My Art Journey

Chat Session 4.

The Early Days

Hello again, today I am continuing my story as started in my last blog, ‘About Me’. This is more about how I first started painting.

After retiring from many years of work I found it difficult to settle and become used to being at home. For me that meant quite a bit more Television time than was ideal. In that process I found a painting program that gave me the initiative to try something very new and different. To me that is. The choice was Watercolours.

After getting some cheap basic materials and following along with the artists lessons, I found myself thinking ‘I can do this’, so I went shopping, this time in an art store to get better quality art materials , and so started my journey into the world of becoming an artist. I practiced daily with many disastrous results, and a few ok ones, not good and certainly not great.

Painting looks easy enough when you are watching video, but let me tell you in the beginning it wasn’t and isn’t. It involves practice, (like most things) a lot of hard work, making, and learning from mistakes.

Learning about ‘colour mixing’, different techniques, and all sorts of things. For one thing, I learnt that if you mix too many colours together, you get mud! Yes that’s right, mud. I soon learnt how to get clean colours and also, mostly the ones that I wanted. These days I do a lot better with my colour mixing, and my clients would be very grateful for that.

As I moved on becoming more used to the process I started to improve.

After three years, self taught, using watercolour, and a lot of practice, I was starting to see worthwhile results, however, some things had me stumped. So I decided to get some professional tutoring and see what else I needed to know.

I found Mr John Ford, (noted Marine Artist F.A.S.M.A,) in Port Adelaide and studied under his tutelage for several years. His encouragement, and advice, has given me the confidence and extra knowledge that I needed, to be consistently producing quality paintings, that I am delighted to say I am very happy with today.

Anyway, where was I…… oh yes,

Then Perspective came along. Oh boy, that thing is everywhere! Not just buildings and landscapes, but in flowers and animals too. Who would have thought (chuckle)!

Size, proportion and ‘perspective’ do matter!

 It is so, so important. If perspective is off, your whole piece is off, that’s it, ruined.     If the balance is wrong, or something just doesn’t look right, this will be size or proportion, and they can ruin your day too. It doesn’t matter when you notice these things, the main thing is that you set about correcting them.

The painting on the right– has good perspective and is well balanced, imagine what it would look like if the grapes were taller than the glass. Oh my….. disastrous.

And in the end, it is so rewarding when I create a piece of art that is not only beautiful, but that I am also very happy with.

I am very passionate about my art, and put all my effort into getting it just right, so I hope you enjoy it as much as I do creating it.    

Moving forward,

In 2016 I decided to expand my knowledge further and started painting with Acrylics to complement and round out my art portfolio, now I work in both Watercolour and Acrylics. You use a different technique for each of them. So here was another challenge in my art journey. I find it all fascinating, exciting, at times frustrating, and an adventure that I truly love.

My style is generally realistic and I now concentrate my efforts on painting our Australian Native birds. and animals. You will find several flower paintings, and some landscapes in my portfolio which shows a transition in interest over time.

My latest adventure in 2021, is experimenting with Abstracts in acrylics. That is a whole other experience in itself, rather daunting actually, but fun too.

Here is the latest one, finished in May 2023, and looking for its new forever home. I called it- Dark Nights and Deep Seas.

Time to go for this one, and Thank you for joining me.

I will try to get the next one out sooner, meanwhile keep checking in to Dianne Vagg Artist and Chat Session, there are new paintings on the way, Dianne