April 29, 2013 by Leonie Andrews

April 25 2013 – sketching

Taking advantage of the ANZAC Day public holiday we decided to pack a picnic lunch and head down to the Namadgi National Park in the southern ACT (Australian Capital Territory) for a spot of drawing.

Our destination was the Orroral Valley and in particular the old Orroral homestead which was built in the late 1860’s. Apart from the homestead itself there is a great corrugated iron shearing shed which was built in the 1930’s and a second house from the 1950’s (which has largely been demolished).

Shearing shed with some of the locals

I spent a lot of time looking around and taking photos so in the end I managed only two water colours.

This is one of the old set of doors into the shearing shed – all the doors and windows have been blocked off, presumably to deter vandalism.

Blocked doorway, Orroral shearing shed

The second is the old homestead, looking at the rear of the building. The house, which consists of four rooms faces the valley wall and Orroral rocks.

Orroral homestead, late 1860’s

April 19, 2013 by Leonie Andrews

6 April 2013, Wittunga

The Wittunga Botanic Gardens in the Adelaide Hills suburb of Blackwood is a popular place for walks and picnics. It also has some beautiful garden displays of South African plants. At this time of year the South African bulbs are at their best. One of the most striking is Haemanthus coccineus, the Blood Flower or Paintbrush Lily. It s flower springs from the soil on a short robust stem. I was lucky to find several flowers open in one spot.

Once the flower is spent the broad fleshy leaves emerge, and the flowers wither to brown.

November 24, 2012June 10, 2013 by Leonie Andrews

Holiday Drawings

It shouldn’t surprise me, but being ‘on holiday’ suddenly frees up time to paint and draw; when it is equally possible to do the same thing in everyday life.

Here are some images from early this month when we took a visiting relative to the coast and around Canberra and drawing became an everyday activity!

The cliff at Depot Beach, those drooping casuarinas are really hard to capture.

A blind drawing of a chair with books and bottles.

Three blind drawings and water colours done at the National Botanic gardens.

Looking at the sky through the branches of a eucalypt.

The deeply fissured bark of Eucalyptus amplifolia, the Cabbage Gum.

The remnant flower stalks of the Gymea Lily, Doryanthes excelsa.

August 8, 2012March 10, 2013 by Leonie Andrews

Little books

I made this book back in June and forgot to post the pictures. This concertina book is 8cm high and about 5 cm wide. As it is made from some left-over bits of pages from my drawing book its shape is a bit ‘random’.

My plan for this little book was to do a series of sketches of objects that caught my eye in one of those beautifully set out interior design books.

The book I was looking at was Hand Made Home by Mark & Sally Bailey, (published by Ryland, Peters & Small 2011). There were lots of interesting pots, stools and chairs, fabrics and other paraphenalia. My goal was to only spend a few minutes on painting each item.

The book is painted on both sides and is 42 cm in length.

This took just over 1 hour to finish, which went a long way to ensuring that I didn’t overwork each piece.

April 9, 2012March 10, 2013 by Leonie Andrews

Colouring

We all have our favourite colours and not suprisingly they are the ones we go back to time and time again. My ‘problem’ has been trying not to do this.

Not sure what to do I’ve tried some pretty wild combinations in an attempt to get out of my colour routine.

Another approach has been to look at colours other artists use. There are some great colourists out there and I came across, one of those, Brian Clarke, via a documentary on SBS. What is really interesting is that Clarke has both a stained glass and a painting practice. One of the pieces I found most inspiring is a stain glass window he designed for the Abbey of Romont in Switzerland. A green shape floats against a checked background of blues and red. A photo of this window can be found here.

I was pleased with the result of taking both colour ideas and my stencilling/masking ideas into some new printed work.

leonieandrews

Tag / watercolour