first stage in my vision for my artwork - 'The Drawing-A-Day Challenge' which I have been posting on my facebook page. Again, I needed a way to be able to do my artwork regardless of what is going on in my life. Whilst I always look forward to drawing as often as possible - whether 1 or sometimes 4 in a day - I miss painitng after a while. 
I began to wonder about how to set myself up with painting equipment that would not take long to put up or dismantle or do. I need to get a good size painting box/easle that carries everything needed for small works, so that when i am travelling or away, I can take it with me or just open it up, do some and put it away again. 

In the meantime, I set my work up anyway, and I have begun to paint these small quick images regardles. In the end, working at it and making the art is the only way to get better and get the art work out there!

                                Sea Lion - Close up of w.i.p.

~ 'The true harvest of my life is intangible - a little star dust caught, a portion of the rainbow I have clutched.' ~ Henry David Thoreau

 Rainbow Ribbon. 

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~ 'Would you see your mind, look at the sky. Would you know your moods, be weather-wise. He whom the weather disappoints, disappoints himself.' ~ H.D.T

'Place of Water, Winter Morning.' Oct 2018 - Jan 2019

Pretty much done with this one after too long. The colours and light are better in the original than my photo - I really must learn to take better photos of my work! 

Ordinary lives, ordinary things - the stuff of life - the cycles, the interconectedness of life on this planet, is the philosophy behind what I try to recreate in my artwork; be they drawings, paintings or other works. Enjoy

'Not So Sure About This - High Five, Santa', and 'Blogging 101' - Jan 2019

Not So Sure About This - High Five, Santa. 04-01-19

Ordinary lives, ordinary things - the stuff of life - the cycles, the interconectedness of life on this planet, is the philosophy behind what I try to recreate in my artwork; be they drawings, paintings or other works. Enjoy

How to Blog 101
I just got the best advice from Artist Photographer, Thomas Ryan about blogging. I had done everything, I thought possible with my blog. For the past 6 or more years I put images on there of my work, for the most part every few weeks, sometimes more. I write a few words about the artwork and every now and then I change the look of the layout. Not one response in all that time. It was obviously not enough! 

Seeing links on the WWW: Apparently images don't work so well when people want to find you on the WWW, Thomas Ryan explained to me (he possibly tried years ago, but I didn't get it or I didn't know there was even a question to ask about what I was doing wrong!). I'd made my blog and made it public, what else could I do? This is what Thomas Ryan taught me: It seems, one of the contributing factors as to how someone notices your blog, is phrases and words and sentences, especially repeated ones, that come up in people's searches. From there, someone potentially notices something they are interested in. I am guessing that the frequency of how often you post 'words' may also be a factor in whether people see your blog - as well as the repetition. Now it all makes more sense.

I know to most all this may be obvious when it comes to blogging, but if you don't know what you are doing wrong, or that there is something wrong with what you are doing, you don't know what to ask, or that there is a question to ask in the first place! It also makes sense to me now why when you search for info and find a link, there are words and sentences from the link/ blog underneath and why we use those to guide us to what we are looking for on the net. I really thought it was the blog title and that's all, people would have to look for, and well, it must be just good luck that people find you. 

Consistency and Content: Another important factor of blogging is 'consistency and content' to quote Mark E Shellshear, artist, gallery owner and successful blogger. Consistency - a type of repetition as I see it, and Content - the quality of what you do in the blog - make people want to come back for more if what they see holds their interest.

Obviously understanding and applying this knowledge, doesn't mean I'll suddenly get more responses to my blog, but at least I've increased the chances that my blog is more obvious to people out there on the big WWW! 
Now lets see if I can also apply the consistency and content model from here on in!

The Challenge - Jan 2019

To be inspired or not to be inspired? Get inspired and challenged to do one thing you love each day for one solid hour - or in pieces throughout the day - whatever works, but just do it: Do a drawing/ painting, or read a page of a book, or write a page of a book, or play guitar, or create a meal, or work an hour in your beloved garden, or sew, make or build part of something each day... 🤩 
With love from the Drawing-A-Day Challege and Bee Garden Artist @: https://www.facebook.com/BeeGardenArtist/

On second thoughts, don't wait to be inspired, just be challenged,  just do it - like work - the inspiration comes after. It's our craft, our work, our job. If we wait for inspiration and the right time, it just helps us make excuses as to why we are unable to try.  

Not a great one, but a trial with water colour pencils. Drawn and painted dec 2018 sometime.

Ordinary lives, ordinary things - the stuff of life - the cycles, the interconectedness of life on this planet, is the philosophy behind what I try to recreate in my artwork; be they drawings, paintings or other works. Enjoy

And something I learned today: I finally got the hang of how blogs work - well sort of- after 6 or so years of posting pictures and not manyy words. Apparently you need to do lots of words and it helps to repeat some things - i.e. stuff about what your blog is about; that's the way people see things on the WWW when they are searching using a word or groups of words in search of things. So to new beginings. Lets see how this goes. (Either way it won't stop me working at my craft!) 

Painting, Messages, Motivation and the Cat that Made Me Paint 🐱: I went to work on my artroom work space last night, as I have been for the past months, trying to create a pleasant and practical painting area. I had drawn 4 drawings on NYD and thought, 'It's New Year, it's time to get some of my drawings into paint...' I moved a long cabinet with no back on so I could put the back on and use it as a table... For weeks I have been getting a lingering smell in the room, sometime strong, sometimes less so, but couldn't find anything. I thought my nose was just getting more sensitve to smells. 

Turns out our old 20YO cat has reached the time of life when he can't even be bothered telling us when he wants to go outside - he would always let us know - so he's been weeing and pooing on my stored artwork, getting in from the back of the cabinet. I cleaned up the pressies he'd left me, obviously a week or so old (probably for Christmas), so pretty easy, and cleaned the space thoroughly. At 3:00 next morning he woke me banging on the door to my artroom trying to get in. i jumped up out of bed, but he beat me to it: A huge puddle behind the same cabinet and probably on the artwork as well. I thought to myself , 'There seems to be a mesage in this for me...

'Later that morning, when I'd woken up properly, I thought, 'Yes, the message must be: paint a picture of Jayke the Cat before he's no longer here". 

Here is a drawing of him before the painting of him happens.

Jayke, All Knowing. 03-01-18

Ordinary lives, ordinary things - the stuff of life - the cycles, the interconectedness of life on this planet, is the philosophy behind what I try to recreate in my artwork; be they drawings, paintings or other works. Enjoy

BeeGardenArtist: Crocodile Under the Stairs - C.U.T.S - series

BeeGardenArtist: Crocodile Under the Stairs - C.U.T.S - series: A few different ideas for various paintings in this one with  a few tentaive working titles: Acts of Cunning, Abuse and Treachery.  Nar...

Ordinary lives, ordinary things - the stuff of life - the cycles, the interconectedness of life ...

In Crocodile Under The Stairs (C.U.T.S) the ordinary lives, ordinary things - the stuff of life, the cycles - have been disrupted, fractured, distorted, broken and destroyed...

Enjoy - if you can.