Being creative energises and stimulates my mind. Planning, researching, and working up a concept for a watercolour is fun. The execution is an intense balance of speed, improvisation, allowing the paint and paper media to work their magic, and not overworking the image.
The painting process is often over too quickly and my inner critic is harsh.
The whole
Inspired by a stone trefoil with coloured glass, this abstract picture is carrying on the ovoid shapes theme with the colours intermingling rather than having hard edges.
I used left over paint from the previous watercolour with some extra colours.
As a teenager, I signed my work with Rx and the year of production. As I am tapping into the creativity of my inner child, I have revived this tradition.
Yesterday at lunch time, I was completing my post machine use cleaning routine after preparing the last coffees of the day. Standing at the sink, my mind was goodness knows where whilst drying the group head with a pink cleaning sponge.
Hubby appeared at the screen door to my left. Something lightly shot across the top of my thong clad left foot. In a split second, I dropped the group head into the sink, shrieked as I leapt backwards, the sponge falling to the floor, at the sight of a four foot long eastern brown disappearing underneath the washing machine, at the same time my husband came in closing the screen door behind him.
I explained there was an asp like creature in the house. Our white fluffy dog, Stan lay on the floor watching our conniptions. Was it a look of complete disinterest he was giving us?
Hubby grabbed the floor pad handle and exclaimed upon seeing the viper in the window reveal. He attempted to open the screen door with the pole as the slithering reptile dropped into the sink. We guessed we all wanted the same thing; a speedy exit from this dramatic situation. My husband opened the screen door, joined me in the living room from where we could view the area as the snake jumped out of the sink onto the floor and out across the patio to the nearest garden border.
This is the first time in almost twenty six years of living here we have encountered a serpent. I was advised it was the second deadliest snake on Earth and one of the most venomous in Australia.
After reading up on our intruder, I was marginally relieved to learn they are generally timid only becoming aggressive when threatened.
I was unsurprised this morning when we awoke to a gloomy sky soon to be followed by rain. The forecasters advise this is a wet patch in the otherwise dryish El Nino weather pattern. As South East Queensland is subtropical, we catch a bit of Far North Queensland’s wet season around February anyway.
Faced with continued inclement weather, I decided to paint an abstract watercolour picture to brighten our day. Overall I’m pleased with the intensity of colours and the way the washes ran into each other.
The photograph is more blue than the turquoise of the actual picture even after adjusting the colour balance.
This watercolour started out as a stylised tree form, nothing more.
For the past eight months, I have repeatedly sketched a Buddha-eque figure. It is based on a photograph of me sitting on a bed taken in May 2023.
I have edited some of the sketches in Google Snapseed and posted them on Instagram. Some people on there have offered to buy them as ETFs. Whatever they are.
I reduced the size of the head of the figure so that the focus of the image is on the body. In one of the iterations of the head, I added a hoop and ‘airhead’ was born. I consider myself a little like a fool or airhead on a hill. Always looking for the greener grass.
Also, I have a tendency to over think things; all I needed to do was sit the figure on a hillock under the tree.
This is the last watercolour picture painted today and the following poem from the storm the day before.
Summer storm Outside, deep air filled rumbles Echoed by pre-breakfast stomach gurgles Rapidly fading morning light rays’ Impeded by gloom grey clouds
Tinkle ping crash flash overhead Panes rattle in frames Storm’s expected to last for an hour Stan pants, shaking on my lap I type this on my phone with an index finger
Internet’s gone off, using mobile data Light rain increasing to very heavy in thirty three minutes The worst is yet to come
Drops pelt Hammering heavily on the tin roof High pitched whooshing increases ear pressure Tinnitus swells
Stan lies rigidly vibrating Momentarily stops awaiting the next sound On it goes seldom slows
I am pretty certain I read about crepe myrtle in Anne Rice novels, set in New Orleans, Louisiana. The first time I saw crepe myrtle trees in red, pink, purple, lilac, and white was when we moved from New South Wales to Queensland in 2018. Since then I have been fascinated by the council planted trees along the streets of Morningside.
I was heartened to see our next door neighbour has a hot pink one in the corner of their garden. It proudly displays its dark green deciduous foliage and cerise blooms above the dividing slatted timber fence.
With my watercolour painting, I am attempting to find my groove. I appear to be in an ovoid phase. Given I am at the start of a journey, an egg shape is perhaps apt.
The picture at the top of the post has seven elements signifying research analysis and deeper understanding. I cannot see the point for myself to paint reality as I can take a photograph. I wanted to paint a representation of next door’s myrtle tree. Working on the basis of the approximate proportional amounts of each of the colours, I light touch painted three ovals in pink, three tear drops in dark green and a surrounding oval merging the three colours.
The next step is to try a painting including the pale blue of the sky.
We had the latest COVID-19 booster on Monday. Alas my body continues to battle against the vaccine. After a restless night’s sleep of hot and hold and ruminating about getting something perfect, Tuesday’s aches and pains bring on listless pathos.
Knowing the side effects will subside, we opt for feeling wiped out in the air conditioned living room. It is just as well I made chicken bolognaise for dinner last night as today, I barely have energy to munch a finger of KitKat.
We usually have the shot on a Friday so that it does not impact the working week. No such luck on this occasion, I’m in no fit state for an hour each way commute for the weekly ‘contact day’.
I wonder if the overlords have made a decision about being able to work from home for the first two weeks in January. The new cross river rail service needs to be connected to the line I use. Adding an extra thirty minutes each way as the train terminates at Northgate then a bus service fills in the gap. I guess I will find out tomorrow.
Back in the eighties, I was gifted a set of Daley Rowney Georgian tubes of watercolour; I still have them. At the time, I was inspired to paint a hotel doorway in Whitby, UK and the view from riding pillion. I will post pictures of them when they resurface.
Over the decades that followed, I dabbled with watercolour painting. Lacking confidence because of my self doubt and fears of failure, of not being any good, and of looking stupid, I have hidden and stifled my art enthralled inner child.
Sixtieth birthday gifts included, Mont Marte A3 paper blocks and a compact Winsor and Newton Cotman watercolour set.
On the day of our thirtieth anniversary, on the way to lunch by ferry, we narrowly missed a heavy downpour on the Noosa River. The first picture is a representation of the malevolent view from our table at Lucio’s Mariner, Tewantin.
With a need to suspend my self disbelief, to allow my inner child to stretch their arms and reconnect with its creativity, I have opted to have a go at abstract painting.
The second painting is a section of my inner vision of the occasion, an abstract sky. Freed from the heavy constraints of assumption and expectation, it represents a lightness of hearts and a hope-filled future. My mind sees other shapes there too.
This conceptional style of painting allows me to experiment with the properties of the watercolour medium and normalises the reduced dexterity brought on by aging. It accommodates less than nimble and unintended jerky movements.
The third painting reflects a vegetation lined riverbank.
I don’t feel comfortable with the whole abstract image. My inner critic believes there is a disconnect between the ‘sky’ and the ‘earth’.
View through the bedroom shutters, Noosa River Retreat
Last Saturday evening we enjoyed a pleasant pre-dinner hour watching a cute dark haired, tattooed young bar person making cocktails. They appeared to be shy; glancing and rapidly snatching their deep blue eyes away from our vampiric gazes.
While seated at the bar, a waitperson wafted past asking if someone was wearing Égoïste. I threw myself on my sword, proclaiming, ‘tis I’.
They asked, ‘do you know what it means?’ ‘No’, I responded. ‘Selfish’ they said with a French accent. I looked into those dark harried les misérable eyes, unsure whether to take offence or not. My tendency to catastrophise had me questioning if I was being labelled a self centred person by association with a perfume.
‘It’s Chanel’, I mumbled. Then becoming defensive, I shared, it was the only fragrance I had managed to find that my skin did not cause to disappear or turn into something foul smelling.
Égoïste Platinum is the only eau de toilette I have worn since 1993. Considering it an extravagance, I seldom put it on and only to go out. A bottle lasts around ten years. As we were on a celebratory vacation marking thirty years together, I had atomised precisely three squirts from collarbone to collarbone.
theINFP 