Black ink pen on white artist's paper 5x7" and matted ready to frame. Fits the very commonly available standard size 8x10" frame.

All the currently available Meditative Studies are here, including this one from today: 

www.wherefishsing.com/meditativestudies

$20 each, including postage within Australia. OS airmail postage is $5 for 1, $8 for 2, $11 for 3+. Comment SOLD on the photo of the one you want and include a contact email so I can send payment details. 

Persistance pays off. A little bit, every day over a long time has a large effect. Like turning a ship, the effort at first looks insignificant. Over the long haul, a small change in direction, a sustained focus on what you want to achieve, makes a gaping difference.

A week of drawing shells over and over and over paid off yesterday and today.

Black ink pen on white watercolour paper 5x7" and matted ready to frame. Fits the very commonly available standard size 8x10" frame.

All the currently available Meditative Studies are here, including this one from today: 

www.wherefishsing.com/meditativestudies

$20 each, including postage within Australia. OS airmail postage is $5 for 1, $8 for 2, $11 for 3+. Comment SOLD on the photo of the one you want and include a contact email so I can send payment details. 

What to do when you fall off the horse? Get right back on of course. Persistance will get you a long way to where you want to go. 

So you may have noticed a lapse of a few days in this daily drawing project. I sure felt it. As time consuming as this daily project is, it is also incredibly soothing and I could feel the agitation building up as I missed this regular slow-looking time. 

I'm back in the saddle again. This time a little wiser. It seems I need more structure. A daily time to do the daily drawing session. Can do. Alarms set. Mind primed. Today went well.

The point of making mistakes is to learn from them. 

All the currently available Meditative Studies are here, including this one from today: 

www.wherefishsing.com/meditativestudies

 

Black ink pen on white paper 5x7" and matted ready to frame. Fits the commonly available standard size 8x10" frame. $20 each, including postage within Australia. OS airmail postage is $5 for 1, $8 for 2, $11 for 3+. Comment SOLD on the photo of the one you want and include a contact email so I can send payment details. 

In keeping with my plan to get out there and show my art to the world via selected markets over the next year or three, off I went and set up at Coffs Harbourside market last Sunday. It was both a glorious day and the first weekend of the Coffs Harbour International Buskers Festival. 

What an awesomely entertaining day. Right in front of me for around six hours there was performer after performer. I couldn't see much through the crowds, but I got plenty of sound and atmosphere.

And in keeping with my theory that ordinary market days are no good for art sales while those coinciding with festivals or holidays are worthwhile, I am happy to report that it was indeed a worthwhile day.

Next weekend the Buskers Festival continues AND it's a public holiday on the Monday (Labour Day NSW), so I am definitely going to be back at the Harbourside market on Sunday.

In the interest of simplicity, you can now go to one place to find all the currently available Meditative Studies. 

www.wherefishsing.com/meditativestudies

All drawings are currently black ink pen on white paper 5x7" and matted ready to frame. Fits the commonly available standard size 8x10" frame. $20 each, including postage within Australia. OS airmail postage is $5 for 1, $8 for 2, $11 for 3+. 

At the moment this links to a FB photo album. This may change as I experiment with how best to make these available, but the address www.wherefishsing.com/meditativestudies will remain the same. Comment SOLD on the photo of the one you want and include a contact email so I can send payment details.

The drawing session today went well, in a learning sort of a way and I'm quietly hopeful I'll have a new meditative study to show you tomorrow or the next day.

Another day of repetitive drawing, still working on the same few problems and getting close to resolving them all.

Our sleeping water-loving visitor, heralding rain.

A continuation of my theme from yesterday of focusing in on just one thing and getting it right. Another drawing session of repetition. And little by little I can see the results. One step at a time I am banishing errors in my drawings of these pesky shells and figuring out better ways to depict them.

It's a good feeling to see progress between the beginning and end of a session.

Speaking of progress, after two months of dryness, we finally had rain. While my initial tree change was some six years ago now, I have never before lived in a house relying only on tank water. Given that we are in one of the highest rainfall areas of Australia, averaging several metres annually, I was not at all worried. But after two months our rather little water tank was getting low and we switched to all the old Victorian drought-era water saving measures we had to use these past few years. Buckets everywhere to catch all the good unused water. Reduced flushing. Short washing machine cycles.

It's been lovely to see & smell rain again and we had a water-loving visitor as a bonus.

Yesterday was Bellingen community market day. It was a gorgeous sunny day and plenty of people were out and about. However unlike the previous market which coincided with the Bellingen Jazz Festival, this was an ordinary market day.

As it turns out, as far as art at markets goes, this seems to matter.

I have only done a small number of markets so far and it may be too early to make a definitive call on this, but so far there is a crystal clear demarcation between ordinary market days and festival or special market days.

So far, festival or special market days are ten times more successful than ordinary days.

Leading up to christmas I'll continue to test this theory, and after that I think I'll be applying it rigorously. After all, market stalls are a huge amount of effort. While fun, they leave me exhausted. They do have to be worthwhile doing.

Speaking of which, I have come to the decision that on market days it is too much to expect of myself to do a daily drawing. The day is a super early start, filled with dashing busyness and ends in a fog of exhaustion.

So no drawing from yesterday, but a photo of my stall at the market instead.

Water eventually wears through rock.

While watching a documentary on the history of tai chi, there was a section on the Wudang style taught in a monastery in remote mountains where battalions of students are instructed to spend their days endlessly repeating the same few movements until mastery is achieved. Only then is a student allowed to move on to the next move. This reminds me of a Chinese ink painting class I attended, where we spent large chunks of time practising the same basic brushstrokes over and over again, until we (hopefully!) had gotten the hang of them. And it reminds me of learning to write, when as kids we had to endlessly copy letters of the alphabet again and again until we had it right.

There is something to be said for focusing on one task until you have mastered it.

And so I found myself late on Sunday night, tired and knowing that any daily drawing I did would not be something worth putting out in public. The rationalisations to just give it a skip were strong. There are some shells I have been drawing recently that refuse to work. One of them is tricky, the others just require a deftness and delicacy to look compelling that I haven't managed all together in the one drawing.

Given that whatever I was going to draw was unlikely to be great, I devoted the drawing session to endless repetitions of the same shells, and shall continue to do so until they I am satisfied with them.

Listening to an Eckhart Tolle talk last night while nibbling my way through an enormous pile of sewing, I was reminded to really quiet the mind and be still, and how much this helps while drawing. 

I discovered a hedge of jasmine just up the road. The scent at the moment is heavenly. This drawing session began with eyes closed, revelling in the perfume.

At last my pen, fingers and brain are all working together. This despite several interruptions. I like to deeply focus while drawing. These aren't called meditative for the heck of it. The sessions that result in these drawings really are my version of meditating. I find the concentration required 'clears the mind' and leaves me calmer, just like meditation is supposed to do. Except that I find getting into this peaceful zone a lot easier when my fingers and mind are busy that when I try to sit with a mantra or empty my head.

This is the plant that intrigued me from yesterday.

7x5" drawing in an 8x10" mat, ready to frame. Comes with a Certificate of Authenticity. $20 including postage anywhere in Australia. Paypal or bank deposit or cheque. Email me for details.

Another oh so close drawing today. I sat in the dog park and studied a weed with which I am unfamiliar. It is everywhere up here . It has purple flowers and I think it's really pretty scattered all along the roadside. I was told what its common name is but have forgotton. The sight of prolific healthy weeds always make me wonder what resource we could be missing out on. A while ago I did an edible weeds workshop and found that an abundant weed was actually a super nutritious and damned tasty vegetable the ancient Greeks knew as purslane. The Chinese still use it. And now I do too.

So so close but no pic today.

Like any skill, drawing is partly natural talent and a bucketload of practice. As with any fine motor techniques, any time away from regular practice results in a noticeable drop in quality. The good news is that once a skill such as drawing is acquired, even after a break from regular practice, there is only a short ramp up back to the high level you were at prior to taking a break.

This is where I am at. Ramping back up. It was expected. I am drawing my way through it.

An afternoon at the beach after scoping out Port Macquarie Foreshore Market for my own stall seems to have encouraged this study of shells out of my pen.

Like it? $20 including postage anywhere in Australia. It's a 7x5" drawing in an 8x10" mat, ready to frame. Comes with a Certificate of Authenticity. Email me for payment details.

Another day, another drawing. But not for public eyes. I expect there will be many 'failures' in this project. But the point is to do at least one every day. If they aren't worthy of being shown, that's both unfortunate and ok. My focus is on the doing, not the result.

No picture today. I'm not happy with the drawing I did.

The above Meditative Study is available now for $AU20, including post within Australia. Matted and ready to frame in an 8x10" mat. Overseas postage at cost. Big discounts available for FB fans and newsletter subscribers - just let me know if you are one of these. Email your postal details to fi at wherefishsing dot com and I will send payment details (Paypal or direct deposit). All pieces come with a Certificate of Authenticity.

Meditative Studies - all originals, no prints -  $20 including postage within Australia. First in, first served.

For those of you who follow along via my FB page, you will already have been introduced to the Meditative Studies. These are small (5x7") pen on paper drawings of pieces of nature - seeds, grasses, shells, leaves, feathers and the like.

I've enjoyed doing these. You have told me you love seeing them. So I am making them a daily feature. The plan is to post a study here on the blog done that day, every day, for the foreseeable future, except when the drawing is not worthy of being made public. The bad ones are burned. The good ones are made available for sale.

Each piece will be matted and ready to frame in an 8x10" mat. The price will include postage anywhere in Australia. Overseas postage will be at cost. If you sign up for my newsletter or fan my FB page you will be offered significant discounts. All pieces come with a Certificate of Authenticity so when I'm a famous artist you have proof you own an original. Speaking of which, these will all be one-off originals, not prints.

All sales will be made here from the blog. I may experiment with the method but this is the location from which the Meditative Studies will be available.

The above Meditative Study is available now for $AU20. Big discounts available for FB fans and newsletter subscribers - just let me know if you are. Email your postal details to fi at wherefishsing dot com and I will send payment details (Paypal or direct deposit). Nice and simple.

Artist inspiration and artist influences. No biographies, dates or scholarly research here -  this is a  personal response to the work of Warwick Fuller by Australian artist Fiona Morgan.

Cobar Overture

I once met a high end art industry valuer and auctioneer who was of the strong opinion that the last thing Australia needs is another landscape artist. Perhaps. I hope he meant we don't need any more mediocre landscape artists, but I suspect not. If that attitude was taken to heart by artists, then we would not have the work of Warwick Fuller to admire and enjoy.

Shark Bay Headland

We were visiting Broken Hill and curiously doing the rounds of the many art galleries in that small town in the middle of nowhere in the desert. It's the same trip that I got to see Pro Hart's work. Although there is a plethora of art and galleries in Broken Hill, the art is mostly appalling and made to make a quick buck out of tourists. So we'd dropped into yet another gallery and were mooching about when we saw a painting that jumped off the wall at us with life.

Sketch for Cliff Top, Sublime Point

Sofala Shed

Great paintings have presence.

The brushwork was incredible. I mean virtuosic. The vitality of the painting was breathtaking. We had stumbled across a Warwick Fuller landscape.

Spinifex in Morning Light

Spring on the Peel River

I've since seen many more of his works in person and gathered several catalogues of his paintings. And generally, the brushwork is always incredible. It's a hallmark of his work. It's a trait I admire and want to work towards mastering. These are emphatically paintings, not images.

Coastline Patonga

Grazing in the Valley

Warwick Fuller is a also painter of light and mood. To me his work continues on from the Australian Impressionists like Arthur Streeton and Tom Roberts.

Rugged Gulley Bathed in Light

Sun on an Overcast Day

It's all about light, light, light. Australian light and Australian colour. I think he captures it beautifully. The colours are absolutely superb. I'm quite a fan of the colour of the Australian bush. It's subtle and unique and I think we should celebrate what we have. We're not Europe or America here. Our light and plants are different, and fantastic.

Shadows Cast, Mt Nameless

Meet the artist - Warwick Fuller demonstrates and chats about his painting while out on a camping and painting tour. Yet another landscape artist I like...

More Warwick Fuller links

Official site: http://www.warwickfuller.com/
Represented by: Katoomba Fine Art
YouTube channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/warwickfuller

The Creative Cauldron series of posts explores and showcases the visual styles, techniques, attitudes, ideas, artists and paintings that have had the most impact on me. 

The rest of the series is accessible via the Creative Cauldron page. Have a meander if you please, and remember to check out my artworks on Flickr, and have an insider peek at life as an artist on Facebook.