Catch up

I spent the weekend very quietly. Catching up on correspondence, sleep, solitary time, reading and doing nothing.

I love to make my own stationery and will avoid sending mail, Christmas cards or thank you notes if I haven't made anything myself. This is terribly rude and even though something bought would be preferable to nothing (and most people probably don't even care) it is a quirk I cannot shrug.

I found this thank you note I made a couple of years ago during my cutesy phase (I don't know if I will ever grow out of this phase - but it was definently more pronounced during this period) to send to my Auntie Janny. She sent me some lovely fabric for my quilt.


I also found a tiny Puss-in-boots I was making from this period which I would like to finish (although I think I have enough projects on the go at the moment).




Here is a new letterhead (for lack of a better word) that I made yesterday to send to my cousin. Those are her initials in the corner. It is done in a very poor imitation of the Art Nouveau style (my current phase) and it looks kind garish and childish in its scanned form and with those colours. I would like to make some monogrammed stationery for myself but some kind of printing method (lino or lithograph?) would be a better option than pen and watercolours for such repetitive work. Anyway, enough thinking out loud.

Have a lovely week!

Watercolour

I tried (and failed dismally) to capture the way the purple Jacaranda flowers seemed to be on fire from the light of the translucent creamy yellow sunset on my drive home from work. That is why I am going to art school! It is so lovely to see natural beauty in this urbanised, polluted world.

This painting was my first foray in gouache. The background is painted in traditional watercolours and the Jacaranda tree is painted in diluted gouache. I was inspired to use these mediums by the watercolourists of the late 1800s to the early twentieth century. In particular, Ellis Rowan, Sydney Long and John R. Neill(Royal Illustrator of the Wizard of Oz books).

Yester Gallery has a good collection of Australian and English Watercolours and Paul Giambarba's 100 Years of Illustration is a beautiful and informative blog on 100 years of illustration (funnily enough).

I am constantly amazed by the detail and life in these watercolours and won't be able to emulate these artists in one hundred years, but hopefully by learning some techniques at art school I will improve and be better able to represent the beauty I see.