New Watercolours

Well, it's been far too long since my last post. I've been so caught up in university work that although I have been doing some crafts, nothing much had been completed, and I didn't have the energy to update this blog. Nevertheless, university is practically over and I have celebrated by diving headfirst into crafting. It's been bliss.

Over the past couple of days I worked on these two paintings. A black robin:

and a hedgesparrow:

They seem to make my house look so much more cheerful. Would be nice to try and keep these ones. My paintings always seem to get sold or I give them away. It's all good fun though.

Christmas Watercolours

I couldn't share these paintings before Christmas as they were gifts for my darling parents, and it would have somewhat ruined the surprise. But now here they are.

This one is a Tomtit, for my dad.

And this is a Rock Wren, for mum.

Both found in my fabulous home country, New Zealand. The bird and insect life here continues to inspire.

Bob Dylan painting

This painting had been sitting on my easel for about 6 months and today I finally go around to finishing it. It's about 50cm square and is acrylic on canvas.

I just love Bob Dylan.

Watercolour Takahe Painting

This one is twice as big as the other two paintings in the previous two posts. The bird is much larger than the other two as well, so it seems appropriate. I'm really enjoying painting these, but I'm back to university on Monday so expect not to hear from me for a while.

Watercolour Stitchbird Painting

Watercolour Fantail Painting

I'm on university holidays and have been itching to do some arty stuff so I settled on having a go at some watercolours of New Zealand birds. I've started off with a fantail, which is a bird I think no one dislikes.

Hopefully more to come!

Origami Portrait - beginning

Hello,
It's been a while. We've just moved into a lovely old house so close to the zoo I can hear the lions roaring at night, so although it's a nice place to be, it's been a bit hectic lately. I've also had much trouble setting up the internet here, but no matter, because I have been on uni holidays, and the break from the distractions of the internet has allowed me to make a good beginning on my new project. The idea came to me at uni one day when I was waiting for a lecture to start. I'd found this tutorial a while ago when I was making christmas crafts and I began thinking that I could make boxes from squares of old magazines and turn them into a portrait. It wasn't until a good few days into this project that I realised how big the task is. But I'm hoping the payoff will be equally large.

So I started off by gridding up the picture I want to recreate, and deciding what shades and colours I would use. I decided on three shades of skins colour (so I wouldn't be completely overwhelmed trying to find exact shades in the magazines), hair colour, black and white, and a background colour - blue. Here is the grid.

I copied it into a maths book to help define the shades I would use, and expand the picture, to make sure the final product would show the detail of the glasses.

Next I had to go through a heap of magazines to find pages with the right colours/shades.

These were cut so that I would get lots of squares of the appropriate colours. I started by drawing up the grids on the magazines and cutting it with scissors, but soon found, a craft knife a lot faster, and use the width of the ruler as the length of the sides of my squares, so there's no need for measuring and ruling, I just lay the edge of the ruler against the edge of the magazine and cut down the other side of the ruler with the craft knife.

So now I had to fold the boxes. Here's that link to the tutorial again.

Cute, aren't they? They're about 1cm wide, and 5mm high.

So then I have to separate them out into the three shades of skin colour:

and all the other colours:

And finally I have begun to glue them together, following my pattern. If you look with the right kind of eyes, you can tell that the part I've completed is his left eye and some of his glasses.

Hope to bring the finished project to you soon! (but not too soon, because I have another few thousand boxes to make - wish me luck)

See my progress here