Jan's News from the Studio July 2024

Hello again

July is one of my favourite months of the year. I'm a bit weird I know, that I love winter. Here are some of the great things about July:

My birthday is in early July and I really do love celebrating my birthday. Come to think of it it's a far better option than not getting to celebrate one!

Call me an accounting / bookkeeping geek if you must but I really get a thrill about starting a new financial year. (I hope you realise I'm sharing some dark secrets about myself... I'm feeling a bit brave today.) I also get a thrill starting the new year and can't wait to start a new calendar on 1st January and consider all the possibilities for the year ahead.

While I don't like loads of rain, there is something fabulous about lying in bed in the morning with the rain bucketing outside. We have minimal rain through summer in Perth so lots of rain in winter is pretty important. According to the Bureau of Meteorology July is one of our coldest and wettest months here. The trick is timing that daily outdoor exercise in between showers.

Read more

,

Neutrals are the Backup Singers

,

My painting group participated in a really interesting workshop last month with Bridget Seaton, a local artist. It was all about making greys or neutrals. That probably sounds a bit dry to the average person, but it was truly fascinating to all of us and, as you can see from the colour charts I made in the workshop, grey is not just grey.

In the first image below, each column of grey mixes are created from a blue, a red, a yellow and adding white in increasing amounts. There are cool and warm blues, reds and yellows and this influences the resulting grey temperature.

Jan's Studio News April 2024

The exciting Artwalk Freo is on in South Fremantle (week 1 of the Artwalk) in just over a week. As you can imagine my head is filled with the "To Do" list leading up to having my studio and our home open for a whole weekend. Aside from finishing off artworks and framing, there's sprucing up the garden, sorting things out in the house, printing labels, and oh so much more. It's going to be a fun weekend showing my art.

,

Mini Paintings How To

,
Mini Paintings How To

Mini paintings are a great option if you have little space for painting. In addition the little paintings make wonderful affordable original art. Sometimes a person would really love to buy some art but it might be beyond their budget at the time. That’s why I make the minis so that everyone can enjoy owning art.

Before I start painting, I section off a large sheet of 300gsm watercolour paper using narrow tape into 6.6cm squares, usually using washi tape which is easily removed afterwards without ripping the paper. You need to allow a little excess around the image size for framing.

The Studio Tour

Recently I moved my studio to a different space in my home so that I would have more room and better light. It was a lot of fun getting organised and thankfully I have a very creative and clever partner who installed a fabulous wall easel.

In this video I talk about a few things I really love about this new improved studio. Apart from the fabulous wall easel, I enjoy my electric stand up - sit down table and IKEA Alex drawers for my art supplies. See what you think.