Friday painting

I was supposed to be assisting at the discus event at my children's inter-school athletics day but it was cancelled due to the weather. Kidlets were devastated. Me, not so much. All day athletics, measuring how far a discus is thrown and avoiding the actual throw (the big ones sometimes aim for you, I swear) in the hot sun, no chair,ugh…..but I do it because it is what needs to be done. You can see how I took the cancellation as a sign to go painting.! I opened the car boot to load the gear (I had already spotted cows lying down in a paddock round the corner) and discovered it was full of biking gear that I have to deliver to Tauranga later today. Stink. So I dragged the easel across the road and painted this.

Towards the city

My version, with greyscale reminding me to keep an eye on values!

Post Xmas, pre New year painting

I have had a huge windfall of a present...a new, Italian, sexy H-frame studio easel. Wowsa! Almost as sexy was the under- the- breath swearing of my lovely husband as he assembled the beast from the  instructions, published in Italian.!!! I know he loves me because he did this on Xmas morning before he went on a bike ride on his new bike....the sacrifice! Thank you, darling!

So, I painted.....and I painted big! But the bad weather has not allowed me to photograph that painting yet  ( i take all my photos outdoors, in natural light) so you will have to suffer this little painting that I painted and managed to photograph just before the rain started.

25 x 30 cm
oil on canvas
Ohaupo towards Managatautari, from the school hall


I had trifle for breakfast yesterday. Just thought I would throw that out there.

Back to normal

The school holidays are over and the kids are back at school. I loved having them home and around me. It was all ok because the weather was fantastic(shorts and t-shirts mid-winter!!wow!) and they are just that bit older. Having said that, I am still trying to vacuum all the glitter out of my carpet and blu-tack has made itself onto almost every wall at that suspicious height of 1 meter!!

I digress. I am back and despite some truly horrendous holiday paintings(I wiped 3 canvasses clean !)I am finding my groove again.

I usually avoid skies but in the process of moving some of my dad's paintings around the house I had chance to ,yet again, marvel at his talent and have a good look at his skies. I took a leaf from his book and gave it a go.