Joie de painting

Hello (maybe) arty (probably) bloggy (pretty sure you’re) humans (no offence to any other reading sentients or entities, all welcome)!

Firstly, I will give you a link to gouache at artslice which simply explains the difference between gouache and watercolours, and has a nice photo.

I am working on painting some prints. It is so lovely painting yellow, cadmium yellow to be exact (yummy-doodles). The smooth stroke of the brush and the colour materialises like liquid shiny sunshine. I just got the feeling to tell you that; in reality all of the colours give me a buzz, and when you put them next to each other…glee!

I was sorting out some prints and in doing so realised how many times I had printed “Joy Riding” in order to get the 9 that printed cleanly and blackly enough to be an edition. I counted them: 11 + the 9 good ones, + 3 APs (Artists Proofs – trials of progressing prints, in this case used to trial colours), so that’s 23. Crikey, it is a good thing I changed my mind from wanting to do an edition of 15!

I have changed track with Joy Dancing Within, remember her? I have been to-ing and fro-ing with the colour plan. The colour schemes (“stories” in fashion lingo) were originally to try to get the dress to stand out and contrast with the background. Now I am taking another tack, and intergrating the whole thing with lots of different greens, and maybe a sunny yellow background(!).

Quote of the day (attributed to Madonna): “The best thing about getting older is getting smarter”.

Keep your glass half full,
Meg

3 Thank-yous

Hi Bloggie-Cohorts,

Three things I am grateful for, right now:

  1. Bokashi compost. First batch dug into garden today. Will let you know in about a month how this develops
  2. The sewerage system. I am so grateful that I don’t have to process my own by-products, although I would love to be able to be responsible like that one day. Like, having a composting toilet or something
  3. The Council takes away our rubbish. I would be wading through it otherwise. I do my best with putting out recycling, doing composting, and throwing away the least that I can, but really, the garbage men keep the place livable still

Stay green, but not mean.
Meg

Stilt walking like a baby

Hello Bloggy Beauties!

I felt like a young foal or a small child might today: The joy of being able to walk around unaided! I was learning to balance and perambulate on stilts. It was SO FUN! At first I had forgotten from last week how to move (knees up and keep moving!) but then I could again, and soon I could without holding anyone or anything! I had arrived at class a bit rattled from a few things that happened today (I will spare you the minutae of that) but by the end of class I was stilt walking with head held high. I guess I was so young when I learned to walk that I don’t consciously remember that joy, so it was kind of nice to experience that excitement as an adult.

Encouragingly, after a week of over-indulgence in chocolate, someone healthy said to me “…there’s no such thing as too much chocolate” which lessened my guilt a bit! My re-vamped plan is to eat healthily and balanced and include good quality chocolate (dark). I am starting to suspect that the guilt/self-beration weighs heavier and does more damage than chocky.

Last night we had a trial run of the projector-generator-trike set-up for the Moving Image walks in SALA. It looks like it’s all going to work very well.

Take care of you. Fly your freak flag.
Meg

Sunny and musical weekend

Dear fabulous blog readers,

Hope you have had a good weekend.
I was lucky to have the LiveTown music night, a visit to a cool energy-efficient farm and also my dental work went well. Friends bought some of my new cards, and gave encouraging feedback, which was lovely.

I will give you the link when my LiveTown review blog post goes up. (Just need to add picture/s)

Have a great week, you guys,
Meg

Filling in the day

The bottom right quarter of my face is off-line right now, as I have just had a dental filling. I am consoled by the fact that I have begun to learn to walk on stilts, and that later it’s LiveTown.

Take care of you,
Meg

Tired but techie-chick-fabulous!

Hey dear readers!

9 minutes til midnight, and I have just uploaded my new tangerine epiphany card sales web page with e-junkie buttons, and cart, and the card designs I have available! Go take a look if you like, I’ll wait here.

I am quite chuffed with myself cos I had to troubleshoot the server trying to keep an old copy (with old buttons etc and no link to card page), and I built the buttons in Flash. My next task is to put links into the text so the google spider robots can see them, as with the buttons being within a flash file they wont be able to read them.

I feel like singing the praises of the (also fabulous) e-junkie. It’s like the egg whites in a pavlova, almost magical!

Hope you have a fabulous day (or night depending on your location),
Thanks for your visit,
Meg

Sunshine on a windy, rainy day

Hello bright and fabulous blog readers!

Despite the sunlight, it’s icy-cold and windy (and now rainy) here, great weather to stay inside and blog!

The card idea is coming along nicely. I now have clear cellophane bags, stickers for the back (“ephemera by tangerine meg”) and the cards and envelopes look great (I think) in bright colours. I’ll show you:


That E-junkie system is so straightforward, and so comprehensive and works so well that now I have buttons and a shopping cart to make things easy for anyone. Soon to be uploaded. Will let you know, and give you the link.

I think I will take some cards to LiveTown music event tomorrow night. Hope to see you there Adelaide and Hills readers!

There have been 1,087 hits to this site as of now. Thanks for making that happen.

Take good care of yourselves,
Meg

Ducks, Art cards, bokashi (that's more of a tag list than a title!)

Hi guys! Hope you have had a good weekend.

The ducks at the “duck park” have been looking so content lately, with plenty of water in the ponds to keep them happy. And the gardens are getting green and recovering from our heat wave/drought. There’s a lot of talk and time and money going into rainwater tanks around here, though.

This weekend I have been to “Officeworks” to the Print department, and got colour photocopies of some of my prints and paintings to make cards. They colour (my main criteria) is very bright and clear, and they came up well, small, on shiny paper. I also bought nice plain white and green card, and some colourful (relatively expensive) envelopes. My next task is to get some spray glue and cellophane bags. Hope to take the cards up to LiveTown event next week.
Oh, and I also found a simple A3 display folder, which should be big enough for most of my print paper sizes (not Joy Dancing Within, but she is on oversized paper), so they can be viewed and handled but kept clean.

My bokashi compost bin is full. So in 2 weeks it will be ready to dig into the garden. I plan on finding a small-growing, self-pollinating almond variety to plant a month later into that bokashi spot, along with a medium-late variety apricot (you may recall me mentioning back in summer I already have a very early fruiting apricot tree).

The orange tree is fruiting and the loquat tree has flowers. The marjoram is healthy as are the 2 new salvias. I got cross at the cat today, that it wasn’t discouraged by the fine netting that was intended to keep them out of the “freshly dug soil” (that’s cat for “nice new toilet”!). I also saw a small caterpillar on the parsley, and a snail having a go at the strawberries, but basically most things seem well and are growing (despite the cold weather and small pest challenges).

Very excited, doing a stilt-walking class this week and next week at Circus school. Can’t wait, will let you know how it goes!

Take care,
Meg

Bad paper, good fruit

Hey there!

Progress today! Remember that lovely watercolour paper I bought last week? Well yesterday I made some prints and today I have done some painting! I have one learning experience to show you (bad result) and one happy construction. OK the bad news first:

example of paint on smooth paper

example of paint on smooth paper

The paper is the same brand and the same weight, but smooth not textured. I did not bother painting any more as the way the paint goes on is so not what I am looking for. It’s kind of a shame, cos the printing ink went on clear and black and lovely.
And the good news…(drum roll) the 3 mandarin design I had carved, is now printed on paper, and painted! Here it is:
bright orange mandarins with sky blue background and rainbow border

bright orange mandarins with sky blue background and rainbow border

The colours look pretty well as I had hoped. The plan for this image is to hand-make some cards, and maybe show on etsy and red bubble (eg. for t-shirts and wall art) as well as do a limited run of originals.
I also finished my SALA animation, it’s all of 80 seconds long! More on that in a couple of weeks.
Be yourself. There’s nobody better qualified.
Meg.

Music, Art and Bokashi happy progress

Hello dear readers,

My bokashi (indoor Japanese compost) buckets are working I believe. They smell sweet, have no insects buzzing around them, and I got my first bokashi juice to use on the weekend. (This may sound strange but was way exciting for me!) To use as fertiliser it’s a teaspoonful per bucket of water and so I watered in my new seedlings with that mix (previously-mentioned herbs plus 3 rainbow chard); also put some neat down the drain to clear it. That appears to have made a difference as well.

New artwork on the way. Have made progress on my SALA animation. It’s called “Bloom where you’re planted” and is a very short simple film to be projected on a specific wall during a Moving Images walking tour (not til August). I will upload to YouTube once it has been screened at the Festival. Also a “Making Of…” could be an even shorter video for YouTube!

New printmaking coming up! I had a lovely time buying new paints, lino and paper last Friday. The potential of the lovely little tubes of colour (and clean big paper, and fresh new lino) is quite uplifting.

Talking of uplifting: Michael Franti and Spearhead on e-Town! Download the podcast, and try to stop yourself from singing, dancing and clapping along while you run, walk or commute!! (It was an encore performance but I hadn’t heard it before). Loved it. Luckily not too populated where I go running!

July LiveTown performers confirmed. Join the mailing list if you want to get email flyers, otherwise subscribe to the blog. (Mostly relevant for Adelaide locals).

Hope you are having a wonderful time,
Meg (the verbose (today))