painting

March 8, 2013 by Tara 6 Comments

It’s funny. I spent a fair amount of February feeling a mild irritation that I ‘had to’ take photos every day.

Despite the fact that it was my choice. Despite the fact that I love Viv’s classes. Despite the fact that I always ended up enjoying the process, from pressing the shutter to deciding on my edits and sharing it in the group.

I’m such a child when it comes to ‘having to’ do something every day. If I have to, I automatically don’t want to. Usually I get over myself if it’s something I really want to do or I can see it’s benefitting me {like showering or doing Tai Chi. Or eating}.

And now I’m feeling it again, having signed up to Carla Sonheim‘s online painting class ‘Flower Crazy’ on a total whim, the day after Viv’s class ended. And while it sounds like I’m having a big old whinge, I don’t regret it. Some parts I find challenging, but that’s good. And once I get started, I really enjoy the drawing practice; and even though I thought I hated small detailed work, I’ve just spent an entire afternoon doing just that.

I actually joined the class because in the class description I could see there were techniques I really wanted to learn. I also really like Carla Sonheim’s work, and have her book ‘Drawing Lab For Mixed Media Artists’, which I wrote about here. And I really love to learn, and I guess I got in a classroom groove over February.

I’m teaching myself Spanish {again} too. Not sure why, but apparently I just need to. I expect the universe will reveal the why to me later.

{some cards I made from disaster paintings}

So here’s a little round up of my first week of Flower Crazy. Every day there are prompts for drawing practice, which you can see at the top. Carla gives us a theme, and then we check it out in Google images {or around our home, as today’s prompt was}, and draw anything that appeals to us as a possible flower shape.

I learned from this that I don’t like drawing gears {too symmetrical and neat}, but I love drawing sea plants! No surprises there. If it’s got a wiggly and imperfect vibe, and is sea related, I’m on it.

There are also videos three times a week and ‘how tos’ in between. Carla’s paintings are so neat and lovely. She also uses really gorgeous soft colours. Since I don’t naturally gravitate towards neutrals and greys {although I wish I did!} mine are a lot brighter and purple/aqua orientated.

Sorry I don’t seem to have edited these very well. Anyway, the image below is what I spent most of this afternoon on. {In between working on my mum’s commission ~ more on that another time ~ and making banana bread.} I loved it! And I’m happy with the outcome. So, you know, yay.

And here are a couple of collages of some close up areas of the paintings that didn’t work out. Nice elements, terrible as a whole. It’s cool though because I learned heaps doing it. I’ve been wanting to bring more detail into my larger scale paintings and am starting to see how I might do that more effectively.

Lots going on in the studio just now; I’m so pleased to be up here more often with actual PURPOSES rather than just playing, which is also fun but sometimes you need a focus. I’m working my way through various TED talks and business summits {which seem to be doing the rounds at the moment; great timing}, so if you have any recommendations of good things to listen to I’d love to hear about them in the comments!

My eyes are going googly, time to go downstairs and, er, watch a few episodes of Modern Family. {My new obsession. My neighbours must think there’s a deranged hyena living next door.}

Thanks for stopping by.

Filed Under: art class, art development, online classes, painting Tagged With: carla sonheim, painting flowers

December 16, 2012 by Tara 8 Comments

I’m in! I have no internet, so posts will be sporadic til mid Jan {WHAT ~ really? WHY?!} as I borrow and scavenge interweb access where I can. I can’t wait to show you properly what’s been going on here, but am swinging by quickly to share some new work and some images from the First Day, taken just before the removal men turned up and filled my house with ~~crap~~ my beautiful things.

I MISS you guys, and blogging and sharing and being part of this little online world. {Not that little, in fact, is it, really.}

Here is the studio, empty and ready for New Stuff to happen in it.

Please note the butler’s sink, the skylights {which open electronically!?!}, the storage and table space.

The way the light falls in, the fact that that entire right wall has storage running behind it. There is room for four people comfortably I think.

And the porthole windows with views of the sea! Seriously? I get to live here?!

It takes me, oh, a good thirty seconds to reach the beach. Although the first few days I wasn’t physically able to leave the house ~ it was too lovely! Now I’m down there every day. It’s better than tv, always changing, always soothing to my soul. And as much as this move is a glorious, exciting thing, other life things continue to happen and they are not always glorious and exciting, so soul soothing is required at the moment.

So then, I had to try out the studio! I have a STACK of unfinished, unloved canvases, just waiting for renewed life, so I started on a big one that just hadn’t worked although I had loved the idea. I forgot, of course, to photograph it before diving in with the paint, but you can still see a little of it underneath the first strokes.

If you follow me on Instagram {@taraleaver} you will have seen most of these. This palette is unusual for me; I rarely use black but I was inspired by Mati Rose’s recent pieces on there too.

Besides, a new start is the perfect time to try doing things differently. It has been quite interesting putting things in place in the flat in accordance with how I live and want to use the space. That will evolve over time and a lot of it is provisional just to get rid of the cardboard boxes, but I find myself intrigued by the possibilities of how I might like to live that is different from before, from the obvious {beach alert} to the tiny daily details.

I’m really loving this painting; it’s not finished quite yet but not too far off I think. I have ideas growing and turning over in my mind as I slowly pull the studio together. Right now it looks NOTHING like the above images, as everything is unpacked but not yet put away in an orderly fashion {ha}; I have enough art materials to amuse a small army it turns out!

And I hope that I will. Amuse, inspire, offer a healing and fun place for people to find their way back to their own creative selves. It would be a crime not to share that space. And although I’m kind of terrified, now that it’s so much nearer {I’ll begin in the new year}, it still feels right.

It feels so good and comforting to be speaking to you again. Moving is a discombobulating thing, whichever way you look at it, and it feels a little like a touchstone to come here and show and tell a little bit. Thanks for being here.

Filed Under: acrylic painting, art development, creative spark sessions, home, journey, mixed media art, mixed media painting, painting, process, studio Tagged With: art studio, new home, new painting

September 8, 2012 by Tara 12 Comments

I started a painting a long time ago {as many of my posts begin}, and it was so pretty I then didn’t want to wreck it so didn’t touch it for months. You know how it goes.

Then, {as many of my posts often say next,} I just suddenly decided to finish it. Yay me.

You can kind of see below that it was made up of various squares of collaged paper, overlaid with pale washes of paint in soft pinks and blues, and a bit of Naples Yellow. {Always.}

I don’t have any photos of the first phase {lost in the mists of time}, but you can see what I did next. I had a stamping urge. {Ha ha, I just read that back and realised it sounds a bit like I just wanted to stamp my feet a bit.}

Also more colour, mainly purple and turquoise, a combo I rather love just now.

And because I’m still besotted with the moon ~ really will I ever not be? ~ I put her in too.

And a moth I’ve had for aaaaaaaaaaages, that I’ve been wanting to use but sort of saving for just the right piece. It was one of those ones where I’ve printed onto tissue paper {go here for how to do this; it’s so easy and really effective} and then just glue the image onto the painting, and lo! The tissue ‘disappears’ and the image is left.

You might like to call this cheating but round here baby, there ain’t no rules.

Moth

30 x 30 x 4cm

Filed Under: mixed media art, mixed media painting, painting, process Tagged With: mixed media painting, moon painting, moth and moon, moth painting, printing onto tissue paper

July 20, 2012 by Tara 4 Comments

Sometimes a painting appears that just WORKS, and you don’t even really know or remember how it came together, because your Creative Source took over and swept you along for the ride. And then you stand back at the end to survey your work, and you just sort of go ‘wow, well that came out well.’ And then you go and make a cup of tea and have a sit down.

And sometimes, none of that happens.

Sometimes you just have to accept that ‘this one was about the process’.

At no point during the creation of the following did I have the faintest idea what I was doing. I expect you’ll be able to tell.

{I painted over the half finished painting below, which had been lying around in the stude for over a year. It was basically a mixed media mess on wood panel.}

{collage pieces ~ fabric, lace, tissue paper}

{gesso, obvs}

{pastels}

{pencil and acrylics}

{ARGH. more gesso}

{acrylics and water}

{if in doubt, add Naples yellow}

{drawing with acrylics}

{ugly phase ugly phase! }

{I don’t know what the eff I’m doing and I no longer care}

Well it’s finished, but it doesn’t really feel like me, it kind of feels like ‘old me’, but that’s ok.

I have a hunch that there was more going on inside than outside while I painted this.

Filed Under: intuitive painting, mixed media art, mixed media painting, painting, process Tagged With: cloud, lotus, mixed media on wood, process, sun

July 16, 2012 by Tara 3 Comments

So.

Here’s another painting finished a few weeks ago, waiting for completion, then realising it IS complete. {There’s a life metaphor if ever I heard one.}

Yay.

My posts are a bit all or nothing lately. After all the upheaval and sad and all the not feeling good, and being scared, and things like that, there has been a series of unpredicted shifts. {Mind you if you know anything about astrology you would probably say they were TOTALLY predicted.}

There was, for example, an enormous row a few weeks ago, in the midst of which I realised that I am no longer afraid. Let me tell you, after 34 years of feeling fear and anxiety to some degree on a daily basis, having it drop away in one moment is something of a game changer.

I didn’t know I wasn’t scared any more until I said it out loud, and in that moment I knew it to be one of those Truths, and I felt I could hold the whole world, I had so much faith and courage.

If that sounds weird, it was. In the best way. So much so that I wanted to paint that feeling, and the images you see in this post are what came of it. It went through a couple of incarnations. At one point I thought there was going to be this amazing yellow woman kneeling with her arms stretched out in front of her and her hair all wild. {two images up}

But it wasn’t really happening so then I remembered some beautiful poppies I’d seen and photographed a few days previously. Yes, I thought, some vibrant red poppies.

Then I realised that I am not really a drawer of flowers {unless you’re after the ‘look what my three year old did’ look}, so back in with the gesso I went. But I kept the red. In a painting about fearlessness there should definitely be some red methinks.

And then I turned it and saw the figure.

And then in a very Goldilocks kind of way, I knew I’d found the image that felt juuuuuust right.

Some tweaking later…

{i will hold the world}

PS. I have since been reacquainted with Monsieur Fear and Madame Anxiety, but to a far lesser degree. I am assured that eventually I will live in a place where fear no longer rules my life or dictates my feelings or actions at all. Bring THAT on.

Filed Under: healing, intuitive painting, journey, mixed media art, mixed media painting, painting, process Tagged With: i will hold the world, mixed media painting

June 7, 2012 by Tara 3 Comments

Recently I spent a happy evening on my little own making inblot paintings. I had a notion that I would make a bunch of really good ones and take them to the shop I had work in last year and see if they would like to take them and sell them for me.

I had a little inblot factory set up on my coffee table ~ inevitably, because of the nature of how they are produced, some inkblots are flipping ugly and can’t be used.

As you can see the two on the left in the above photo were definite keepers. Since I really enjoy drawing ladies with big dresses next to moon, stars and trees, I stuck with that.

The usual apologies for shoddy photography. I have got lazy because my phone photographs are the right size which saves a lot of the resizing that images from my camera require. These days I tend to use the camera only for photographing large canvas paintings. And let’s face it, even then the images are often a little iffy. Ah well. {You can see this greatly bothers me.}

Despite my grand ideas, I still only have two completed and framed up. I guess the rest will come in their own sweet time.

Or not.

PS. This is not the post I intended to publish, but the other one isn’t ready yet so this is a little interlude before the new painting reveal.

Filed Under: painting, painting on paper, process Tagged With: framed paintings, inkblot paintings

May 10, 2012 by Tara 5 Comments

Remember this?

I wrote about it recently here.

Anyway, it’s now finished, and looks like this.

{No matter how hard I try, my photography and editing skills SUCK.}

Here are a few close ups:

It has many layers, this one. The one thing that’s bothering me now is the name. As you may know, usually my paintings tell me what their names are during the process. Occasionally that doesn’t happen and I am left with a nameless painting, and the option of calling it ‘Untitled’ which is a personal no-no for me.

All paintings mean something, and even if the artist doesn’t want to distract the viewer from drawing their own conclusions, calling a painting ‘Untitled’ feels like a cop out to me. It makes me feel sorry for the painting. {I know, I’m such an anthropomorphiser.}

So I’m asking for input please; perhaps you see something in the painting that I don’t, which would help me to name it. I may or may not use the suggestions, but daft as I am, I want this painting to know it has a place in the world.

Filed Under: acrylic painting, art, painting, paintings Tagged With: 'untitled', acrylic painting, naming

May 9, 2012 by Tara 1 Comment

I would like to say three things today.

1. Some of what I said yesterday has not been sitting well with me, and while I’m well aware that in the grand scheme of things it’s not at all important, I still want to clear it, if only for myself. I am not retracting what I said, only the implied judgement. I noticed in myself that I felt a bit smug about the part where I wrote “some people feel it’s inauthentic {an overused word if ever there was one} to only put happy things on your blog and therefore must redress the balance by revealing some of their less joyful things“. As if that in itself is not a little hypocritical! People can write whatever the hell they want on their blogs; it’s not for me to comment on or judge that, and especially not to do so from some sort of self applied elevated position! It’s important to me in the work that I do that I walk my talk and apply what I learn; thinly veiled judgements are not part of that.

So, having got that out of the way {and apologies if you’re not UK based, this next bit won’t be for you} ~

2. I’m geeking out over Graze right now.

It’s a company that posts you boxes of snacks {it fits through the letterbox so no need to wait in ~ huge bonus as far as I’m concerned}, and you can choose what you like and don’t like from their website. They then send you boxes according to your preferences. The range is enormous, and from chomping my way through my first box this morning I can vouch for amazing quality too.

Not to mention eco friendly {and pleasingly designed} packaging, healthy options, a little booklet full of info, and the possibility of sending boxes as gifts. AND, they gave me a code that can be used any number of times {although just one per person, obvs} for a free box, like mine that you see here. You are not obliged to buy more either. Here’s the link if you’re interested:

GRAZE

They’re not paying me to big them up but I do get some money off I think if you decide to try it. But even if you don’t, I still think it’s a genius idea. It’s like getting an edible present in the post ~ something I’ll always say yes to!

And finally,

3. I did a bit more to my new painting last night. I wanted to put a figure in, and this one from my sketchbook felt right and fitted beautifully:

The painting informed me it wants to be called Vessel, which I really like, and although it’s not finished, I’m pleased with progress so far.

And now I am going to go and dance and sing in my kitchen while attempting to make stew.

Filed Under: journey, musings, painting, sketchbook, work in progress Tagged With: graze.com, painting in progress, vessel

April 22, 2012 by Tara 7 Comments

So it was pissing with rain when I woke up the other morning, and I was forced to abandon my original plans and stay in bed with my new Flora Bowley book and some breakfast.

Reading it brought back many of the things I learned in her class last year {goodness me, a year ago next month}, to the point where I was galvanised into leaping out of bed and spending most of the day in my studio. Hooray!

It seemed fitting to tackle this enormous bad boy, who’d been languishing reproachfully in the hall for the past eleven months after being started at said retreat. I felt it was safe to assume that it wasn’t going anywhere in this state by this point, but could at least be a springboard into something new. Not to mention a good exercise in non attachment {especially when you are told later on that it was better before you messed with it. Humph.}

Over the course of three hours I messed with it. A LOT. I referenced Flora’s book a lot too.

I tacked up this image on the right because I wanted to use the shape. I had a vague notion of abstract figurativism, a term I think I just made up.

I’m not sure how possible it is to learn from another artist without at least partially taking something from them that then shows up in your work, whether it’s colour choices, shapes, mark making or anything else. So by this point I felt it was way too ‘Flora’ and not enough ‘Tara’. {God I love those colours though.}

As Flora points out, “There is nothing wrong and plenty to be learned from looking at other people’s work and finding inspiration there; however, doing so has the potential to draw you away from your own voice. Notice when your creative expression feels forced, difficult, contrived, or simply not your own. Listen closely.”

Quite. I didn’t need to listen closely with the sound of my own self screaming in my ear that this was starting not to feel like me at all.

Or at least, kind of me, but also clearly Flora-influenced.

I kept swimming in and out of ugly phases and not knowing what to do and just diving in and trusting, and going away for coffee and snacks.

As it stands now it looks thus:

{ark. blurry. it’s a little sharper in real life}

I hung it up to see if it would speak to me more clearly from the wall than from the studio. Depending on the day I tend to ‘know’ it’s finished and love it to death, or feel very uncertain about the whole thing. I do like the ‘it could be a figure…. but IS it?’ quality. You could hang it any way up really.

Another telltale sign of incompletion {another made up word?} is that it hasn’t given me a title yet. There’s definitely something iffy about the top and middle right area. Today, anyway.

Filed Under: painting, process Tagged With: figurative, flora bowley, painting, process

April 11, 2012 by Tara 7 Comments

Alright my lovely darlings!

I know you are totally on the edge of your seats to find out how my first ever go at oil painting panned out…

It was FAB!!

It took me a while to really ‘learn’ the ways of oil, and clearly I’ve only just scratched the surface {literally in some areas }, but once I got over the fact that it isn’t acrylic and therefore doesn’t behave like acrylic ~ I know, but it’s like I’ve developed a muscle memory for how to apply paint ~ it was so groovy!

I went in with a prepared {lightly collaged} canvas and a half baked idea about layers and a figure. Two and a half hours or so later {I never work that long without a break by myself; clearly a classroom atmosphere is good for me}, and I had done this:

Now, you know I’m not normally one to blow my own trumpet, but BLOODY HELL I love this painting! It’s SO. GOOD! Modesty be damned; I had no idea oil paints could give so much more of a professional look to a painting. It doesn’t really show here but this could easily be in a gallery. It would sell very quickly. That’s right! For at least a million.

{If your eyes are widening at my Extreme Self Confidence All Of A Sudden you can imagine D’s face after half an hour of me waxing lyrical about my own work.}

Actually, I’m not sure it’s finished, but there is that slight Fear of Ruination going on. We’ll see.

I’m not gonna lie, tidy up time was a little tedious, and white spirit really does nothing for my hands, but I loved it so much I went back today and started three new canvases! Little ones. More on that another time.

So basically, if you’ve been thinking about trying oils and haven’t got round to it, do it do it do it! It’ll open up a whole new world to you, promise.

Filed Under: art class, art development, creativity, journey, mixed media art, mixed media painting, painting Tagged With: art class, oil painting, pink, red