I will brazenly prostitute myself for the chance of being rewarded with free stuff. I am delighted if a free cloth bag contains paper and pens. And boy do I hoard them.
Around a decade ago in Sydney, the local office supply company, Office Works were giving customers a bag weighed down with pencils, pens, pencil case, and bookmarks.
The pink, green, and purple ink pens used in today’s mixed media abstract picture are from that boon. I used the pens to outline the ovoids, washed over with watercolour and drew the shapes again on top.
The stamped circles were outlined in Lipton’s decaffeinated tea with paint added while wet.
In my mind during the week leading up to this week’s mixed media painting, I thought dark green flowing into yellow. When it came to mixing the colours yesterday, I loved the green so much, I felt pink was needed.
I started the painting in portrait to encourage the colours to flow and mingle.
Last week’s stamped rings were achieved by applying watercolour to the rim of a drinking glass with a brush. This week I dipped the edge of a deeper rimmed glass into paint in a saucer, resulting in more strongly defined circles.
My husband commented the colours looked subdued. I explained they were step one.
With the picture turned around to landscape, I added green, pink, red, and black bubbles. This draws out the creative process and extends my enjoyment.
As it was a warm sunny Autumn day, I took a break yesterday so that we could spend a couple of hours in the spa.
Coming back to the painting this morning, there was very little to add.
My ‘80s sister, Wimbledon day party, very heavy false lashes
This year my sister would have been sixty. As Mardi Gras is in the air, I authored the following poem in their memory, Gossamer consonance.
There is a photo of me from the same event at the end of this post.
Well my friends the time has come All night long fond memories Of us boogieing on down In Blackpool of ‘84 My wistful sister dreams as Lionel Ritchie serenades Confident dragon hearted A helping hand and support With impish sense of humour The eighties is our time to Raise the roof and have some fun Throw away the work to be done Curious invert spirits joined Relishing life’s offerings And let the music play on Play on play on Everybody sing everybody dance Lose yourself in wild romance Australia with my soul mate French lorry driver for Sis Our gossamer consonance stretched Ten thousand miles forty years I imagine them beyond the veil Forever young partying under Perpetual mirrorballs Yeah once you get started You can’t sit down Come join the fun It’s a merry-go-round Everyone’s dancing Their troubles away Come join our party See how we play
This week’s watercolour started off in a similar vein as previous ones. A collection of five shapes overlapping.
I wanted to experiment with olive green, purple, and a caramel yellow. The yellow turned out more buttercup than browned sugar. I don’t mind the contrasting result.
Then I started adding Cheerio like hoops. My husband thinks I was subliminally channeling the cheerfulness surrounding the first Australian concert at the Melbourne Cricket Ground last night, resulting in a homage to Taylor Swift.
I can get overwealmed with posting on social media and holding myself to account to do so.
Lately, I have tried sharing a snippet of a watercolour on Instagram with the whole picture being available here on WordPress. I imagine this is what the audience of each platform wants.
This enhanced and cropped image is from yesterday’s picture. I immediately thought, ovoids kissing!
A wet day in South East Queensland, prefer for a whimsical verse and watercolour.
One of seven, my purpose is clear Learn from each other, trust them my dear Hunt, discover clues, stop for a beer Fog may descend, path no longer clear Senses enough to look, smell, touch, hear If we get stuck, can visit a seer Time to get moving, pack up the gear
I think it depends on how one measures the journey, in time or in distance. Also, there are many milestones and enjoyable deviations along life’s path.
26 years ago we moved from Birmingham, UK to Sydney, Australia, 17,034 km. The journey took three flights and a couple of nights’ stopover in Singapore. It is a distant memory.
When travelling, I prefer to get to where I am going as quickly as possible so that I can maximise the time at the destination.
In comparison to the UK, distances in Australia are gargantuan. The UK is about 965 km north to south. Our move from Sydney to Brisbane in 2018 was 1,000 km, a ten hours drive.
We continue to enjoy our shared highway of 30 years together in the UK and Australia. The ups and downs have brought us closer and reinforced our commitment to each other. We appreciate spending valuable time with our dear friends. The moments shared with them are like dazzling jewels along our road.
This week’s abstract watercolour fits in with the journeying theme. It was inspired by my husband suggesting overlapping ovoids might be interesting.
It took a number of weeks for the idea to sprout into a possibility. On plan it is a bridge made up of piles of alternating purple and green rock hoops topped with an orange capstone. I tried out the concept in Freeform on the iPhone and sketched it with coloured pencils before attempting to paint it free hand.
One of the artists I follow on Instagram posted a video of the painting of three green, purple, olive solid overlapping circles in portrait. Over this a stem and dense large leaves were added. Using a pen, lines and dots were added to alternate leaves. Then something else was added, I cannot remember what, probably flowers. I would have stopped at the three circles. I liked the simplicity of the forms, the colours, and the spatial calm.
Yesterday, I added green, yellow, and purple pencil bubbles to the abalone shell inspired watercolour from last week.
The original abstract abalone shell reflects my aim for an ‘ideal’ restrained and constrained abstract watercolour. The result evoked a meh response from me. Internally, I wrestled with the original is okay, I may make it worse if I do anything to it. Down the track, I would have earmarked it as a failure, turned the sheet over and painted on the back.
I now love the pimped up version and for the Internet, the addition of a Google Snapseed pop filter. It is sort of my first mixed media picture.
theINFP 