Duck musings

Howdy. I've been thinking how strange it is that 6 years ago I woke up on the other side of the world in Perth and wanted to draw ducks. Yes, a Middle Market Advisory Manager who hadn't seen a duck in about 10 years wanted to draw ducks. I think my friend Ads, though very kind and lovely that she is, thought I was a bit crazy as I dragged her to all the book stores that lunch time to try to find a book on ducks. She was actually very supportive - Ads being Ads - and the book found was Waterbirds of South-West Wetlands by Carolyn Thomson-Dans and Stuart Halse and cost me a grand total of $6.50. Quite inspired I went home and tried to copy the photo of the Australian Shelduck with pastels and posted it on my blog. I realised Sunday as I sat drawing a female mallard and her ducklings at St Margaret's Loch that I was drawing ducks for a book of my own making. So because I am obviously such a big well-known artist (ha ha :p) I thought I'd do a retrospective of my Shelduck 6 years ago compared to my sketch of the Mallard and her ducklings today. I am also quite interested in the birds of Australia having similar names to that of the UK but looking just slightly different. Here is a photo of a Mallard in Australia from the Thomson-Dans and Halse book. PS Hope you hare having a good day. It was quite exciting to get thunder and rain this morning after 2 weeks of sun! Though happy sun is back this afternoon :-). Oh and please scroll down my blog on the right and check out the link to the Hidden Door blog - it's cool stuff. Get involved while you can! 

K Fisher, Female Mallard and Ducklings (2013)

K Fisher, Australian Shelduck (2007)

Mallard in Australia, Waterbirds of South-West Wetlands

Cyclamen success!

Ahoy fellow people! At long last I have completed my RBGE Certificate in Botanical Illustration. The wonderful day came a few weeks ago on Saturday 8 June. The 10 month course was absolutely brilliant, however, I admit that the final weeks of tinkering around with my final piece while sometimes enjoyable was completely terrifying. So much pressure when painting on a pristine white background. The lift off technique certainly came in very handy and something I am very happy to have learnt. Not only did I pass, I passed with Merit (though I get the feeling no one passed with less than a merit! :-)). To top it off, we even get a graduation ceremony in September, complete with nibblies and wine - no gown unfortunately but I think I can survive just this once without. Without further ado (drum roll please), I reveal my final composition of dear cyclamen persicum (actually to be honest my Cyclamen F1 Hybrid as my original lost its flowers too early in the piece), together with a photo of my actual hybrid. Also this week I have been lovingly staring at a painting Madonna and child in the national gallery by an artist nicknamed The Master of the Embroidered Foliage. The painting is amazing, particularly the berries and leaves and the shadow of Mary. I would post here but there doesn't seem to be an online image of it in the collection, so you may have to waltz over to the gallery and view it for yourself :D. Well, off to meet a friend at the train station. Hopefully won't be too long before I post again.

Cyclamen (K Fisher) - 20 cm x 14 cm

My wee little cyclamen hybrid F1 mix (and my tutor Pamela Richardson blurry in background)

St Margaret's Loch in egg

I don't know about you, but I have at least a thousand passwords now to everything. And I am not exaggerating. The amount of times I've locked myself out because I can't remember my own password. You know at the time, I am sure I'll remember or I promise myself to make a note of it somewhere. Yeah right. So the short of it is, you are extremely lucky (aren't you pleased?!) to be getting my newest exciting post. 

Volume 3 of my documentation is taking ages. For someone who got asked (along with everyone else apparently) where was all my work for the semester, I seem to be having a lot of difficulty fitting everything in. I know, if the documentation was just for marking perhaps I would be more strict and limit the number of photos, but because I selfishly want it as a record for myself to kick start me into third year, I want to put more not less in. But less is always more so they say. Here are the first egg tempera paintings I did this semester. I am relatively proud of myself that I bought pigments and mixed the paints with egg myself. Thanks to Koo Schadler's excellent manual http://www.kooschadler.com/. As you can see I'm far off Koo's level and I truly wish I could get to one of her workshops to see if I am on the right track but unfortunately she lives in the USA. 

So, this is strange. Well I find it strange. I like the look and feel of these first paintings (a triptych) and I think I'm getting across what I want to, but at the same time I don't like them because my egg tempera technique is not great. So I like them but I am not happy at the same time.  I am happy for you to have your own thoughts of the matter of course! Oh and I should say, the people are based on a photo by John Patrick Skating, St Margaret's Loch which can be found on the National Gallery of Scotland website. 

The Other (left panel)

The Other (central panel)

The Other (right panel)

A day of falconry

I am super excited. Today I finished my first ever slip case! I wanted a thumb tab so it was easier to pull my falconry day prints out, but think I need to find a better way to finish it off in book cloth as it looks a bit shoddy. In the end, the prints were a bit 'hey-ho' per the tutor comments at my review, but my main purpose was to try using different ways to print in colour, including jigsaw blocks, roller, addition and multiple colour prints so I am not too phased, though I do heed their comments. I think I need more development time. It is one thing to print something initially, but then I need time to figure out how to improve it to be what I want it to be. Anyway, I had a couple of friends who liked the prints. Oisin liked the lip of the older man holding the bird which I really struggled with and thought I had made a muck up of, so that was nice of him to say :). Will post a couple more of the pieces from my final review for second year soon. I am in the process of doing my documentation that I need to submit for my final grade so all in good time...

The Modern Thinking Bird

There was once a girl who asked a boy what he thought the most fragile thing in the world was. And he cupped his hands in the shape of a bird's nest and said to her that in his mind, a bird's eggs protected by a hedge of twigs was the most fragile thing in the world. And every time she looked high into the trees and saw a bird's nest made of twigs she thought of what he had said. 

And I wonder sometimes if we, humans, birds, fish, other animals, insects, plants aren't made up of all the same stuff. But not exactly the same stuff which is what I think makes it so perfect. I was thinking as corny as it is, that maybe it's just like a big painting with different textures and colours and lines and shapes and that with one or another part missing is just isn't going to be the same. And I know when I was a kid, I remember someone talking about weaving, and that if there was a mistake, the pattern on the rug could still be beautiful and maybe that's where I got the thought from. 

You can probably tell it's late at night here. I've got to print 7 lino cuts about 35 times tomorrow and I'm still cutting them. I've decided to make a little black book cloth covered square pouch with gold writing to put them in and call it The Modern Thinking Bird. Hope you think that's ok. Here is one of them, which I am going to try using chine colle on. It generally is a bit of a disaster when I do it but I'll see, you never know what might happen.

Man and Kestrel at Scottish Deer Centre

Dear Cyclamen persicum - what shall I do?

I am thinking it is time for my monthly blog contribution. It is a perfect sunny day in Edinburgh. Hopefully it signals a good Spring to come. It has been a while since I have had a cider, I don't think I particularly like drinking in winter. Red wine usually makes me sleepy, so because I am now the 'it's on special' girl, I happened upon a Rekorderlig Apple & Blackcurrent cider 49p cheaper than usual! So I am sipping on this while replying to all my emails and happily listening to a track by Ride sent to me by one of my friend's, Keith. In return I have been sending him arty stop-animation clips, since I'm not cool enough to be properly into music (only really dance/techno because it's fun to turn up loud on the headphones and pretend I'm one of the dancers in the Step Up movies ha ha). So here is Vapour Trail and the stop-animation clip I sent Keith in return - waiting for his full critical review on it...

Ride - Vapour Trail

Graffiti Stop Motion - by Blu

Art wise...stressing out a bit as usual. The time has come for me to decide upon my final composition for my Botanical Illustration course. The problem is I have to decide this week before the flowers die on my cyclamen persicum. And I am meant to paint the flowers now before anything else and what if I put them in the wrong spot and then trying to paint in the leaves and seed pods after looks a bit knaff? I guess I just have to go for it. My Aunty, Lynda Strahan, sent me a CD of some of her Australian botanical drawings which are pretty delightful. She says she is not professionally trained in botanical illustration so I can show her how the 'real' thing is done once I finish my course but seriously, if I could come up with anything as good as her pieces I would be very pleased. I have asked her permission to put some of her drawings on my blog, but I am going to be a bit sneaky and put three up now and then if she says no (she is very nice so I am sure she won't) I will take them down. How is that? Okay and I guess I actually better put up something by me - so I will put my initial cyclamen persicum flower workpaper here also. Not that exciting but it's something...Okay must go and work on a story I'm writing for my pa.

London 2013

I am a bit late on my promise to deliver weekly research on contemporary art practice, but I have been working hard. My research so far is on the wall of my studio, ranging from inspiration from my London trip, to artists found in art journals, to artists suggested  in my mid-year feedback. Firstly to say, London was fun! I had a really good time seeing a very good Australian friend and her entourage, together with another one of my friend's who now lives in London. I got picked on by the Aussies for having a quote 'fake posh Kylie Minogue accent and can I stop putting it on and speak in my real Australian voice now...?!'.  To which my friend responded, 'that is her real Australian voice'. Not sure what to think of that but needless to say I gave as good as I got. Regardless of the 'fake' accent I think my ability to hassle and make wisecracks to Aussies I had only just met did the trick in proving my authentic Australianness! (They were of course, for all their hassling, pretty nice Aussies to hang out with :)).

Okay, so enough of the Australian talk and to serious business... I made it to the Tate Modern with my Aussie friend and I think we were both huge fans of the eight-channel video installation in the Tanks I am not me, the horse is not mine by William Kentridge http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern-tanks/exhibition/william-kentridge-i-am-not-me-horse-not-mine. From the write-up in the Tanks, I understand this was a common saying among Russian peasants who were found stealing a horse (pretty clever don't you think). I also found just now a stop-motion animation of Kentridge's called Tide Table (video below) which is done in a very different way to the one in the Tate exhibition, but is really worth watching http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJ-c4N2njwg

I also went to the Natural History Museum, which apparently has an amazing blue whale you should see, but I completely forgot about it because I became ensconced in the bird section and the Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibition www.wildlifephotographeroftheyear.com. The exhibition was truly wonderful and made me quite emotional because of the section on raising awareness of threatened species. I think that sometimes humans, including myself, really can be such lousy and self-centred creatures with respect to looking after what we have been given. But on the other hand, I know that humans can also be pretty caring and wonderful too. Anyway, in order that I didn't sit down and begin to cry at the bad state of the world, I escaped to the Victoria and Albert museum where I completely, absolutely and devotedly fell in love with the Medieval section (to be honest I have always been in love with things Medieval, but this just took it to a new level!). The Illuminated Book of Hours were by far my favourite (if only I could have turned their luscious pages instead of being stuck with one open page behind glass!), but there were also many other enchanting, sparkly, beautiful things in the section http://www.vam.ac.uk/page/m/medieval/. When I got back to College last week I found this website where you can scroll through some Book of Hours that are for sale http://www.medievalbooksofhours.com/. Here is an open page of one of the books: 

Well that is more than enough from me I think. Exciting things on the horizon though in the next couple of weeks....