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.

April 9, 2012March 10, 2013 by Leonie Andrews

Late March

I’ve had a bottle of masking fluid sitting in my cupboard for years. I thought it was about time I pulled it out and used it. The fluid is a ‘plastic’ liquid which, once dried, reserves an area of your page from watercolour paint. After your paint has dried you can rub the area and lift the dried plastic off.