“Have You Been to New Zealand?”

“Have You Been to New Zealand?”

I have just listened to Marc Maron interview Sir Ian McKellen on Maron’s podcast “WTF”(Episode 621, 20th July 2015).  Here is a snippet of their conversation which I faithfully wrote down in my journal.

Sir Ian McKellen: “Have you been to New Zealand?”

Marc Maron:   “No.”

Sir Ian McKellen: “Oh.  Well if you like living where you do, surrounded by sky and weather, go to New Zealand – because they have more of it.”

Marc Maron:   “It’s beautiful, right?”

Sir Ian McKellen:  “Overwhelmingly beautiful!  As you drive down some of those empty roads and surrounded by rapidly changing scenery; mountains and glaciers and volcanoes, you hear yourself saying I believe in God because this couldn’t just have happened.”

Marc Maron:  “Wow”

Sir Ian McKellen:  “Yes, wonderful!”

This post illustrates Sir Ian McKellen’s point.  I have just returned from New Zealand and here is a selection of photos – all taken on my I-Phone.  Here goes…

View from our apartment in Christchurch.  Beyond the Canterbury plains there is fresh snow on the Southern Alps.

A hill in the suburb of Cashmere, Christchurch, with the Alps in the distance.

New Brighton beach, Christchurch just before dusk.

A selfie of my shadow in the grasses of New Brighton. (Don’t I look nice!?)

Matt and I took two separate trips into the mountains. Here he is at Arthur’s Pass.

New Zealand’s mountain parrot, the kea, at the viaduct lookout above Otira…not minding at all the gales and horizontal snow.

Otira township. This is a railway junction between Christchurch and the West Coast town of Greymouth. It is rather forbidding but I love it.

These engines are waiting for the Transalpine Express train to arrive from Greymouth. They are needed to haul the train up the steep incline to Arthur’s Pass.  (The train goes through a 20 minute tunnel under the mountain – which I always find a bit daunting.)

We stayed at Bealy. Here was the landscape at sunset.

Signpost in the mountains. The river is the Waimakariri which flows to Christchurch.

View from the balcony of our cabin at Bealy.

In the morning Matt and I wandered beside Waimakariri river just below our cabin.  The air and waters were freezing and pristine.

Gazing into a still pool of the Waimakariri river.

Going off road up to Mount White. I do enjoy the exclamation traffic signs in New Zealand. They seem to me to exclaim at the views. “Look at this!” they say.  “Awesome”.

Selfie at Mount White. The Waimakariri is a perfect example of a ‘braided river’. Most of it runs underground.

Cass station – made famous (at least in New Zealand) in a painting called “Cass” by our iconic artist, Rita Angus.

I flew from Christchurch to Wellington and back. This photo illustrates why the Maori called New Zealand Aotearoa – which means land of the long white cloud. Note the alps poking up through the clouds.

A closer view of the Southern Alps as we flew north.

Beautiful blues of Tasman ocean and sky on the return flight.

The township of Kaikoura is below. (The plane was an ATR 72.)

Kaikoura mountains and gorgeous colours in the sea.

Matthew picked me up from Christchurch airport and we drove straight out to Lake Coleridge where we stayed overnight. View from Harper Road. Good old New Zealand SHEEP! (Their coats are much cleaner than Australian sheep.)

Late afternoon at Lake Coleridge. The winter sun in New Zealand sits low in the sky as we are so far south.

Matt and I pushed ourselves on a big walk up Peak Hill. Gosh it was hard work but it made us feel that there is life in us yet.  Here is Lake Coleridge.

The Rakaia river from Peak Hill.

Raikaia River.  (There’s my selfie shadow again.)

After our climb, we drove down another gravel road.  Matthew in front of the Wilberforce river. There is that low winter sun again – and it is only around midday.

We took an off-road detour to get back to Christchurch. Lyndon road is unsealed and takes one past the totally frozen Lake Lyndon.  The dirt road (which was actually mud and ice in places) takes one between Coleridge and Porters Pass.

Lake Lyndon.  Actually, Lyndon Road was closed – as it is a ‘fine weather’ road so we shouldn’t have been there at all.

We don’t EVER see such a thing as a frozen lake in Western Australia, so this was mesmerizing to us.

As we drive back across the Canterbury plains, the mountains receded in my rear view mirror and the sun set behind them. Goodbye New Zealand. See you next time!

Yes.  I have been to New Zealand.

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Amethyst

Amethyst

Amethyst
coloured pencil drawing on Velin BFK Rives paper
290 x 395 mm.
July 2015

Did I say I was going to draw this twice?  I promised I would draw it on two different papers in my last post Spot the Difference.

The idea was to draw the image once on Magnani Pescia (left) and once on Velin BFK Rives (right) so that I could compare results on each.

What came to pass was that I finished the drawing on the Velin BFK Rives.  It was perfect to me; dramatic and full of light.  I loved it – but I couldn’t bear the boredom of completing another version of it on a different kind of paper.  When I had initially written that I was going to do this exercise, one of my friends from Pencil Art Society (Canada), Erica Lindsay Walker, made the following comment, “Doing the same piece twice is something I have never done.  I think I would find it incredibly hard to do as when I finish a piece I am generally drained and have said all I want to say about it”.  Erica’s comment could not have summed up more perfectly my own experience.  I found myself rushing the second version, full of impatience.  That was no way to be so I decided to stop.

There isn’t much point showing you the half-completed work on the Pescia.  I won’t throw it away.  I will put it in a folder and perhaps return to it some time in the future.  In my last post I wrote that I have drawn this piece already, back in 2005.  Here is an image of that decade-old drawing which I called “Lilac Geisha”.

Lilac Geisha
Pencils on Magnani Pescia.
2005

The difference in the colours is mostly because I drew this before I had digital photography equipment.  Therefore the image you see here is from a scan of a photo of the drawing.

The exercise was completely successful even though I didn’t finish it.  What did I learn?  I learned that Velin BFK Rives produces dramatic results.  I do not have to be afraid of this new paper.  I also learned that my own attitude is far more important than which paper I am using.  What I mean is, even though I had my old favourite Pescia paper in front of me, I knew I would not be able to get a good result because I wasn’t having fun any more.  I have to delight in the drawing process, not rush while constantly checking the time.

Artists using coloured pencils who want a sharply photo-realistic finish (and there are many of you) will not want a bar of this paper.  The pencil marks are noticeably more expressive than marks made on a smooth paper.    If you are not after a perfect airbrushed end result and you don’t mind the paper’s tooth showing through, you might want to give it a try.    In using Velin BFK Rives you will go against the coloured pencil fashion of hyper-realism.

Afterword: September 2015.  I DID finally finish the second version on Pescia paper.  Here it is.

Version 2 of “Amethyst” on Magnani Pescia. September 2015.

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Spot the Difference

Spot the Difference

A first for me – drawing the same picture on two different papers; Pescia (left) and Velin BFK Rives (right).  Here they are at undercoat stage.

I have not used my new paper, Velin BFK Rives, very much yet.  After two drawings which succeeded, I fell off my horse (so to speak) with the one below.

Though I may have sounded gung ho in my post about chucking out the drawing “Joy” two weeks ago* the fact is I was winded by my fall and my confidence was bruised.  You know what any riding instructor will say when her student falls off?   “Get back onto your horse at once!”

I couldn’t do it straight away.  I didn’t want to ride my new horse, Velin BFK Rives, any more.  I wanted to go back to my dependable old horse, Pescia.  I was curled up on the ground in misery.  I have two pieces of my old Pescia paper left so decided to just go back and do a drawing on one of the pieces.  I had had enough of messing with new papers.  So I began. It felt so good, smooth and silky.  Ahhh – that’s what I was used to. But using the Pescia didn’t make me happy: quite the reverse.  I was drawing on my old Pescia and grieving at the same time – for this paper which I only had two pieces of.  Gosh I was depressed.  I was IN the comfort zone but it wasn’t going to get me anywhere, was it?!

Then I had the idea.  I still needed to go forward.  The BFK Rives was probably not at fault in my failed drawing “Joy”.  It was a compositional problem.  So rather than blaming the paper (the new horse), why not do this current drawing on Rives as well as Pescia?  I will clearly see how both perform with the identical subject and I will surely learn something.

So this is what I am doing.  After mapping in the under-colours on the two papers, I will complete the Rives drawing before working with the Pescia.  Here is the way the Rives drawing looks so far…(still with most of the geisha to layer).

Work in progress on Velin BFK Rives (detail)

I am enjoying working on the Rives and I feel confident that I CAN work this paper.  It will be fascinating to see the two completed drawings side by side.  Will one be more intense than the other?  Will I be able to get the depth of colour with one that I can achieve in the other?  I will find out – and so will you.

I went right back to a very old photo as source material.  I photographed the image in February 2005 on my old film camera.   I drew it in the same year.  The drawing has not been in my possession for at least six or seven years.  I am not going to look at the photo of my 2005 drawing until I am finished this pair as I don’t want to be influenced by what I did back then.  Finally, when I do check it out, I look forward to seeing if and how my pencil work has changed in a decade.

From feeling hopeless, I am now happy again, sitting astride my new horse and moving forward with her.   “Trot on.”

* The Only Thing I Ever Got From You Was Sorrow is my post a fortnight ago about the failed drawing “Joy”.

Afterword:  September 2015

The finished “Amethyst” on Velin BFK Rives. July 2015.

Version 2 of “Amethyst” on Magnani Pescia. September 2015.

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