Paronella Park

I visited Paronella Park some years ago,  immediately after a storm.  

I made this painting from a photograph that I took on that trip.

Painting from photographs.

After a break of a couple of days, I have been painting again.
This time I have used some photographs that I found, from my days of travelling around Queensland by myself.  I have a few photographs that I'd like to use for reference material for painting.
Rainforest near Gympie....

 and a ruin at Paronella Park....

(Still wet so that there is rather a bad reflection on the rhs.)
I have just been to have another look at these two small paintings, and they are almost like sketches. They make you look carefully at the subject to resolve the problems... and now I just need some bigger canvasses.

Still life

Still life paintings are usually a winter pursuit, but I want to try a few "Cezanne style" techniques, and so today I set up some of my usual objects and had a go...  not terribly successful yet,  but I have learned a little more.  While this is not a finished painting, and I don't know just how pleased I am with it (sometimes it takes a few days to decide whether I'll keep a painting or sand it off and paint on the canvas again.)  These are three of my old ink bottles...  unfinished, but on the way....

and this is how they are set up in the studio....

I have painted them previously.... I like these funny old things.... and from last year....

 ... and I often paint other old artifacts also....

These are both tiny paintings that I have been doing while I was constantly busy with local government, leaving little time to paint.  Others are of garden produce....

....  and most of these tiny daily paintings have been sold,  but I still have a couple of favourites.
I still need to practice some of the "Cezanne techniques" as I am having such a good time with the more limited palette and the attempt to use the colours in such a different way...  tricky, but such fun!

Bunya pines, Qld.

Another day, another painting...

This painting was made from a photograph that I had taken several years ago, in Queensland, near Toowoomba.  I had put the picture aside (along with a number of others) to use for this very purpose... making a painting.   Once again,  I used some of Cezanne's tricks...

I have also re-painted Mt Light, from the drawing in my sketchbook....

 ... this painting has quite a different  "feel" and is quite  a bit smaller than the one that I did yesterday.

People who know me will be aware that I'm not the most organised person,  and that I usualy have quite a messy house.  It seems the only place that I keep really tidy is my painting stuff...

.... I only just noticed that they colours are even sorted into four piles...  whites, reds, yellows and blue/earths.

Mt Light

This is a drawing that I made of Mt Light several years ago.

 Today I used the drawing to make a painting of the same scene....

...  in the style of Cezanne.

Mt Ste-Victoire after Cezanne

My plan has been to copy several Cezanne paintings so that I can work out how he did the work and then use the same technique to paint some local landscapes and a particular still life. 

This mountain (Mt Sainte-Victoire) was painted by Cezanne a number of times (and by other artists also.)  It is either very painter-genic or easily accessable.

The painting is made using a minimum of colours, and very similar brush strokes all over it.   There are few details shown anywhere.  It seems like an extension of the pointillist style of the impressionists taken to patches of colour with distance being manipulated with colour and tone alone.
His still life that I painted last week had distortions of edges and contrast to indicate the 3-D nature of the subject.  He has used the same technique here... with contrasts in tone indicating differences in distance.

Painting again

I began this blog some time ago... I'd intended to use it as a means of keeping my drawing and painting,  but the council and meetings took over.  I'm not on council any more.  I'm painting again!
I have a programme of paintings to do over the next week or so an hopefully that will get me started again.
Today I have copied a till life painting by Cezanne.  Of course I only had a dodgy reproduction to copy,   but I am pleased with the result...  and I'll only get better as I get back into regular practice.