Inspired by Objects and Garden

Partisan Day, pastel on board, 27 x 27 cm

I've been drawing in pastel regularly over the past few weeks, taking inspiration from the objects I find and what is growing in the garden. I have tried new corners of the studio to set things up and although I intend not to use flowers in every drawing it turns out they are w ay for me to put colours together that make sense that it's hard to do any other way.  There's also the thing of not wanting the flowers to die before I have captured them.

The image above began as a matching exercise: I decided I was going to begin with Matisse's colour scheme, colours I might not gravitate to myself. 

Henri Matisse, The Piano Lesson

I moved around looking for objects and colour to compose something that would have my sensibility and evoke the Matisse. 

Cold Incessant Rain, pastel on board, 27 x 27 cm

Wednesday Carboot, pastel on paper, 17 x 18 cm

Tangerine Zinnia and Tie, pastel on paper, 16 x 16 cm

Plastic after plogging

I learned a new world on Facebook yesterday and it is going to be my new favourite word.  PLOGGING.

It is: 'a new pastime taking off in Sweden that sees people going for a jog, and at the same time picking up litter. You pick and you jog – hence the term ‘plog.’
Yesterday I was running with Lyra and found two 'hedge balloons' which I stopped to collect and stuff in my poo bag.  I am a plogger.  Who knew? My eyes are always peeled for that perfect piece of plastic…

In general my plastic comes from a few different routes: people bring me plastic; I save obselete plastic that I get in my life and I find plastic when i walk and run.  

This collage began with some red I got from a friend.  It suggested Matisse to me as I moved forward.  It didn't come easily but when I'd finished, I knew it was done.

Studying Matisse's colour

There's a part of me that likes to go out and 'find inspiration' and I consider wandering and gathering ideas important, but when I started this blog, a long time ago, I also knew that I have more than enough material to keep me busy FOREVER and it's a just a case of looking at what I have around me, intently, to see what's next. 

What better place to look again than with Matisse.  

Maybe how an idea begins to evolve

I went through my sketchbooks and gessoed out all the stuff that wasn't interesting.  In a few places I glued shapes of a different colour over dark places. The rose red was part of a paint chip I'd collected in Maine a few summers ago.  I blended a bit of bluey gouache into the gesso.This morning I woke early and found some objects that would work with the direction of the red.  The objects were not red.

Next I scanned the new image and printed it onto some cartridge paper.  I worked without reference to the objects with a Matisse book opened.

Remembering an inspiring teacher

I was sorry to hear that Vita Petersen had died.  Vita was my first life drawing teacher.  I was 12 and remember Vita covering the window to the art room door with paper to keep prying eyes out.  With Vita I looked carefully at Matisse's Odalisque with Raised Arms and today when I go to my life drawing group, I hear Vita's voice in my head as I follow a contour.   #45/365 http://mailart365.blogspot.com/