A few years ago I’d sold a painting of fish on old slabs of timber to a friend. Fast forward a few years and someone who’d seen it wanted something similar.
Of course, its not so simple just ordering a painting on old timber, an old shutter or door. FIRST you have to FIND it. Which means looking at every rubbish pile you walk or drive by anywhere you go. Sorting through stacks of old wood wherever you see one, searching for something suitable.
Remember, I no longer have sheds where I can store every potential piece of rubbish wood I find…
Once you locate the right piece, you have to carry it home, then prepare it – wash and clean off dirt or whatever might have accumulated on it, sand off the worse weathering and layers of old paint, cut off any rotted or jagged bits it might have, mend where needed, and generally prepare the surface for painting.
Then paint it. Last finish with varnish and some method for hanging it.
Don’t get me wrong. This is right up my alley. I love doing this stuff. I just wish I had the luxury of the multiple sheds I had in Tasmania to store my stash of future projects. Back then I could pick up anything I thought would ‘come in handy one day’, so that when I had a commission (or an idea) I could just walk around the sheds looking for the right piece…
Those were the days…
Do you detect a note of nostalgia in my voice typing? Yes, you do. ‘Cause lately I’ve been thinking about Australia more and more and miss it more and more.
sigh.
Anyway. Enjoy some fish.
Here is the finished piece, sitting on my workbench outside cause I have no space to hang it.
While my brother was here I didn’t have the space to work on anything larger than would fit on the corner of the kitchen table. So, when he asked me to paint him a fish on marble as a gift for a friend, I got out some broken marble pieces I had, my watercolour pencils and watercolours and made this for him. Since he’s flying, he needed the marble to be thin and light so I used a broken marble tile piece I found.
Turns out I’m really good at doing fish… must be in the blood. My grandfather on mom’s side was a fisherman, my family on dad’s side and my brother are all in the fish/seafood business… That must be it.
You already know I’m a magpie, constantly picking up crap stuff I find anywhere and everywhere. So, I had this spare bit of marble that I decided to paint while I had my stuff out and the table was already occupied with it all. This time I decided to do something different. I rarely paint birds, but I saw this photo and loved the way they all seem to be gossiping.
You know what I love about painting watercolours on marble? Its the way the marble doesn’t soak up the paint – it allows it to sit there till it dries. It takes longer to finish a painting as I have to wait between stages, but sometimes the pooling of watery paint gives me the effects I want and allows me to bleed colours together in a way I can’t get on paper.
Anyway, here is a quick look at the bedroom made into a studio before mom and Peter arrived. That whole wall was my working space, with great light coming in through the window which faces east. The opposite wall is bookcases and storage.
Later on I added a shelf (I found tossed out on a scap pile) and an easy access way to store paint tubes using clip hangers I already had and didn’t really use. After mom and Peter arrived I had to shuffle things around as I needed to put up the blow up mattress to sleep on.
This is Peter bonding with Vincent.
And here is Vincent, looking gorgeous as ever at a beach bar.
Well, there you have it. Two posts in two days. Who knew!
While doing some ‘filing’ on my computer I came across some images of things I never got around to sharing on here.
Both are paintings on larger pieces of marble.
I’m having a blogger crisis.
Sometimes I wonder if I want to continue with the blog as a lot of time I don’t feel like I have much to share or anything to say that anyone would be interested in hearing. I know it’s a great way to share my work, hopefully get people interested in it, hopefully drive sales from my shops, but to be honest, I’m not sure it’s working. At all.
In the past I’ve had success with my CafePress shop, Ebay and my Etsy shop… but it seems to go in cycles. I’ll go through a period where I sell stuff and get commissions, and then for months and months nothing. Its kinda depressing really.
So I just continue to share things now and then, not as often as I used to, cause I’m busy doing stuff which I either don’t want to share or is just too boring for words. I mean, who wants to know what I’m watching on Netflix or hear about me doing the laundry or washing dishes? I certainly don’t want to know about it and I’m the one doing it. Or not. As the case may be.
Life goes on for all of us. Sometimes its creative, and sometimes its socializing, and sometimes its hibernating.
What I’ve been doing lately is mostly needle felting, with a bit of painting on the side – so many paintings unfinished – and organising workshops.
I posted my needle felted critters and some people were interested in learning to needle felt, so I decided to offer a couple of beginner workshops, adding more advanced ones later on as needed.
So far its looking promising. I have booked out the first series with some participants for the second round of beginner’s workshops.
It takes a lot of time to organise things like that cause my brain is not made for logistics… and all the different ways to spread the word and get in touch and communicate means I am posting on FB, Instagram, sending messages in Messenger, Messages, Viber and WhatsApp and then I have to keep track of who wants to do which workshop and WAAAAHHHH.
Makes me wanna sit in a corner rock backwards and forwards.
But I do love doing workshops. I love meeting new people (like I do with my sculpture workshops (you can see those on my website www.zefiart.com * and find them on TripAdvisor and Viator). And I love sharing my knowledge and skills with people who want to learn them.
* For some reason on this computer I keep getting error/unsecure site messages when I visit my website but it seems to work on the mobile and other places. I have no idea why. I’ve tried just about everything… Deleting cookies, emptying the cache, chatting with customer service at my website host. Computers confound me despite the fact that I can do a lot on them… some things are too confusing.
Anyway… I’m looking forward to a few workshops coming up, various social events I’m going to, and I’m enjoying the gorgeous weather we’ve been having on and off between bouts of rain and wind. Today is one of the glorious days it’s hard to believe isn’t spring. Oh, and I’m joining a theatre group here on Paros. I’ve always loved theatre and, although secretly I would love to act, I’m being realistic that I will probably freeze on stage, so I’m limiting my involvement to building sets and painting backdrops! That should be great fun.
Who said there’s nothing to do on Paros in winter? I think it’s very busy! Just quieter on the roads and less places to eat out. And that’s fine with me!
Thought I’d share a quickie work I framed the other day. I say ‘quickie’ even though it was weeks in the making… mainly cause I had no idea what I was going to do.
Firstly, I glued an old, yellowed book page from a stack of throw away books I’d collected to a sheet of cartridge paper to create a background to work on like I did here, then I left it for ages, sitting on the kitchen table among the hundreds of things I was going to get to ‘soon’…
While working on one of my large paintings I decided to experiment with the texture building paste I’d bought, so I mixed up some paint and applied it to the paper, thinking I would do a small painting of a wall and stairs. I let it dry and as I looked at it, I felt totally uninspired to continue, so I let it sit and think about its sins a little longer.
Thing was, the more I looked at it. the more I liked the simplicity of the colours on the background and didn’t want to make it into anything other than a background.
Sometime during that period, I saw a FB post about a guy who created art by doing backgrounds then whacking paint covered sticks and branches onto his canvases. Hm… This was only small so I couldn’t go whacking the hell out of it… but I could try pressing something onto it… that might work.
And that’s what I did. Since it was a neutral background, I wanted to do something to bring it to life. I had some of those fuzzy dried flower arrangement things from other projects, so I chose my colours, et viola!
I used the same ‘flower’ to print the image in 3 different colours and I liked it. It’s like nothing I’ve ever done before, but I was pleased.
I had a small frame that fit the work, and I had flat white spray paint, so I sprayed the frame, gave it a bit of rub in spots where the paint hadn’t gone on well, and there it is.
At this point comes the warning/disclaimer. When doing spray painting at home, don’t pull the cap off the spray paint with a vice grip and the determination of a fat man going after the last chip at the family dinner table. I pulled it off (they do like to make them almost impossible to pull off!) and pulled off the spray nozzle at the same time. Putting the nozzle back on caused all kinds of grief as you can see.
But hey, it’s pretty normal for me to have paint all over my hands, my clothes, my shoes… no one expects anything less.
You might notice a bandage on one finger…? I got that while rummaging through a toolbox to find a screwdriver. Instead, I found a razor paint scraper (the kind you use on glass) without its protective cover.
junk4joy 