Kombi Kamping

I'm sure I'm not alone when I say that as a teenager I wanted to one day own a kombi of my own. My uncle had a metallic blue one when I was a kid. The bohemian, travelling, drifter in us all can't help but be seduced by them. Travelling wherever the wind or whim takes you... whether it be a perfect point break, deserted forest trails or into the throng of a festival. Supremely customisable, archaically functional - if a little quirky - with oh so much personality.
For some, the dream remains a dream. Others commit to the tweaking and tinkering that comes with the reward of ownership and the sweet, sweet freedom.

It can be hard to balance responsible, adult life with the desire to escape and take off. I find my balance here.

Ocean treasures

Recent watercolours I finished since coming back from our trip.

I learn something every time I paint. Wet in wet. Wet in dry. When to use which. Blending, shading, colours. The biggest thing with watercolours is learning to leave it alone. The shell above was my first go at using masking fluid. Learned you have to take a bit of care pulling it off.

Treasures from Gnaraloo. So inspired to try a still life like this. Then I saw some work by Sue Kalab when visiting my Grandfather in hospital. Sadly I couldn't find any of her ocean inspired work online. I'm pretty happy with my limited colour pallette and the secondary shadows work well.

Rainbow in the storm

Things are pretty gloomy today. A huge front is passing over the City. It feels like winter.

I spent the whole weekend painting and drawing and these are some of the results.
Pulled out the sewing machine for the first time in about 2 years. Feels good. And my needle was sufficiently worn in to blast through the watercolour paper.

After I completed the one above I came across this amazing website with tips on controlled washes and graded washes and the like. So I have been pracitisng my technique. The writer talks a lot about using the 'bead' of watercolour and not letting it dry out. Makes sense. Worth checking out if you're a beginner like me. The section on common mistakes has been invaluable. With any luck I'll now have smooth washes instead of blotchy ones and no unexpected water marks. watercolour techniques

Water doodles...

New painting!

I have finally finished this! Been blue balling it a bit. You know when you procrastinate because you don't want to make a mistake? I do it all the time. I don't know why. It's not like I can't just start again...

So I bought better quality paints and then had to wait for them to arrive, then realised I needed to get a bit familiar with them before blasting straight into painting this.

So anyway, it makes me happy. It reminds me of girls' only trips to Lancelin (2 hours north of where I live). It's one of those tiny holiday/fishing/surf towns that don't have a proper supermarket. Lots of scrub and sand dunes. Relaxed and low key. The weekends are always carefree and full of too much good food and filthy language and, with luck, some super good waves. The toughest decisions centre around which board and which thickness of wettie/rashie to wear.

Sketchbook

I made a series of scrap/sketch books a number of weeks ago. The concept was one I'd seen demonstrated by Traci Bautista who does funky, urban inspired art and bookmaking. So I've taken a pile of photocopies of my work, along with coloured paper, watercolour paper and some b&w photocopies and bound them using my zutter bind-it-all. 

It's actually been really liberating. I made sure I had lots of colour and lots of different sized pages. So now when have an idea or want to draw something, I open up to a little page that is just the right size and off I go.  It has also enabled me to make it a work in progress and I've been sticking in things: yoga stickers, festival flyers, cider bottle labels, lyrics. fun!

Ocean inspired collage in the background. Sketch inspired by camping trips down south to Denmark, one of Maddie Joyce's camping adventures and, well, all this.

Desert Lefts

Beach in My Backyard

Psychodelic 60s page - Sandtracks

Beach in My Backyard

Drawing Down the Moon

I've been beavering away drawing and filling my sketchbook. These are the first paintings I've finished on this theme. I'm a bit bummed because the watercolours I've used let me down a bit. They didn't deal with being diluted for a wash and became grainy. I've ordered some winsor newton cotman's half pans from the UK. I've done another drawing but don't want to finish it til I get the new paints.

We spent the weekend down in Margaret River watching the finals of the Drug Aware Pro. Kelly Slater got knocked out before we arrived, along with Mick, and Taj lost his quarter final. The swell died and the finals were a real struggle, waiting for waves. Courtney Conologue was great to watch. Couldn't believe that everyone left after the men's event finished and didn't bother to watch the women's finals. Says something about people's interest in surfing. I'd hoped it would be more equal. Pretty sad.

We've finally had some rain after the longest Summer we've ever had. It is very welcome. The image below is inspired by our last girls surf trip up north, back when it was 40 degrees.

Backyard Bliss

Watercolour course - final week

 

Here's my finished painting with details added and the tones in the car darkened. Getting the right balance with light and dark has been a challenge. Plus figuring out what to try to paint in and what to leave out.

This painting was inspired by a photo by photographer, Ryan Tatar. His photos have a wonderful retro feel and are often themed around surf culture in California.
Click through on the images below to visit his flickr photostream.

Watercolour course - Part 2

We did flowers this week. I'm not totally thrilled with what I did, but I learned something. I like some of the poppies in the image below. I had fun working wet-in-wet and trying to create light and shadow by adding water.

This one was really just to play around with salt. meh.

This one I started in week 3 and have almost finished. I'm really happy with it and am stoked that I managed to draw a car. I spent a lot of time drawing before I got into painting. Since this photo I've touched up a few things and made some shadows darker.

This is the original photo by Ryan Tatar that I've worked from. He takes wonderful photos and you should check his retro world out here.

Watercolour Course Part 1

I've completed 3 weeks of my watercolour course now and it's been great. I've certainly learned a lot and it's really good to have the time allocated each week to practise.

These are still lifes from week one. The idea is to concentrate on tone, shades of light and dark.
Week 2: below. Still life and working wet-in-wet. At the start of week 4, I'm now finally starting to see when I can use wet-in-wet and when I can use wet on dry.

 
Week 3: above and below. I was so knackered but made myself come anyway. I'm actually really happy with my ghost gum and plan to have a go at painting some more trees. I really like the sky in the one below, but there are a few random things about it. That's called learning though, I guess. Each time I've completed a painting I've learned something. 

I've almost finished the piece I started in Week 4. I spent a lot of time working on the drawing and didn't finish it in class. There were plenty of times where I thought I'd bitten off more than I could chew. But I've surprised myself and am actually really pleased with how it's progressing. Who knew I could draw a car?!

Watercolours

I start a 6 week watercolour course tomorrow night. Hopefully learn some basics. Should be good, never done any painting tuition before.
These are some little ones I've done recently based on photos. Looking forward to posting some more as I progress.

Second board makeover

At work on an old kneeboard

I finally plucked up the courage to attack one of my own boards with Posca paint pens. The first board was an old one of my dad's that he doesn't surf anymore, so if it turned into a disaster, it didn't matter.
I wanted my 6'8 to work out. Plus my husband surfs it as well, so couldn't have anything too girly on it. A challenge. Having said that, he did used to surf a pink foamie in Summer a fair bit - he doesn't really care what his boards look like.

Originally I'd planned to work on the deck, but the original spray was just too busy to add to.
So I drafted up a design for the underside of the nose hoping that, one day, that bit will be out of the water a lot and shown off while I'm busting reos etc :P.

I found it quite a challenge to work in such a narrow triangle, so I solved this by drawing the waves on an angle, effectively giving me more width to work in. I added the stars to echo the pattern on the deck. I used a more limited colour palette to minimise the girliness by avoiding the rainbow effect of the board above and stuck to simpler lines.

completed 6'8

Finished surf book and some waves

It was about time I finished off my book by binding it and doing the cover. The wax medium worked a charm at getting rid of leftover paper fibre on my image transfers. The seed head below is a stand alone transfer that was painted with wax medium once finished.

The back also has an image transfer direct to the canvas. It came out super bright once the wax medium went on.

The final page. some doodling with posca pens, more image transfers. The bus is a funny drawing James emailed me of our van that he'd whipped up in paintbrush. You know the one where you have to try and draw with the mouse?

I've been making the most of the flat conditions by practicing drawing/painting waves. Here's some of the results so far. More if you follow the link to flickr.

This last one is a sketch I did up at Gnaraloo, now with some colour added with water soluble oil pastels.

Long absence

I'm good at leaving this blog for ages. That has partly been because I haven't been up to much. Well, I have. But it's all here: http://www.crystalvoyager.blogspot.com/ I made these over the last week or so. I've been wanting to get more into some mixed media and in particular, books, but just don't quite know where to start. These were small, simple and fun. My goal was to introduce layers as I tend to work quite flat. They are 4 x 4 inches.

Biff the Crystal Voyager

Between Christmas and New Year's I painted our van. Here's a few shots. This is what it used to look like.

One side done, but with paper still up.

Viola!!