Cath Sheard Art

Tag: acrylic

  • Happiness is: new paints

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    I found Golden Fluid Acrylics at 30% off the other day at Tanjis. So I ordered a few – some are new colours to try, others are spares of long-time favourites. Happiness is: a wee box of paints, sitting on my desk tempting me. The first thing I do when I get new paint in a bottle is smear some of the colour on the lid. It’s easier to find what I want, and seeing the colours lifts my spirits.

    Oh, and for the record, here are the colours I bought: Turquoise (phthalo), Green Gold, Phthalo Green (yellow shade), Paynes Gray, Cobalt Teal, Cobalt Blue, Dioxazine Purple, Anthraquinone Blue, Nickel Azo Yellow, Iridescent Fine Gold, Napthol Red medium, Quinacridone Red, 2 of Quinacridone Nickel Azo Gold and 2 of Quinacridone Burnt Orange.

  • A whisper of grass

    I have been working towards a couple of exhibitions, including the annual NZ Art Guild exhibition “Out of the Blue”, and have finally finished everything I need to get done. The last works will be in Monday’s courier. Yahoo!

    This is the last work to be signed and made ready for hanging. It celebrates the wonderful warm colours of the land here in New Zealand as the first spring growth of grass pops through in the paddocks around us. It’s more about how I remember that time of year, and how it makes me feel, than about the actual look of the landscape. It is 10×10″ acrylic on gallery wrap canvas.

    A whisper of grass
    A whisper of grass

  • Painting interlude

    I have not really done any painting in the past week. I have two problems mainly:

    1. The weather is so hideous. It is 24 degrees or so here most days and incredibly humid. My acrylic paints are giving me grief; they get to the tacky stage almost instantly. Awful.  There is no way I would consider varnishing in this weather.

    2. Our wee dog has been increasingly sick over the last week. We have it under control now I hope but it has been very time consuming. She is my only baby and I have been really worried about her. You can meet Faith here.

    I’ve been going to bed early each night so she can cuddle up with me and get some ‘Mom sympathy’. So while I soothe her, I have been rereading some favorite art books. Such as the Acrylic Revolution, and some books about journals and mixed media. Then I scribble some notes in my art journals; so the time has not been wasted. It’s amazing what even that small amount of research does to rev up the brain and get the creative wheels spinning.

  • New Mt Egmont painting – looking at the values

    This week I have four days off work, and I intend spending the whole time painting. I have to get some big works done for an exhibition in Auckland. BUT this coming Friday is Waitangi Day. It’s the day New Zealand celebrates the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi, the document that more than 150 years ago was signed between Maori and the Crown detailing how this land would be in the future. It gives Maori equal rights in law – amazing for a colony in the 1800s – and probably one of the reasons New Zealand has, in the main anyway, thrived as a bi-cultural society.

    This Friday my town, Patea, celebrates with an event called Paepae in the Park. It’s a massive day with music, food stalls, speeches – all celebrating our diverse community (Patea has a high percentage of Maori, as has this area generally). Businesses are closed but to support the day I open the library, which is next to the park where the event is held. A top NZ band, Katchafire, is playing this year, and we expect about 5,000 people to attend. The library has disabled access toilets, and offers people time out in the shade and quiet. I also think it is good for the library, and me as library manager, to be seen to be involved in events within the community. Last year the event did not go ahead because of a massive industrial fire in town on the day. The year before I had more than 700 people through the doors on the day – amazing, because at that stage our usual weekly footprint count was only 500.egmont-and-cowsWhat does that have to do with painting? Well — I am going to do some small, 4×4 or 6×6, acrylic paintings of Mt Egmont to display – and hopefully sell – in the library. The Mountain (Maunga) is very important to local Maori. When they have been away form the area, seeing Mt Egmont signals that they are ‘home’. So I have cropped a favorite photo of the mountain to square-ish, and turned it to gray-scale to make  the values more obvious. And tomorrow  head into my art room to get messy. Love it.

  • Playing with acrylic & mediums: Golden Landscape 7

    I have been working on some small 4×4″ canvas again, in a continuing series, this time using more mediums and a high gloss resin-type glaze over the top. The series alludes to, but does not replicate, the land I see around me here on the West Coast of New Zealand. The strong hot colours refer to the weather we are having at the moment – really hot and quite dry. I love working in this format; I can put 4 or 6 canvas on my desk and work on all of them at once, so that there is a relationship between them.

    I use mainly Golden products – in this case I used light modeling paste, pumice gel, garnet gel, gesso, and a then gloss glazing medium.  The colour is all Golden Fluid acrylics – I buy the small bottles and just love them. When I first get them I smear some of the colour on the lid of the bottle so I can see the colours when they are all standing in the drawer they’re stored in – saves me picking up the bottles and checking the colour as I work. I put the paint on with brushes, my fingers, a palette knife, a sponge and even a syringe I got from our local vet. My hands always tell the story of what I’ve been doing, what colours I’m into at the time…

    Works in this series are for sale in my Etsy store. golden-landscape-7