Posts by Leonie Andrews

I am an artist of the landscape of common objects. Discarded items and suburban life fuel my art practice.

March 10, 2014 by Leonie Andrews

Just testing

If I’ve learned one thing since joining the world of on-line drawing, urban sketchers and other sundry artists, is that there are many different techniques out there to apply to any scene or subject matter. I haven’t been doing many watercolours recently, so I’ve decided it is time to do some more exploration.

Watercolour over wax crayon.

I dropped by my local library the other day and selected two watercolour books from what was on offer. I was looking for something to suggest some new techniques or find some different ways of working. One of the books I picked up was Shirley Trevena’s Taking Risks With Watercolour. While I’m not particularly interested in step by step painting guide, Trevena’s book takes you through both her techniques and her thinking behind the preparation of one particular work. Her strong colours, use of layering and interesting compositions were enough to get my interest. The other book, Travels with Watercolour by Lucy Willis, I have yet to get fully into, but almost immediately I found some ideas that I could readily apply.

So today was the day. What I was focusing on was masking and wax crayons to help indicate layers and complex shapes. My subject matter was a green plastic sieve with some figs inside it. Willis had suggested using a wax crayon to draw a complex shape which colour could be washed over, rather than the more common way of painting in the negative shapes and leaving the white of the paper to indicate the shape. Trevena uses masking fluid, among many other techniques, to reserve space and allow for complex pattern detail to be worked into a painting. She suggests using the fluid with a fine nozzled bottle to allow for more linear definition (obviously the nozzle on my bottle wasn’t quite what it could have been).

Early stages of resists on watercolour paper.

The photo above shows the first stage of both techniques. The top is the wax resist and the bottom is the masking fluid. I then applied some washes over them, keeping in mind how the light was falling on the bowl but not necessarily taking into account the actual colour behind the bowl.

Wax and masking fluid resist with added washes.

Having removed the masking fluid on the bottom image I then went back in with some watercolour pencil to add extra colour. Some other suggestions from Trevena, were to use a stick to drag colour from one area to suggest detail, in this case the purple colour of the base of the fig into the lighter green of the upper part of the fruit.

Drawing colour up from wet paint with a stick and a pleasing passage of wash over wax crayon.

I’m pretty pleased with these initial explorations and plan to keep working with these ideas and several others suggested by both artists.

March 8, 2014March 8, 2014 by Leonie Andrews

Music at the Markets

I’ve done very little drawing this week. I’ve had to focus on finalising exhibition proposals. Trading drawing for writing and trying to bash some plain English, as opposed to art speak, into my words. I’ll let you know how I go.

Relief came on Friday as we took an hour at lunch to drop by the Fyshwick Markets where there was an ‘apple and pear week’ promotion, which included a tasting of some interesting ciders. Oooh arghh, oooh arghh, I hear you say! To add to the atmosphere two guitarists were playing some very easy sounding jazz – not that we needed encouragement to sample the ciders on offer.

Jazz guitar at the Fyshwick markets, 7 March 2014.

I clearly didn’t realise the effect the cider was having on me until I scanned the image below and noticed that I’d managed to get both the wrong day and month on the drawing!

Jazz guitar and some listings of what was on offer on the day. (For the record I recommend Willie Smiths Organic Cider and the Hillbilly Crushed Pear).

February 28, 2014 by Leonie Andrews

Something and Nothing

The most recent design exercise set for the textile group I belong to was on the theme of ‘Nothing’. It was an interesting concept to try to express. I had recently re-watched the documentary ‘Herb and Dorothy’ about the American collectors of minimalist and conceptual art Herb and Dorothy Vogel. A favourite scene in the documentary is where a visitor attempts to get to grips with a piece that consists of a short length of rope, nailed to the wall (apologies I can’t recall the name of the artist).

So I thought I would also work with a small piece of unravelled rope that I had, clearly in the scheme of things this could be considered ‘nothing’. I sewed it onto a small scrap of fabric left over from a sewing project.

Something, small rope work, February 2014.

‘something’, small rope work on found fabric, 29 cm w x 4 cms h, February 2014.

After finishing this I realised that by using the bright red thread I’d created ‘something’ rather than nothing.

I think I fared better with my second attempt, a row of even smaller sections of rope sewn down with a more neutral coloured thread.

'nothing', rope sewn on found fabric, February 2014,

‘nothing’, rope sewn on found fabric, 30 cm w x 4cms h, February 2014,

This piece also brings to mind inland clouds – these picture-book clouds float by them selves in a summer sky offering no prospect of rain.

To shamelessly borrow from one of the other artists participating in this exercise “nothing is defined by something.”

February 28, 2014 by Leonie Andrews

The weekly cafe drawings

In which the artist realises she spends way too much time drinking coffee as an excuse to draw.

Tuesday saw us at the Curtin Shops where we had a fine view of Matthew Harding‘s bird sculptures. This is my second attempt, at drawing this sculpture. The first magically disappeared when I pressed the ‘don’t save’ icon on my phablett by mistake!

Bird Sculpture, Matthew Harding 2001, Curtin Shops, ACT, 25 February 2014.

In despair I returned to using the type of media that don’t just disappear vis, my pen and paper. I made this second drawing with an interesting array of traffic lights.

Reading with traffic lights, Curtin Shops ACT, 25 February 2014.

The next day we were in the centre of Canberra, known around here as Civic, where I was joining friends for lunch. Post lunch we found yet another cafe, Garema Cafe, not surprisingly adjoining Garema Place. This is one of four cafes crowded into a tight alley between buildings.

Down the alley towards the Taxation office building, 26 February 2014.

Thursday we were buying fruit at the Belconnen Markets when, yes, you’ve got it, we stopped for a cup of coffee. I didn’t quite finish this drawing, there’s only so much time that I can spend on a cup of coffee.

Inside the central plaza at Belconnen Markets, 27 February 2014

February 24, 2014 by Leonie Andrews

Concrete pergola – three ways

I didn’t intend to do this drawing 3 times, but while I was sitting at one of the local libraries I saw this intriguing piece of architecture – an outsized concrete pergola. The structure itself is two stories high, each of the horizontal blades looks to be at least a metre high.

Firstly I tried drawing it with my fountain pen. I found it hard to control my tonal values and got rather lost somewhere between the vegetation and the structure.

Concrete pergola outside Woden Library, 24 February 2014.

The second attempt, from a slightly different perspective. This drawing shows a much better grasp of the structure, as I started by drawing the negative spaces. I also decided to skip most of the vegetation.

Second version of the concrete pergola outside Woden Library, 24 February 2014.

My last version was done on my phablet using PS Touch. I decided that one of the most attractive aspects of this scene were the colours of the concrete against the clear summer sky. So I ditched the vegetation and just stuck to the architecture. I quite like this one.

Third view of the pergola outside the Woden Library, 24 February 2014.

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Author / Leonie Andrews