Reg has installed a 12-volt chargeable battery run, bright LED light in the inside cabin of our ‘troopy’, car and I have a 240-volt florescent light fitting mounted high on the cargo barrier behind the driver’s seat.

In the cabin, of the troop carrier, we have removed the eleven passenger seats to make a small room and I have mounted a table across at the back, tied to the cargo barrier. 
Underneath this, I will have plastic lightweight draws containing my oil painter’s art studio equipment. 

I have removed the comfortable seat and back from a conventional swivel stool we found at the tip shop and I place this on top of a plastic crate, which doubles as storage and the base for a comfortable seat. 

Not much is needed to be added to my touring, on location, oil painting, studio. J.  I just need to shop around for the auto insurance quote to make sure my car art studio contents, are covered in the car insurance policy.

Can you tell, J how eager I am for our next painting and writing, tour?

Safety note: I do not use thinners or flammable liquids when oil painting or cleaning brushes so no dangerous materials are carried in the car. 

The people and horses in outback Australia, and the cattle country, provide a wealth of material for the artist to paint. In this work I have used an image from the Katherine Camp-draft, in a scene I was painting of central Queensland. Note the red earth. I used a technique explained to me by a relative of the great Sir Hans Heysen, to create the richness of the red gold earth. It is a technique I teach my students, one which is not immediately obvious. it is these 'tricks of the trade, passed by one master to the next, that has assisted me throughout my own career as an artist. It isn't 'beginner information though' :-), first lessons first.
The image pictured here is of a gift card, made from this large work. The original is longer than this image, it does not have the writting on it. I am not sure of the size, I thiink it may be 15" x 30". it is a favorite of mine and I have it hanging on show, in my studio room.

  A friend has asked me to show her what horse art I have in my possession,

I love horses in art works so I have quite a few. Some are on my walls and some is in storage ready for my four grandchildren to select from, when they are grown up. I do occasionally sell some of the originals I own but I do not actually exhibit or make an effort to sell any, as I do not paint major art works these days, just little ones, like those I showed in my last post.

I will start with the largest horse artwork I have, this one is three foot by four foot, and it is oil on stretched Belgian linen canvas. “The horses by the dam” by Kathy Shell. This work was painted in the year I was invited to exhibit in Sydney with other artists, who like me had been chosen as Australia’s top ten artists. I think this was in my late, forties and early in my years as owner, artist of Buninyong Gallery.

I make a policy to never cry over broken pots.
I strive to accept the creative disasters, think about what is important in life and move on.

When I was a potter sculptor, I had a policy, of never crying over broken pots.  I had some exhilarating experiences when I opened the kiln door and saw thousands of dollars worth of exquisitely beautiful reduction fired, glazed pots glowing at me.  I also saw the devastation of two months of work, shattered and broken or glued to the kiln shelving on several occasions and once those broken pieces cooled I took them and placed some of the more attractive broken pieces around my garden, arranged like sculptural interest then walked back to the studio and began production again.

You say thanks when the creative work turns out well, you learn to accept the disasters.

I once attended a master class in watercolour with Robert A Wade, OAM and he taught his students that to be a good watercolourist, you needed to have strong wrists.  When we looked at him with wonder at why we required strength for the job, he picked up a quite nice looking watercolour on the expensive 100% pure cotton paper and he tore it in two. ‘That’ he said, ‘is what you need to do, if it isn’t good enough’.  This was another example of accepting what we learn when a creative process goes wrong.

Many oil painters are never happy with the painting they create so they re work and re work it and the painting shows the effects of this pentemento. Pentimento, means, ‘the artist repents’, and in the case of oil paintings, the application of darker paint over light paint usually causes the dark paint to crack and placing light paint over darker paint has the result of the dark pigment eventually bleeding through. Sometimes it is best to learn from our creative mistakes and move on rather than rehashing a work repeatedly.

A code I had inserted into one of my web sites to allow Google search engine to track it, became corrupted.  This made it hard for readers to find my web site and when I checked the site using Google Analyticals  it showed my web site as a dead flat line. It took me several tries over a week to correct the code and get it back to the rising line that reflects the interest level I have from readership in that site.  I could easily have felt distressed that six months of my work was not even showing on the web and stayed up all night obsessively working on trying to fix the problem and increase my Google rating. I just worked at it within my allocated hours of work, slept contented and had a life outside of my fix the problem, web work.  I kept my ‘do not cry over broken pots’, rule in my head, and told myself that while ‘my writing and reputation as a writer is important to me, I must never allow it to become an obsession, the best work is created by healthy minds’.  I have a great deal of belief in the value of positive self-talk messages. J

This morning I logged into Google Analyticals and the flat line of web death, has risen, lol, J, my web site is ALIVE AGAIN JJJ, What a relief JJJ.

I have been a creative artist now for sixty years. Maybe time and experience help me shrug off creative failure. It may help new artists if they know that even the masters made mistakes at every stage of their creative careers.  I can recall digging clay from a ditch, fashioning a teacup by hand and air drying it, as a child. The pot, was strong for an unfired raw clay pot and I adored it, felt intense pride in it and then when I dared to lift it by its handle the inevitable happened and it broke.  I felt intense disappointment.  

I am wondering, if it was my mother who first said to me with a smile, ‘Do not cry over broken pots’?

I am not one for saying, “hold back tears”. Tears can be healing, great therapy. All I am saying is, “to LOVE your creativity but don’t wreck your life with obsession over it, keep a balance of a healthy mind and body along with your joy in being a creative person”.

 

Third night at this painting and I followed, my 'more look than put rule and I didn't begin the painting until late in the evening, when i was sure of 'what it NEEDED'.

At this stage I worked with a fine signature brush and I mixed a dark violet with dark orange and I increased the darks within the rose. I mixed Titanium white and lemon yellow increasing the lights on the outer edges of the rose petals, I also dragged the paint on the brush over the the face of the bear to try to give the impression of some fabric tecture, an indication that this was a calico bear. similar dry brush work was used to try to indicate a suggestion of a knitted top on the bear..

I know I could easily work on the painting for another week, adding detail, but would it be better or just stiffer and more perfect?    When I asked the painting, 'What more does it need, (see the previous post), rather than asking, 'what more can I do', I didn't hear it tell me anything.

I will reproduce this painting with a motivational quote as a small business card size fridge magnet for sale at A$4.00, including postage within Australia.

If you have any suggestions for a quote that you think would suit this image (not too wordy), I would love to hear it. 
Cheers, and happy creating,

Kathy

I began with this wonderful, photo of two Clydesdales, showing amazing personality in thier expressions. The secret of a good paining is not in the artist's skill but in an amazing subject. Every painting should tell a story and the subject lent itself imagining what this pair of horses might have been saying to each other.  My friends and I had fun choosing captions for the art work prints.
I am working with Maimari Puro Artists Oil Paint, and an archival quality stretched canvas and using artist quality, round, Chungking, hog hair brushes, size 2 8 and 12, one synthetic, rigger brush, size 1 and one 000 sable signature brush/ I use a disposable palette..

Because I am needing to enlarge the image from a small photo, I very carefully draft it as a line drawing on to my canvas using a soft charcoal stick which will dust away as I work.  I only use this technique if I am enlarging, I normally work without a preliminary drawing when painting sight size.

I planned every aspect of the painting, before I began, especially the colour harmony,  I chose a split opposite colour harmony of red orange, yellow orange and the opposite colour to orange a blue.  I put out on my pallet, low and high chroma (colour intensity)versions of these colours and light and dark tonal values (light and shade, versions of them plus Titanium white.  I did not use black from a tube but achieved a tone as dark as black by mixing a dark orange (Burnt Sienna) and a dark blue (Ultramarine dark), together so they muted out each others colour, leaving only a dark no colour as dark as black.  You are only able to achieve tones as dark as black when you work with the worlds best oil artist quality oil paints with high concentration of pigments and little or no bulking fillers.  Student grade oil paints contain a lot of filler and oils and little pigment (colour) density, if using these you would have to resort to the rather flat, bland, black where you need intense darks and expect the darks to eventually fade, if using student grade paint, as the oils eventually yellow and alter the pigment colour.

 

With my darkest and lightest tones blocked in, I begin to mix all my medium dark, medium and medium light tones

I do more detailing and subtly draw the viewers's eye to the focal point and strive using good composition and reduced contrast of light and shade on the outer corners, to stop the viewers eye going out of the painting.  Can you see how I have blurred the fence post on the lower left hand side of the painting?  It merges with the background, visible, but not hard edged, It is viewable but it does not draw the eye away from the main focal points which is not the horses themselves but the interaction in expression and pose of the horses.  I feel as if they are in conversation and it’s somewhat a cheeky private in nature one at thatJ.  These horses make me smile.  I love this painting and enjoyed working on it and sharing my how I painted it steps with you.

I am available to assist you with your paintings through private tuition, on line or in my studio for a tuition fee.

The completed painting of Rosco and Rusty the delinquent clydesdales, below.

The images of my art works are copyright, contact me to purchase originals and print images and please respect my free lessons, learn from me all you like, but do not copy. Thank you :-).

Happy creativityJ.

Kathy Shell xxx 

I received a great commission and some original photo material from Tracey, at the  the Heavy Horse Stables to complete some original art works using images of thier Clydesdale's and to reproduce these into art print form. See my art cards, art postcards and art fridge magnets pages above for the links through to my art print stores.

I had such fun painting this pair of personality plus, Clydesdale and the painting lent itself so well to print reproduction, I used it to make large and small fridge magnets, car size magnets, caps T shirts, pens, key rings, gift cards and larger folded cards with envelopes, small and large postcards and small and large size prints. 

The original oil painting is 12" x 16" in artist quality oil paints on stretched canvas and is now available for viewing and purchase.