JUST ME :: and a stack of blank pages

:: Living creatively ::

About me

This is the real secret of life — to be completely engaged with what you are doing in the here and now. And instead of calling it work, realise it is play. The only thing that is ultimately real about your journey is the step that you are taking at this moment. That’s all there ever is. I’m here to tell you that the path to peace is right there, when you want to get away. When you are present, you can allow the mind to be as it is without getting entangled in it. If you miss the present moment, you miss your appointment with life. That is very serious!

Friday, November 26, 2010

Fantasy Arums

“Let us be grateful to people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.”
- Marcel Proust

A daily practice of sketching and painting gives you a chance to exercise the big three P's - practice, practice, practice!


Arum Lilies - Acrylic on Gesso primed un-stretched canvas - 9" x 12" - Maree©

Definitely a first for me, doing a subject that is not true to life. I mean, really, Orange Arums?! What next?! Normally for me, as here, once I apply a back-ground, that normally sets the tone for the rest of the colour palette. And it seemed a natural progression of incorporating orange as the contrast to the yellow back-ground.

All species of Arums (or Zantedeschia) are endemic to southern Africa. Z. aethiopica grows naturally in marshy areas and is only deciduous when water becomes scarce. It grows continuously when watered and fed regularly and can survive periods of minor frosts.

The Zantedeschia species are poisonous due to the presence of calcium oxalate. All parts of the plant are toxic, and produce irritation and swelling of the mouth and throat, acute vomiting and diarrhoea. A beautiful flower carrying a deadly secret!

Wednesday, November 10, 2010

Die Hard!

“You expected to be sad in the fall. Part of you dies each year when the leaves fall from the trees and their branches are bare against the wind and the cold, wintry light. But you knew there would always be the spring, as you knew the river would flow again after it was frozen.”
- Ernest Hemingway

A daily practice of sketching and painting gives you a chance to exercise the big three P's - practice, practice, practice!


Watercolour in Moleskine Watercolour sketch-book - 8" x 5"

These blue gum trees (Eucalyptus) on our smallholding (Tarlton, South Africa) are real die hards! They have withstood this past Winter's fire ravages and are already sprouting new young leaves and producing new bark under the old burnt, peeling bark. These trees will never cease to amaze me - I've even seen one that, after being struck by lightning and split down the middle, the one side continued growing, even producing new branches!

Monday, November 8, 2010

The Simple Beauty

Unfurl your cloak of silken white
Reveal your secret wand upraised at length
And not unlike a star you shine serene
To exalt the autumn-tide with silver cups.
Shall we drink sweet nectar as we praise
The simple beauty revealed now in truth?
Or shall we simply sit and idly gaze
Into the eyes of love I have for you?
Calla lily soft and silken white
With open heart I pledge my love this night.
- Author unknown

A daily practice of sketching and painting gives you a chance to exercise the big three P's - practice, practice, practice!



Arum lilies done one the back of a sheet of Photo printing paper, using coffee (Nescafé Instant, very strong, very black!) - for the back-ground. This paper is actually very thin, and ever so slightly glossy, so it was a completely different feel painting on this in stead of my normal heavy-weight watercolour paper I'm used to. It's also not conducive to allowing the paint, or coffee, to freely flow and mix. I also gave the back-ground a slight salt treatment, which then promptly refused to budge once the painting was dry! I had to scrub it off with a nail brush! I used fine table salt, maybe that could be the reason... But it has somehow imparted a raw quality to the painting.

Zantedeschia is native to southern Africa from South Africa north to Malawi. The Zantedeschia species are poisonous due to the presence of calcium oxalate. *All parts of the plant are toxic,* and produce irritation and swelling of the mouth and throat, acute vomiting and diarrhoea.

Did you know that the striking arum lily "flower" is actually many tiny flowers arranged in a complex spiral pattern on the central column (spadix)? The tiny flowers are arranged in male and female zones on the spadix. The top 7 cm are male flowers and the lower 1.8 cm are female. If you look through a hand-lens you may see the stringy pollen emerging from the male flowers which consist largely of anthers. The female flowers have an ovary with a short stalk above it, which is the style (where the pollen is received). The spadix is surrounded by the white or coloured spathe. According to Marloth, the whiteness of the spathe is not caused by pigmentation, but is an optical effect produced by numerous airspaces beneath the epidermis.


To buy a Greeting card or other fine art print of this image, go to My Redbubble

Wednesday, November 3, 2010

Coffee Trees - Flow-ers of energy

From the Non-physical, you created you, and now from the physical, you continue to create, and we are nothing if we are not Flow-ers of Energy. We must have objects of attention, that are ringing our bells, in order to feel the fullness of who we are, flowing through us, for the continuation of All-That-Is. That is what puts the eternalness in eternity.
- Abraham-Hicks

A daily practice of sketching and painting gives you a chance to exercise the big three P's - practice, practice, practice!


"Trees - Flow-ers of Energy - Coffee on Bockingford 300gsm

Some more painting with coffee, this is totally exciting! The back-ground was stained with tea first (black and very strong!) you can see it peeping through in the three corners) continuing with coffee when the tea was totally dry. Unlike the coffee, the tea is staining, so doesn't lift easily and takes over-painting and layering like a dream.

This was done exclusively with no sketching beforehand - I just followed the flow of the colours and, trees, being one of my favourite subjects, always seem to appear before my eyes! I also added a bit of Cadmium Red for interest and some Intense Green for a couple of leaves. The dark parts are where the coffee dried to a rich, glossy sheen on the original, but doesn't show up on the scan.

Done on a thick Bockingford 300gsm watercolour paper - 12" x 8"

Tuesday, November 2, 2010

Reflections

Everyone and everything that shows up in our life is a reflection of something that is happening inside of us.
- Alan Cohen

A daily practice of sketching and painting gives you a chance to exercise the big three P's - practice, practice, practice!


"Reflections" - Watercolour on Bockingford 300gsm - 8" x 12" (A4)

After all the coffee painting I've done (and there are more to follow!), I craved the good flow of my familiar and beloved watercolours and here I really just played with my colours wet-in-wet, with no preliminary sketching, enjoying the interaction of the colours and watching the picture appear! Nothing like watercolours! Whoot whoot!