New Zealand fantails

On our visit to New Zealand I have been fascinated by all the different birds we have seen. We saw the New Zealand fantail on many of our walks and even in the garden. Their Maori name is Piwakawaka which I also quite like.

They are similar to our British tit family in size but they have a fantail. The breast colour varies from a russet brown to a sooty black. The tails are flickering silver and black with the centre feather quite often black although we did see both pure black fantails and pure while fantails. The two distinct types are the common pied fantail and the black fantail (less common 4%). The common fantail has distinct flashes of white, over the eyes, under the beak and on the wings. They use their fantails for flight, feeding and display. They can use the fantail to sweep across foliage and dislodge insects which they eat. We noticed that they were often seen in pairs.. They tend to flit from perch to perch and they are quite agile in flight twisting and turning. They are quite difficult to photograph as a result.

We saw black fantails on the Kepler track between the control tower to rainbow reach. The majority of the time we saw the common fantails.

Life in our bubble

Today is Monday 6th April. I had a good nights sleep and feel quite rested. The world outside here was calm and relaxed. The noise was low and there wasn't too much light last night.

I have been for a walk in our local park called Heron Park named after the white-faced Heron. It is a lovely park with lots of paths, some in the open and some through the trees. I have noticed that the white faced Heron is smaller than our UK Heron and has yellow legs. I will be doing a bit of research to find out more while in level 4 lockdown.

I met and talked to two people on my walk at 2m away. One was from American Samoa called Martin. He was tending to the garden of a house. He had a lovely smile on his face, he said he enjoyed the outdoors. It was difficult for me to understand him but we both agreed that it was lovely to be in the outdoors and say how much we loved it.  The second person or people was a mother and her daughter. She was speaking French so I said Bonjour. That started a conversation in French, gosh it all flooded back .. I love the language. I have never been that good at it but it was lovely to renew and practice. The lady said she and her husband had been living here in New Zealand for 9 years. I spoke to the daughter in English I asked her her name and she game the name of a character in Frozen, Elsa. Her mother tried to get her to give her real name.

I took some photos in the park. A tree with crocheted flowers around it. And one with crocheted squares. I photographed the tree which stands as an interesting sculpture. I also photographed a pine tree with lots of sparrows.

On the other side of the world!

Today is the 30th March 2020. A week ago I had a text from my friend Hazel while on holiday to tell us that New Zealand was going into level 4 lockdown in 2 days. We needed to decide what to do .. holiday over .. go home? No flights. Return to Auckland and be locked down with them. We were so grateful for her offer, at least we had a friend who could help us.

It has been surreal hearing all the news. Is it really happening and I feel like I'm upside down? Especially as we contact loved ones at home at the beginning and end of our day .. rather strange.

I finally feel like I am listening .. the road messages are clear ... Stay calm, be kind.

I read this message in the park today - not sure if it's Maori text?
"That this incoming tide is not the breaking of waves upon the reef, but the rising tide of humankind reaching for this distant horizon, carried ashore upon hopes and aspirations.
Welcome to the pillow on which rests the dreams of those who came before you""

I also overheard a Maori man say "it's time everyone slowed down".

Feeling so lucky to be here.

Paintings of runners

The last two months I have been getting enquiries about runners paintings. My son Thomas is a keen cross country and marathon runner so I have done quite a few paintings on that theme. My aim is to try to capture the style of the runner and the feeling of motion.

My spirit runners for the Olympics in 2012 were popular

As was the "runners at the bend"

A charcoal version of these runners is still available framed at £140

 

Spring terms life drawing

In the spring term of life drawing the elements we covered were all related to tone - exploring ways of using tone, tone in different media, subtractive tone, tone on dark paper and looking at artists from the renaissance period.

This term I have pre prepared my paper for life drawing classes. I have either used gesso only and a large brush to accentuate the brush strokes or stuck newspaper into the wet gesso to get a reverse print.

I have picked out a few of my favourite life drawings,

I love the light on the shoulders on this drawing

This model was slightly twisted but made an interesting pose

I just captured the torso here, the light was amazing

I love this curled up pose with the head twisted

A wonderful relaxed pose quickly drawn in charcoal

I loved the shoulders on this one and the fall of the light

Again the shoulders were amazing, just catching the light

Flower paintings and cards

Over the years I have painted numerous still lifes of flowers. I try to capture the feel and character of the flower. I like to buy flowers for the table if I don't have any in the garden to pick. At this time of the year I mainly buy tulips and roses.

I love it when the light hits the flowers and makes the petals and leaves really shine. I try to capture this in my paintings. I usually start by making sketches of the flowers in pencil, charcoal or pastel. I really look and try to capture what I see and the character of each flower. For instance if the flower is standing up or bowed down. I look at the length and position of the petals. I treat them rather as I would people by looking at their proportions.

Below is a sketch I have done in charocoal

Flowers in a vase, sketch

It is useful to have the sketch as a reminder when panting the flowers. Here is the final painting.

I often do little sketch paintings of my flowers to make personal cards. The following sketches were made of the spring helebores in my garden. I use cards which have a rectangular aperture which allows me to stick these original sketchs in. For these sketches I used paper I had prepared for the first two and brown paper on the last one.

Rome Unpacked

Happy New Year! It was great to see the images of Rome in the TV program "Rome Unpacked". It features so many images of Rome, you can see the presenters going around on a Vespa. You can actually see the Trevi fountain and then you learn it was filmed very early in the morning (5am)!

Even so it brought back some amazing memories of the buildings, old town roads and piazzas. I especially enjoyed going to see many of the amazing paintings in the basilicas and also an exhibition of paintings by Caravagio.

I particularly liked the piazzas especially those with cafes where you could linger, enjoy the ambiance, the sun and people watch! Here are a couple of my favourites:-

Café in the sunlight

This painting is of a café in Piazza di Pietra. What you cannot see are the amazing columns of the temple of Hadrian to the left. I was more interested in the low light on the building and the people. 

Café by the Pantheon

This is a painting of a cafe in Piazza della Rotonda with the Pantheon in the background. It is an amazing building with its unsupported dome and oculus (hole in the middle) the only source of natural light. This café was great to just watch the world go by. It was one of my favourite places in Rome although quite busy most of the time.

You can see these and more of my Rome collection at www.littlevangogh.co.uk. I am looking forward to seeing the second part of "Rome Unpacked".