I've embarked on an Art and Creativity course at The Learning Connexion. I was fortunate enough to have my work assessed and to be admitted direct to the honours diploma course. This will be two years of part time study, which I am undertaking via distance delivery.

It's very much self directed, which will require a lot of self motivation and dedication. But its something I very much want to do, so I can't imagine that being a problem.

Three more paintings completed.

Pukerua Bay Sunrise is another pretty cliché subject, but was an attempt to capture the colours of early morning and get more practice at graduated colour washes. I mixed up the colours for each corner, then a mid range between each corner at top and bottom. I painted the background over the whole canvas, blending the colours as I went.

I've done three more acrylic paintings since my last piece shown here. The first is based on photos I took at Raglan when I was up there flying my model gliders earlier this year.

The second is a minimalist abstract. The canvas is painted black, with a red line near the top. The "black" paint is actually mixed from blue, red and yellow, and took four coats to achieve a good coverage.

The third started off with using up leftover paint, just creating broad strokes across the canvas, blending as I went. Once the background was finished it seemed to need a subject, so I included the petrel in silhouette. A bit of a cliché subject, but I quite like it.

See images of these pictures after the break. I've also added an "Acrylic" page to the website.

The last couple of weeks have been really busy, with 23 pictures to frame, mostly for my participation in the upcoming "By Land or By Sea" exhibition at Artrium Gallery.

The exhibition opening is on Thursday 6 June from 5:30 to 8:30 pm - please call in if you are in the area. There will be wine and snacks, and some great pictures to look at (and buy if you're so inclined).

I've heard it said that artists are never completely happy with the final result of their efforts, and I think it must be true in my case at least. I find when I've "finished" a painting there's always something that I think could have been done a little better. But I also know that you can "fix" something worse than it was before, so you have to stop somewhere.

As of this week I'll be working as a fire engineer for 2 to 3 days a week. This will cut into the painting time, but will bring in some much needed cash!

I've finished another acrylic painting, see below. It is of the west coast just north of Raglan.

I'm very pleased to report that the two paintings I submitted for the Peters Doig Marlborough art awards have been selected for the competition. The two paintings are "The Eyes Have It" and "Napier Headland", both of which can be seen on the Pastel page.

The exhibition opens on Saturday 19th May from 6 to 8 pm, and runs to 17th June, at the Yealands Estate Marlborough Gallery, 204 High St, Blenheim.

Last week I went to see the "Degas to Dali" exhibition of works from the National Galleries of Scotland. It's interesting to see paintings by the so-called "Masters", and I guess at the time they were done they were fairly radical and daring. But to be honest I found it to be fairly unexciting.

A major difference between acrylics and pastel is the time it takes. I've just finished the acrylic painting shown below and it took me close to three full days to do this. Maybe it will be faster when I get more used to the medium - it's still taking me quite a while to mix up the colours I need.

Acrylic

Continuing the exploration of acrylic paints, I did the painting shown below of the hill across the valley from my house. This one went a lot better than the last one. It's on a new canvas, rather than recycled like the previous. The paint seemed to flow onto the canvas much more easily, and I think I'm starting to get the hang of blending.