Club Champs

This weekend we have had club champs at College Rifles. I took a few photos of the open competition and Emma Rodgers and Kevin Dennerly-Minturn played, both winning their respective singles as well as combining in the mixed.

Image gathering around Auckland

I've been rumaging around Auckland city looking for unsuspecting people to photograph and buildings of interest. A few weeks ago I found this gem in a pedestrianised street off Queen Street.
It has been made into a pub which sells Belgian beer, which made it even more interesting for me.


I included it in a painting by compositing it onto the edge of a park (urban park 2)
raising it up onto a plinth so that it towers above the figure walking past.

Christmas Day 2007

After a seafood bbq, pavlova and chocolate pudding we were all a bit tired so it was time for photos on the bed.

New website

I am building a new website but it is going slowly as the method I was using to build it has become unusable. That was 'Freewebs' who are also hosting the site. There is a problem there too in that it is too slow to load.

I will find another software means of building and updating the site but in the meantime it is on hold. However once it is going properly it will be called matthewjamescarter.com

Double portrait started

Matthew has been working on big double portrait of Mandy & Desi
have a look at it here:
Paintings

They have gone off travelling now for a week to learn how to surf.

Amanda and Desi arrive in New Zealand

Amanda and Desi arrived in Auckland 7 hours apart from each other on different flights. One at nearly midnight and the other at 7am. Both arrived safely and got over the jet lag very quickly. Here they are with Joe in the Winter Garden in Auckland Domain.

Halloween

Anita bought a pumpkin to carve for Halloween. It was quite difficult to do and resulted in Matthew's assistance. Here is the finished result which is a very friendly pumpkin!

Joe has a hair cut

We decided that Joe looked far too much like Albert Einstein and needed a hair cut. This is Joe before he had his hair cut up a tree in Cornwall Park.

Kotaro

Here is a new painting I've started of Kotaro Suzuki, who is staying with us for some months. He spent a lot of time learning one of Bach's preludes and I thought it would be good to see as a painting.

College Rifles Badminton Hall.
I've got to prepare a speech for the AGM coming up in November and I find the best time to write it is 4 am.

Another sunny day on the roof. The wind didn't get up until about midday when it took me by surprise and knocked the canvas off the easel onto my palette. A few splodges of paint and some swearing later, I secured it again only to have the same thing happen again.
Here is the result of the mornings painting.
I am getting 6 paintings ready for an exhibition which I'm getting a bit anxious about and I want to include this one. I is not quite finished though and the deadline is this weekend!

Another windy and hot day on the roof.

Today wasn't as windy as yesterday, but my canvas still got blown off the easel as soon as my back was turned. How do these 'plein air' painters manage without having to wait for weeks for the perfect day with a clouldless sky and not a breath of wind? Today for example if I saw that the sun had come out, I made my way upstairs but by the time I got set up, a large dark cloud had come over and a shower started! Off I trot with canvas, easel, paints etc inside.

Anyway here are the results of today's painting.

The partition wall is complete and I've gibstopped (filled the holes in the plasterboard) and painted it so it is ready for visitors or another homestay. Here it is from the outside of the room.


and here is Joe helping me build it.

A great windy day for painting on the roof

Today was a hot and windy day for painting on the roof. I have no pictures from today either of the hot windy weather directly or of the painting I have started, so here instead is an old one of a lovely hot day in Coromandel when we were on holiday:

And here's one of the others on the beach when it was not quite so sunny.

I will update you on the progress of the new bedroom tomorrow with some photos. (that is if anyone is watching!!)

Busy week after the flu.

At the beginning of the week I thought I'd had it. I had a bad case of flu' and several days in bed looking at the sky through the bedroom window. When I thought I was getting better I got up and started building another bedroom downstairs in the area where we used to watch tv.
That area we have since vacated as we moved the tv upstairs and we found it just to be a vacant space.


So, here it is semi built. After I got this far I was in bed for 2 days. Anyway, with the use of a nail gun borrowed from Barry Bright, it was up pretty quickly.

Stadt Weimar at Auckland Port

Here is the painting of the ship so far.
I'm trying to create a bright sunny day which is from imagination as when I saw the boat, it was raining so those drawings and photos I took had a completely different look.

New painting of the port

I have started something a bit different. It's come out of the cityscapes and I'm not sure where it is going but here is the drawing. You can just make out the cranes over the container ship.

It is bigger than anything so far and on a large easel which I can pull up and down using a small pulley.

You can see another idea I had underneath. A double portrait of Anita and Myself. I wasn't happy with it so am trying something new.

I've finished the painting of Tom at last. Anita suggested I get rid of the mysterious sheet behind him because it was distracting. so I've done that and kept it simple. I also brightened up the carpet area in front of him to create a pool of light there. I think it is better so I'm going to leave it as it is. You can see it at the Paintings site: www.gallerynewzealand.blogspot.com

I have got into an exhibition called the Original Art Sale at the TelstraClear Pacific Centre http://www.theoriginalartsale.co.nz/
which is happening at the end of August/early September, so I'm getting 6 paintings ready for that.

I've been painting a few oil sketches too. Cityscapes and views from the roof. Yesterday I was up there sheltering from showers which came every half an hour and trying to paint at the same time! One of the sketches is of Devenport and Rangitoto Island which I intend to make up into a big painting. Could be one for the exhibition if it turns out OK.

I thought I'd have a go at a still life because I havn't got anybody new to sit for a portrait. So to keep myself busy I'm doing a big cityscape during the day and this still life during the night.
The cityscapes are on a new blog which you will see at sidebar.

This one is oil on board, size: 24"x24" and shows the first coat on most of it plus a 2nd coat on the brown bottle.
I didn't do an underpaint on this, just a charcoal drawing which I scuffed out and then another charcoal drawing which I was happy with.

update on Tom WIP

It's a bad photo I know but it shows what I need to change in this new painting. That is the right lower leg length which is too long. I should have taken more time at the underpaiting stage.!!