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.
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
theINFP 