Its sunny outside

And I'm still indoors. I can't really move while the bub is still snoozing, so I'm keeping myself occupied watching the spring colours come alive from my window.


Beautiful! I can't take my eyes off the explosion of purple. Hence I've chosen to sit in the sun room with a camera and take some snaps of the outside, while I waste away the time.

Got another idea for some artwork......I've always had this fascination with water. Funny how that is, since as a child getting my feet wet at the beach used to scare me senseless. Being a Pisces, I should love the water, right??? Wrong. I had a phobia of it for ages and it still recurs every now and then. It took a long time for me to learn to swim coz of it. I guess I've learned to deal with it by studying images of it through art. So this afternoon I've been photographing images of swirling water in a basin, which I'll use in a painting sometime.

Also added a blurry pic of the grubby bub to my ideas book. As per my as yet unfinished painting, I'm still obssessed with trying to make something out of the visual movement in a blurry picture.

Ciao for now!

Scatterbrained

Having a little grubby bub at home usually means I can't focus on one thing at a time, having to always have an ear attuned to her various noises. So I end up forgetting where I was before I was interrupted by her most recent "episode". As a segue from all things bub-related, I'm getting inspiration from children's TV shows at the moment. She's mesmerised by Boohbah, Pocoyo and Pinky Dinky Doo, and I can see why! The colours and shapes are so bright and vibrant, they're just wanting attention.

So back to inspiration - I thought I'd start with circles. Years back when I took up a studio art class to get back into the groove of oil painting, the term's theme was circles. I took it one step further and composed a picture from "circles in nature", choosing whirlpools. This had immense potential in that I could play with colour in the ripples. I just added the diver as the main subject of the art work to provide context to the water.

Above is the finished painting. Anyway, I'm using the circle theme for the next piece and have been playing around with the idea of creating a stained glass/collage effect with overlapping circles to depict a scene. I still need to find the perfect picture. So below is a list of the key effects I want to achieve:

- overlapping circles

- transparent

- collage

- stained glass

- ripples in the glass

- must fuse together to form an image

Must find an image!!! Wish me luck!

{Eventually I might publish all of the art work that I have at home on this blog}

The finished painting..........

....is never quite the same as it appeared in my mind's eye. Take the following painting which I composed last year inspired from a number of details I found in several photos. I usually cutout the photos from travel/homewares/fashion/gardening magazines.

The overall picture was from the Vogue travel section, the statue in the background was from an InStyle magazine article on Europe and I was aiming for a French impressionist feel. All-in-all I'm quite happy with the piece now - it wasn't working for me back then.

Anyway, I started this blog for a number of reasons:

1) I'm at home on a year-long break looking after baby Camille (who is the most adorable little girl) and I need something else to pass the time between her waking hours

2) This is one of the only ways to reach the outside world from the comfort of my lounge without having to lug around the myriad of baby junk

3) It's not mindless passive entertainment........although it may be for you!

4) It's an area for me to "whiteboard" my ideas which might (?) inspire some artwork and/or paintings later on

So to any artists, budding or otherwise, out there who stumble on this blog, please feel free to let me know what are the everyday things/items/situations that inspire you.

Ciao!!!