Cath Sheard Art

Tag: painting

  • Playtime in my art studio

    It’s not often I get time alone at home; being full-time carer for my Mum means that I almost always have someone at home with me. On top of that, during the week we have two different caregivers coming in and out, etc. I value their help, we could not manage without them and both still work, but it’s more people in my days. For a real introvert, this is not always easy. Today my husband Tony has gone to visit his cousin Alison and my sister Ailsa has taken Mum out for a drive. So it’s just me, the cat and the dog. Bliss! I love my family and would not change my life for anything, but I do crave time alone.

    So what does an artist do when they get some unexpected time out? Yes, that right, they head for their studio … and I did. I have started on some backgrounds, just playing with texture, colour and pattern. I’ve also done a few small, connected, abstract landscapes using my favorite Unison pastels.

    I love the feel of pastels plus there’s such a depth of colour; I enjoy the way the light hits those fine particles of pure colour. The only downside for me is that if I use them too much the ends of my fingers get sore from wiping them clean all the time. I try not to be too compulsive about keeping my fingertips clean and that helps!

    For the backgrounds I gathered up foam stamps, liquid acrylics, a white wax crayon, rubber paint spatula, letting stencils and some scraps of patterned paper. I fairly randomly layered the colours and patterns on. These are nothing finished about these at all – they are very much at the beginning stages so it’ll be fun to see what develops over the next few days.

    Now I am going to sit down in the sunshine and start working with some ideas I’ve had for Christmas gifts. There’s less than 3 months to go, and I want to make one or two textile items for family members. Fingers crossed that my new glasses give me sharp enough focus for doing needlework. Time will tell…

    Starting on some backgrounds; these will uncurl as I add more layers.
    Working on small landscapes in pastel.
    I love the way Unison pastels catch the light.

  • Trying out a new sales site

    As many artists are discovering, some of the older sales websites now have so many artists on them that it’s easy to get a little (or a lot) lost in the crowd. I was with Etsy for ages and it worked well, but have seen no activity there for ages now. I also joined ArtFire but it didn’t work for me – it’s a lovely site, but I couldn’t get it to work for me. Recently one of my works sold almost as soon as it was dry, then another person contacted me wanting to purchase the same work. This got me to thinking about print, postcards etc; and that led me to RedBubble. So I have taken the plunge and signed up, with my Freezing Works series being offered as postcards, prints and posters. With Christmas not that far away, it’s certainly worth a shot. Why not pop across and take a look?

    Here’s the work I could have sold twice in a couple of motnhs:

  • Crusade #44: In a scrape

    Michelle’s challenge for the month over at the GPP Street Team site was to put away pour paint brushes, grab an old credit card, and get scraping. This idea really suits how I work so my answer to the challenge was “heck yes!”. I keep any old library cards people hand back in, so always have a supply of cards on hand for using in my art. All the following are done with an old library card; some have stamping on top, others have oil pastel and are wrapped with crinkled freezer wrap for texture. This has made me feel quite inspired and ready to get into some serious paintings; thanks so much Michelle – you really do rock.

  • Rouge Poire / Bleu Poire for Pocket Rocket exhibition

    The Pocket Rockets exhibition, being held in Dunedin, is only about 10 days away now. I am sending off 4 works to organiser Tanya Dann in Monday’s courier post. I seem to have a few exhibitions coming up at the moment, so I am sending two older works and two new ones. The two newly completed works are part of the ongoing Pears series, in this case Bleu Poire and Rouge Poire. The photograph of the blue background is pretty accurate but the other one is hopeless. I have had a few attempts at getting a decent pic but for some reason the camera just won’t pick up the yellow colour of the background. In the photo it looks very washed out but it is actually quite a vibrant yellow. My camera is normally really good so not sure what is going on. Ah well, anyway … these are both 10×10″ in acrylic on gallery wrap canvas.

    Last weekend I decided to have a very brutal clean-up in my studio. Tony took a carload of junk away, not all from my studio I hasten to add, but some of it sure was.  I had a wee pile of old paintings that I hadn’t sold, and in many cases had never shown – none of them fitted in with what I do now. They took up a lot of room and, more importantly, every time I went out there they were looking at me. Some I felt I could recycle. The others? I put black paint all over them so no one could grab them, and Tony took them to the rubbish dump. It feels *so* good to be rid of them – like there’s this huge weight off my shoulders. I hadn’t realised just how oppressive they had become. Now when I go to my studio I just feel excited, which is how it should be.

  • Patea Freezing Works – Where’s my knife?

    I am back to my Freezing Works series; I need to have 3 works finished and sent off by the end of the month. They’re heading to the “One Size Fits All” exhibition at the Thornton Gallery in Hamilton in August. Each work has to be 10″ square and that suits be just fine for this series. I always enjoy working at that size anyway as it suits the way I work in winter – sitting down at my office desk with the heater on. In winter it is simply far too cold to go to my outside studio and stand at an easel. The studio used to be the caravan shed so it has corrugated iron walls, a concrete floor on dirt, and no insulation at all. Freezing in winter and hot as heck in summer. What a wimp, I know!

    These three works are loosely based on photos by New Zealand photographer Aaron Cubis. You can see some of his amazing work here on Flickr. I started with loose washes and runs of Golden Fluid Acrylics; Napthol red medium, Quinacridone magenta & crimson, and Phthalo green (blue) and Permanent green light. From there I have just played around, trying to capture the feel of years of peeling paint and rusty metals. What I loved about Aaron’s photos was the vivid contrast of the red and green paint on the walls and this is what I have tried to capture. This is probably going to be the most realistic of the three works as I tend to loosen up as I get into a subject painting by painting.

    Photo by Aaron Cubis

    The clean-up of the Freezing Works following the fire a couple of years ago is 95% complete now; the landscape looks so different with all those buildings gone. I guess the biggest impact on the landscape was when the chimney came down. I am happy to see it all gone; as I come down the hill into Patea the view out to the Tasman Sea is spectacular. Of course the landscape will never be as it was 100s of years ago, because of power lines, house sat the beach and so forth, but it does give a better idea of just how beautiful the untouched landscape must have been here pre-settlement.

    Where's my knife? 10×10" acrylic.