I decided to do a more abstract piece. It was going to be a very simple - just some large areas divided up with curved lines with a few designs on them. But it kind of changed along the way and the simple design got a lot more complex.

The painting is based on my memories of our recent trip to Vietnam. The bottom left is a simple representation of the terraced rice paddies in the northern highlands, with a bold dividing feature from the next section representing the misty highland hills near the south China border. The next sections are based on Hoi An in central Vietnam. We did not go any further south apart from passing through Ho Chi Minh city (Saigon) on the way to Kuala Lumpur.

The second Tararua Sunrise painting is finished. For some reason I struggled a bit with this one, even though it's a relatively simple painting. It was hard to make the colours and the contrasts work.

Although I had thought I would use green ochre for the highlights on the foreground hills, but it just didn't look right. I ended up using a mix of olive green and green ochre for the light shades, and dark brown blended with green ochre for the darker areas.

I'm happy with the end result.

Standing up and shouting Hey look at me! doesn't come easily to me - I'd much rather sit back and let my art speak for itself. But if I want to make a living from my art then I realise I need to get people interested, and that means marketing.

And I really want to make a successful career of my art, so some sacrifices are in order.

The first step was setting up this website, which turned out to be easy and "free" (as in, it doesn't cost anything to have the website, but it takes a bit of effort keeping it up to date, doing blog posts etc.).

A bit of progress today - not as much as I'd hoped, but still should be able to finish it tomorrow barring interruptions.

The outline drawing was a bit fiddly and took a while, then sorting out the colours for the distant hills was difficult. Finally settled on Davy's Grey with a dark brown blended in, and Green Ochre for the highlights.

New Painting

Started a new painting, another Tararua sunrise with a slightly different perspective from the last one.

Pastels

The Vietnamese sampan painting is now called "The Lone Paddler", finished as shown below.

The boat and paddler are done quite precisely as planned, and the reflections on the water go back to the looser style of the background. I think it works as intended - interested to hear any comments?

Yesterday after finishing the Tararua painting I started an outline drawing for another Vietnam painting. Still in Hoi An, a painting of an old man sculling his sampan up the river.

Another painting finished today - "Tararua Sunrise".

The Tararua Range runs between the west coastal plains and the Wairarapa Valley in the lower North Island of NZ. So from the coastal side the sun rises behind the mountains, giving interesting colours and patterns of light and shade. This is what I have tried to capture in this painting.

Finished a new painting today - "The Eyes Have It". First of a series of paintings from our recent trip to Malaysia and Vietnam.

The boats are tourist boats at Hoi An, Vietnam. They are hired by the hour for trips on the river, at prices depending on how desperate they are, or how patient you are and how many owners you are prepared to haggle with. We paid 150,000 dong (about $US7) for a 1 hour trip to the wood carving village on the other side of the river. Of course it's all a tourist trap - they take you around all the wood carving workshops and you have to be pretty determined to escape without buying at least something.

The painting took about a week on and off. The detail on the boats in the background was quite fiddly and took a long time. Also had a bit of trouble with the wharf that the boats are tied up to, in the end I just left it out - believe me it looks much better without it.

Jason

First blog post ever!

I'm not making any promises about how often I'll post. I've seen lots of blogs where regular updates are faithfully promised, only to see them dwindle to nothing after the first half dozen posts.

So, why pastels?

Easiest for me! No messing around with brushes and wet stuff, and waiting for things to dry, or having to hurry to blend things while they are still wet. Just apply the colour direct to the paper, if it's not right, blend or overlay another colour, or brush it off and start again.

As a bonus they are pretty much pure pigment, so you get the clearest and brightest colour with no medium getting in the way.

Of course, the down side is that they always remain delicate, and have to be handled with care, and framed under glass. But I think the benefits outweigh the downsides so I guess pastel will always be my medium of choice.

So to launch my illustrious career, my first group exhibition is "All's Welly and Good", at Artrium Gallery, Tinakori Rd, Wellington. The exhibition runs from 2 to 28 February 2012 and has 14 of my paintings (two sold so far!).

Some other paintings can also be seen at Ngaio Fine Arts, Wellington.

I'll post any future exhibitions here as they arise.

That's all for now.

Jason