Charcoal portrait

Today was a "mummy" day which sometimes means I get the chance to draw as my kids love seeing me draw and they can draw at the same time.

I was going through photos on my laptop trying to figure out what I was going to draw and I came across this photo of my son's best friend. Last Friday at his friend's house, we convinced the boys (with bribes of course) to dress up for some photos and Carter was a fireman while his best friend was a pirate.

So here is Ryan in his pirate glory. I toned the paper first this time which I quite enjoyed working with rather than having a pristine white background. It does look better in real life and it is bigger than A4 so the scanner didn't capture it all. I'll have to see now if Ryan's mother likes it.

Possibility

Some of you may have noticed that my posting has been sporadic as of late. One of the big reasons for that is I have been working hard on getting everything ready to launch my business in a few months time. I know that I have mentioned little pieces about it, but I now have my confirmed logo designed by Karen Rubado (see above - isn't it beautiful) and feel like I am close to being ready so I now feel good about talking about it to you all.

The name of my business is (as you can probably guess) Possibility Ltd. My main focus initially will be career coaching, recruitment and interview skills and CV development with life coaching added early next year. I am half way through my Diploma in Life Coaching which I am thoroughly enjoying and about to start taking some clients which is exceptionally exciting (and just a little bit scary) as well. In the more far off future, I would love to add creativity workshops as well as that would just be so so much fun.

It took me a long time to come up with the name for this business and I absolutely love Possibility. I wanted something that stood for my values and beliefs about how we can all have a great life and I think Possibility sums that up for me. It makes me so sad to see so many people feel they are completely trapped, that they can't move on from a job they hate because of things like financial commitments, status etc and who are so unhappy. I think we are supposed to be happy in our life and the work we do has a major impact on us and how we feel about ourselves and every aspect of our life.

For me, balance is incredibly important. I love being a mum and wife, being an artist and being a businesswoman. I need those areas to all be fulfilled to have that balance. And though I am probably working harder and more hours than I have ever done before in my life, I am so energised and excited about it and it feels so good that I can share the knowledge and experience that I gained in all my years in Human Resources to help enable people to make changes in their life and have the skills and knowledge to be able to make these changes.

Going through all the thinking and planning for this new business is also making me re-assess other parts of my life, e.g. what this blog is actually all about and what I want to communicate here. I'm still thinking about that but watch for some changes coming soon...

Have a fabulous day!

Trying out Derwint tinted charcoal

Tonight I tried out a small tin of Derwent Tinted Charcoal that I bought over a year ago and then stashed away in my studio cupboard and promptly forgot about. After playing with the red chalk pencil this afternoon on Tayla's portrait, I had a memory trigger that I did have something like that and I found them.

I wasn't terribly experimental with the colours tonight, but they are lovely and velvety to use and I did this with a white chalk pencil, a tinted grey charcoal pencil and a tinted dark blue/black charcoal pencil.

Incidentally this angel belongs to an old gravestone that I drive past frequently. This gravestone is right at the top of a graveyard on a hill with it's back to the road and for months I drove past wanting to photograph it so I could draw or paint it as I find it so beautiful. A few weeks back, kids were in daycare, and I knew I was driving past there for a meeting so I left early and took my camera and took a number of photos. The sun was very bright that day so I would like to go back when it was more overcast to get more subtlety.

The reason I drew this tonight was as a study for a painting. I have an idea about incorporating this into a large work so I also prepared a canvas tonight so I am hoping to draw it out on there tomorrow. I must say, this was supposed to be a study and I spent about 3 hours on it, but it was thoroughly enjoyable and I am really pleased with the outcome. The picture isn't nearly as good as what it looks like in real life but you get the idea.

Portrait - Carbon pencil and chalk

Yay for lazy Sunday afternoons! I finally finished this portrait of Tayla and because I wasn't so happy with progress just with the carbon pencil, I used some red chalk as well which I kind of like. Makes it a little softer I think.

We had a great weekend with the kids having an over-nighter at the grandparents so DH and I got to both sleep in. I thought I would still wake up at 6am, but didn't and actually slept through to 9am which was just lovely. The house seemed ridiculously quiet without two toddlers about and this morning I managed to finish a book with no interruptions and have a generally lazy time. Yay for grandparents.

Exhibition Photos

Here is a photo of my pieces at the current annual NZ Art Guild Exhibition. Photo was taken by Helen Sherrock who graciously allowed me to borrow it for this blog given I forgot my camera on opening night.

I sold the three small ones on the night which was fantastic and I have all sorts of ideas swirling around in my head at the moment for the next type of series with resin and colour.

Tonight I will hand over my laptop to my 16 year old stepson so he and his father can play computer games against each other, and with the temptation to surf the net and read blogs taken away from me, I will head into my studio (albeit with a heater as it is pretty cold at the moment), put on some good music (loving Christine Kane right now) and paint.

Ngatahi - my other image

Now that Ngatahi has been revealed, I can reveal my other painting I did for this. It was a fairly critical piece with the top of the South Island and the bottom of the North Island of New Zealand so I didn't want to post it prior to Ngatahi being unveiled as anyone that knows the shape of NZ would probably pick it out.

Trying to come up with a way of keeping the islands plus creating an artwork was hard with this piece and I ended up coming across a photo of some lilies in my electronic files and realised I could make them fit so that is what I did.

Anyway, I am working at the moment (yes on a Sunday evening) so need to stop my 5 minute blogging break and get back to some HR work.

Tayla - WIP carbon pencil

My little girl is growing up. She will be 2 this September and everyday both her and her brother astound me with new words, new levels of comprehension and their imagination. They both draw draw draw all the time and I am constantly buying more colour pencils for them. For some reason they like to chew on and eat crayons so coloured pencils work best for them. And I can tell you that little pieces of crayon make it all the way to the other end!

On Sunday I started a new portrait of Tayla based on some photos I took that morning. The eye isn't right and needs to be fixed and I am hoping to get some more time at this one today as Wednesday is one of my Mummy/Artist days. The kids love seeing me draw although I am always scared they might try and improve my work with their pencils so I never leave a half-completed drawing anywhere near them. They love seeing the drawings and paintings of themselves though. They will think it normal to grow up surrounded by depictions of them at every age and stage.

Ngatahi unveiled

I have just got home from the opening night of the annual NZ Art Guild Exhibition which was also the unveiling of Ngatahi (the collaborative project) and a charity art auction for the Mental Health Foundation of New Zealand.

As you can see above, this is Ngatahi and it is beautiful. It is large - 1.3 m x 1.3m and was sold tonight in the auction along with 14 other artworks that had been donated. All up nearly $7000 was raised for the MHF which is fabulous.

On a side note, I sold 3 out of my 4 pieces that I have in the exhibition tonight which was great. Would be even better if the fourth piece sells over the next month while the exhibition runs.

The pieces that sold were from my resin series which is great because I was interested in seeing the reaction to them in a public forum. It is so hard to photograph these as they are so textured with transparent glazes that in real life they are completely different. So I am really pleased with the sales tonight!