Inspiration from the Outer Hebrides

My family and I were in South Uist last week, one of the islands of the Outer Hebrides, Scotland. We experienced every type of weather imaginable, but the big skies, low sun and autumnal colours of the land were inspirational. The landscape seemed to change with every passing moment as clouds passed, changing the light and bringing an unparalleled drama to everything we saw. The wind didn't stop the entire time we were there (with the exception of when we loaded into the car at 5:30am to catch the ferry to leave), but it didn't stop us exploring the hills, ruins, lochs and beaches of this incredible place. Inspired by the seaweed and my new love of watercolour, I did these two paintings while we were there.

Ascophyllum nodosum is known as knotted wrack. I
collected this sample from a beach on the island of Eriskay.

Fucus vesiculosus goes by the common name bladder wrack,
named obviously for the gas-filled bladders that give floatation
to this seaweed. This particular specimen was much more red than
other samples I have seen, hence the colouration.

I have a new obsession

Timing couldn't be worse. I am up to my eyeballs in work and my husband is away so I'm flying solo parent for a while. However, like any obsession, these things become insignificant and all that matters is when you can next indulge yourself. This is how I currently feel about watercolours. I have no training in art and until very recently, stayed pretty clear of watercolour as a medium because it is thoroughly unforgiving. However, I recently took a course at the University of Bristol Botanic Garden and now I'm hooked. It's obviously a work in progress, but I'm thoroughly enjoying exploring this new medium. Here's a few snaps of the products so far...

Unfinished...this is the oak I started during
the watercolour course.

Little maple leaf - the product of family art night on Friday.

Autumn colours - the latest product.

Digging up some old cards

Every now and then I feel inspired to do an original design card. I was sorting through some old computer files recently and came across two examples I thought I would share. The first was a card I made for Morgan to hand out to his friends at nursery. It was inspired by a play the children put on and included a very eclectic array of characters. The children loved it because they could recognise the characters.

The second is a watercolour I did of my Azure Kingfisher photograph that I sent to my Grandmother. She loved it (as grandmother's do) and last I saw, it had a place of honour in her living room.

Kelp

I did this from a picture I came across in a nature photography book. Even though the photo is from New Zealand, where I've never been, it struck me as it reminded me of diving on the west coast of Canada. Diving off of Vancouver Island and looking up through the bull kelp with the blades dancing in the currents. Missing Canada....

IF - Robot

I did a blog post for the University of Bristol Botanic Garden about composting robots, but I was faced with a definite lack of visual material for the post. After all, a photo of compost wasn't terribly appealing. So, I decided to throw caution to the wind and quickly whip a little cartoon to go alongside the post of what a compostable robot might look like. I drew the outline by hand and then coloured the cartoon in on the computer. So, when I saw this week's IF topic, I couldn't resist submitting this!

Flowers from the University of Bristol Botanic Garden

I have had the great privilege lately of also blogging for the University of Bristol Botanic Garden. This means that I get an opportunity to take pictures of flowers and call it work. I thought I would just do a quick post to highlight some of the flower photos I've done over the last little while. Enjoy.

Just a little crabby....

This is a female fiddler crab I sketched out and coloured in with watercolour while my son Morgan was painting.

IF - Stripes

A quick sketch for Illustration Friday this week. Topic is 'Stripes', so what better than an animal with a naturally striped boa, ready to accent any mood! I love ring-tailed lemurs...who doesn't?

I can't believe I haven't done any artwork since July!

I realized recently how important it is to keep being creative. You see, I realized long ago how important it is for my sanity to exercise my body. I run. On days when I don't run I'm less patient, less productive and more likely to be grumpy.

So why shouldn't exercising my brain be just as important?

I write. It's my profession. So, after several months of doing less creative writing and more paid writing, I realized I was suffering from a lack of exercise of the brain. I was grumpy, doubting my career choice, unproductive...you name it! So, a couple of days of drawing, photography and doing some unpaid but deeply satisfying creative writing, I feel like I've just done a half marathon and I'm ready to get back at it.

Lesson learned - keep running, keep creating.

Morgan's version

After my last post, I had to put up this picture of the canvas Morgan painted today. I have callously put an arrow to direct your attention to what he has told me is a copy of "mummy's flower". I think he's captured it personally - spiraling spadix and all!

The rest is a variety of things...but the boy knows how to use the whole canvas, that's for sure!

Letting go...

Anthurium scherzerianum in acrylic on canvas.

Since trying to paint with a three year old under foot, I've found that I've had to change my process considerably. If my son is playing away happily by himself and there is nothing else pressing, I get out my paints. Of course, soon as he sees me he wants to be involved - so out come his paints. At first he had his own brushes, his own paints and some scrap paper. However, this wasn't good enough because it was different from what I had. So, it evolved. He now has small amounts of my paint, my older brushes and his own canvasses. It makes him happy, which makes me happy.

However, it wasn't easy. I had to let go of how I did things. A painting session with Morgan means things are messier, noisier (there's constant chatter), and usually very time restricted. While painting the background to this image, he even leaned over and decided to add a few of his own touches. AHHHH! I wasn't impressed and it was following an incident where he had just accidentally dragged his sleeve through his paint and got it all over the floor...so my anxiety was already elevated. Then I took a breath and I let it go. "Oh...good idea." I said, "I'm going to add some black to what you did and then it will look like things in the background that are out of focus." He was happy with that.

You see, in a brief moment between having the unwanted addition to my painting and before I opened my mouth to tell him off I realized a few things. First, if I yell at him this isn't going to be fun for him anymore. Second, he thought he was helping me (and maybe he did), just as I help him grab the pen and write his letters - so how can I get mad for something I do to him?  Third, it's only paint. I struggle so hard to make the image in my mind come to life on the canvas and it rarely looks exactly how I imagined in the end. So, why not embrace that rather than get frustrated about it. Let it go!

Now, just so nobody thinks I let my child run rampant...we did have a discussion about asking first before drawing on someone else's picture.

Giant Australian Cuttlefish

Just finished this painting today. It was inspired by a cover photo on an old Australian Geographic, which just screamed out WATERCOLOUR!

The giant Australian cuttlefish (Sepia apama) is a master of disguise. The skin of cuttlefish is made up of  layers of different cell types - chromatophores, iridophores, and leucophores - that give it an infinite array of colours. Chromatophores are literally little balls of colour that are so tightly bound up that they are invisible. However, when the muscles attached to the pigment cell is flexed, it stretches the ball out into a disc of colour. The muscles are wired directly to the brain so that pigment changes are instantaneous as information is perceived by the eyes and transmitted to the brain.

Iridophores lie beneath the chromatophores and contain multiple tiny platelets that reflect light, producing the iridescent and metallic colours. Beneath the iridophores are leucophores, which reflect the predominant light in the environment (i.e., they appear white in white light, blue in blue light etc.).  Besides the very impressive colour displays, cuttlefish are able to add another dimension to their camouflage, by creating protrusions in their skin with papillae, they can also mimic textures as well as colours.

Aquilegia vulgaris

From our back garden; Aquilegia vulgaris, commonly known as columbine. I don't have much to say about this other than it felt good (and challenging) to work with watercolours again. Also, I have an all new respect for botanical artists!

Asleep

This week's IF word is Asleep. It made me immediately think of the many, many hours I watched our son sleep in an incubator in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. We were in the hospital for two months as he was only 970 grams when he was born.

I kept a journal and wrote in it almost daily. I also sketched. This is one of the sketches from that notebook.

Burning

This week's Illustration Friday topic is burning. What with packing up a house to move to the UK, a sick 3-year old for the last week, a husband overseas for 3 weeks and wrapping up the final days of my job...burn out came to mind initially, however that wasn't terribly inspiring. Frankly, I can't hear the word burning without thinking of the horrific fires here in Australia in 2009. The media was filled with shocking images. So, here is my take on burning.

Nautilus Races

This week's Illustration Friday theme is transportation. What better way to get around than on a marine creature that has been transporting itself for 450 million years. Nautilus are incredibly resilient animals that don't usually get much attention. Of course, the catch is that they propel themselves backwards, so they may hit the odd thing and they may not take the most direct route! This painting is another in a series of underwater children's illustrations I've done for my son's bedroom.

Acrobat

This week's Illustration Friday theme....ACROBAT. Not sure whether I got the point across or whether it just looks like some lady wrestling with the linen?!

A rolling stone gathers no moss

A very quick watercolour for Illustration Friday's word of the week PROVERB. I chose the proverb A rolling stone gathers no moss because it is something my grandmother always used to say to me. Of course, these days my interpretation is much different. I figure, moss grows quickly, so why not roll while you can!

Monarch

This is my latest endeavour. I was looking through an art book and came across a beautiful butterfly on canvas. It was incredibly life-like, with the veins of the wings raised and even slight imperfections at the edges. Of course, when I read the text I soon realized that it was, in fact, life...glued to the canvas. So, I was inspired to give it a go but without using a real butterfly. I used texture paste to lift the butterfly off the canvas and literally squeezed it out of a bag like icing to create the veins in the wing. This photo sadly doesn't capture this third dimension, but I was pretty pleased with how it turned out.

Azure kingfisher

We saw at least four breeding pairs of azure kingfisher along the Noosa River. It was low light conditions, I had a frustrated two year old hanging off my arm and we were in a canoe. Not ideal conditions and the picture is a little soft as a result. However, it does illustrate the incredible colour of these little beauties.

Drifting Dreams

This was taken at the end of our four day paddle up the Noosa River. Morgan was napping and lighting was high contrast; I couldn't resist.