Painting: Sheep in morning mist 2

The sky is in and the sun on the hilltops and bush.

Painting: Sheep in morning mist.

I got up early one morning a while ago and drove up into the hills between Tauranga and Rotorua.  Just after the sun had risen, I came upon this dear little valley encircled with bush (the word New Zealanders use for full, four storey, canopied native forest).  The mist had burnt off the sunlit sides and top, but lingered in the valley floor.  A few sheep had climbed up into the sun and were munching on the golden grass, and three or four were still taking their time in the shadows, slowly following a sheep-track along and up the slope.  The shadows of the hills on the right stretched across onto the left hand slope forming two interesting shapes.

Working from photos and water colour sketches I did at the time, I roughed the scene on canvas with pencil...

...then blocked in the main colours with watery acrylics.  I'm not concerned with the detail yet.

May the Force be With Him

Handicapped

Although I've never played golf myself, I grew up very near this beautiful course, some believe the best in the world.  There was a bit of a hoo-ha when it was to be developed as some felt that the view was going to be spoilt.  However other than from a plane, the only way you can see any of this piece of private land is from the bottom of the cliffs at low tide as you make the trek to see the gannets at Cape Kidnappers. So there really can be no grounds for complaint.  I'm sure the select few who come to play have plenty of dosh, some of which gets spent in the Hawkes Bay province.  Probably on wine or restaurant meals.  So someone benefits.  

Gorgeous, innit?

There's more information here.

Apostrophe 'Clumsy Visually'.

__________________________________________________

Date: 31 October 2008 8:43:22 AM

To: "Frances Nelson"

Subject: Re: World Teachers Day

Frances, I feel sure that the words 'World Teachers Day' requires an apostrophe after the S.  Not a good look! 

Kate

______________
On behalf of Frances Nelson, thanks for your email about the e-card sent to you recently. 

You'll be glad to know the subject of the apostrophe has been discussed here well before you raised it.  Teachers' Day is obviously correct, but modern convention (and here we have followed the style of the NZ Teachers Council) accepts dropping the apostrophe.  (See http://www.teacherscouncil.govt.nz/ ).

From a design perspective, the apostrophe is clumsy visually and this meant that we plumped for the "no apostrophe" on the posters and maintained consistency with the other material.
Thanks
Stephanie
********************
Stephanie Mills
Communications Director
NZEI Te Riu Roa
+04 3822 793
027 4486226

NZEI Te Riu Roa - Supporting quality public education

What is Art? Suggestion #1.

Mark Rothko.  Untitled.  1958.

"Art begins when one person, with the object of joining * another or others to himself in one and the same feeling, expresses that feeling by certain external indications. To take the simplest example: a boy, having experienced, let us say, fear on encountering a wolf, relates that encounter; and, in order to evoke in others the feeling he has experienced, describes himself, his condition before the encounter, the surroundings, the woods, his own lightheartedness, and then the wolf's appearance, its movements, the distance between himself and the wolf, etc. All this, if only the boy, when telling the story, again experiences the feelings he had lived through and infects the hearers and compels them to feel what the narrator had experienced is art. If even the boy had not seen a wolf but had frequently been afraid of one, and if, wishing to evoke in others the fear he had felt, he invented an encounter with a wolf and recounted it so as to make his hearers share the feelings he experienced when he feared the world, that also would be art. And just in the same way it is art if a man, having experienced either the fear of suffering or the attraction of enjoyment (whether in reality or in imagination) expresses these feelings on canvas or in marble so that others are infected by them. And it is also art if a man feels or imagines to himself feelings of delight, gladness, sorrow, despair, courage, or despondency and the transition from one to another of these feelings, and expresses these feelings by sounds so that the hearers are infected by them and experience them as they were experienced by the composer."

-Leo Tolstoy 1896

* My emphasis.

Hibiscus

All done and dusted.