Colour Wheels and Portraits

Last week we had another two workshops with New Zealand artist, Graham Braddock. To see our bushmen's huts we did last year, click here.

This year we had two workshops: Confidence with Colour & Fun with Portraits.

In the Confidence with Colour workshop Graham had us draw a colour wheel with a difference - a vase of flowers. Then we added a marrow to demonstrate how to blend different colours together to different effects.

Bethany's colour wheel

Mine (left) and Emily's (right) colour wheels

In the Fun with Portraits workshop, Graham picked a boy & a girl from the audience and led us through drawing a portrait of them. We focussed on getting proportions right before filling in the details.

Bethany's portraits

My portraits

Favourite NZ Nature Study Books

Here are some of our favourite New Zealand nature study books:

The Life-Size Guide to Insects and Other Land Invertebrates of New Zealand and others in the series by Andrew Crowe have life size photos of many common species. This makes it easy for you and your children to identify the nature you find in your own backyard!

Philip Crosbie Morrison's books are lovely too. He was a naturalist and hosted a radio programme back in the 1950s or 60s. The titles we have are called The Junior Naturalist - Nature Talks to Australian & New Zealand Children, published 1966 and Nature Talks to New Zealanders, published 1962. The books have chapters on different nature topics, from "The 'humble' bumble-bee" to "The Immaculate seagull." The books also have lovely illustrations.

We also have some little books by Murdoch Riley, Shrubs & Small Trees, New Zealand Wildlife, and Know your New Zealand Birds. These have lovely illustrations by artist Peter Scaife, who was a customer of ours when we had a picture framing business in the Wairarapa. Great little books for learning and identifying common NZ species.

We have also enjoyed The Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady. Although it is English, it still has beautiful illustrations of many of our common plants & birds. We also refer to our copy of Handbook of Nature Study by Anna Botsford Comstock often.

New Zealand Nature Alphabet

I have been inspired by Geninne's watercolour alphabet here so I tried my own New Zealand version. Here it is:

Art with Graham BraddockArt

We've had quite an arty time lately. Having been sick in the holidays and with the cold weather, we were stuck inside and the girls were getting quite bored. So we've been trying a few art projects.

A couple of months ago we had a workshop at church with Graham Braddock. He is a Christian New Zealand artist. He took us through all the steps of drawing a bushman's hut, using a photo set in the great Kauri forests in the Far North of New Zealand. We got our drawings out and coloured them with watercolour pencils. I will have a go at uploading some pictures.

These are the originals we did on the day, first with pencil then with a marker pen. Top to bottom are Bethany's (8 yrs), Emily's (7 yrs) and mine.

A few weeks later we coloured them with water colour pencils. Again from top to bottom are Bethany's, Emily's & mine.