Middling Muddlings!

I haven't posted because I haven't finished anything but I have been doing stuff, I'm just in the middle of everything. Hence I thought that I would blog about my middling muddling middles.

Here is my desk in my studio (I took over half of the garage and my poor car now needs to live outside now). I am playing around with lino prints as part of my extramural study. And at this stage I can say that they are very time-consuming in the cutting out, you do need to spend time planning before just jumping in, especially if you are using 3 colours like I will be, but the outcome is pretty cool. Not necessary my image outcome, I mean, just an original print is something special. I'm doing a female figure as you can probably see and I have cut 2 of the blocks and printed both colours so I can work out what I need to do with the mid-colour block which will put a lot more definition on the body.

Also on my messy desk, there is a glass coke bottle to be drawn, my box of pencil-related goodies, a drink bottle (never ever be without water for babies and toddlers) and behind is another of the middlings of another painting which will be one big close up wave once it has moved on from the blobs of colour stage.




This photo shows my painting area, I have a nice new linen canvas on my easel. This will be the first time I have tried linen and I am really looking forward to it. Why is that there? Well yesterday morning I got an exciting phone call from a man who had seen my painting at the Bruce Mason Centre which has a red sold ticket on it and he wants a similar one, same size. So yesterday I trotted off to Gordon Harris who are my normal trusty providers of the canvases I really like to find that they are completely out of stock of that size in all their stores and would have to order it in from the guy who makes them in the South Island. As I promised I would have this painting done within a fortnight, that was not an option. My issue with the size is that the canvases I buy are in metric and this one was 600x800mm which does not translate to any standard size with inches.

So this morning I trotted off, baby girl in tow, to Studio Art Supplies in Parnell as I heard that they make canvases to order. What a fabulous shop, staff that are practicing artists and so knowledgeable and helpful and I got a linen canvas then and there for the price of the cotton canvas. He was going to make me up a cotton one and then asked if I had tried linen. I said no, as my prices didn't really justify using linen at this stage, so he said he would give it to me at the cotton price which came to a pretty good discount. I was stoked and I will so be going back there again. Fantastic shop!


And last couple of photos, this is "my" room in which I also used to paint in. This is why my babies share a room because I need this space! Actually they love sharing so I don't feel guilty.
We do live in a fair sized house, 4 bedrooms plus study, but we need more space. I've worked out that in our next house which will be THE house, I pretty much need 3 rooms of my own, my studio, my library and my office. I am a book addict as well as you can probably tell and these are the 2 sides of my room and don't include the 15 odd boxes of books in the attic!

So the reason I thought that I would post photos of my studio and my room too, is to show the middling muddling middles of everything. I am slowly getting things sorted and my studio is close to being organised. My books are in loose genre order and then alphabetical order but the stuff on the floor needs sorting and I need to bring the filing cabinet down here. I'll get there, just with babies and toddlers and work and art and life, I don't seem to have much time! Love it though!