Georgina Kuna Botanical

So this show is up, and on for a couple of months. Lovely venue, at Diss Cornhall . Staff are fabulous and friendly as you could wish. The show looks really good, thanks to stirling efforts from the hanging team (thanks lads!). Diss is a really nice place to visit anyway, makes for a great day out - lots of fun stuff up and down the highstreet, plenty of really nice cafes to grab lunch (or treat yourself and go the The Cock Inn . It's a bit out of the centre but the food is really really REALLY excellent). Oh, and in an exciting new development in my return to the artist's life, I'm delivering the Drawing workshop on Sat 1st June. Lots of prepping and practising going on here in readiness for that, and a great opportunity to re-visit some basics - always something to learn from doing that.

Blog posts (in my world anyway) are, apparently, like buses...you wait ages for one and then three come at once. In fact, writing a post immediately brings ideas for other posts to mind. Must try harder, promise I will try to try. Right here and now though, I just wanted to show you the other SBA submission that didn't get selected. It's a biggish piece, on 16.5" x 11.7" paper. I rather like it myself, though it's far from 'perfect' (whatever that is...) It was fun to paint, and I learned a lot. I have so far mostly painted my subjects as I find them - no tweaking or primping, and here that gave me a slightly odd and somewhat comical perspective on the desiccated tip of the main leaf. It's something to bear in mind when composing an image I guess - I very much like the idea of 'veracity', but perhaps not to the detriment of the image in the end. 

Life has been crazy busy so far in 2019. That's my excuse for not blogging much, because excuses for not blogging are as you know my stock-in-trade. But, this busy busy busy has lead to not enough painting. Which is not so good. Good things have been happening (see previous post SQUEEE!!!!). But the painting thing has to happen otherwise, what the hell's going on? So, today I have been belatedly catching up on prepping for this exhibition... Isn't it a beautiful poster? Those colours just SING and absolutely declare spring and sunshine and plants bursting into life and bloom all over the place with absolute and glorious abandon. Gorgeous. And that Botanical Drawing Day in Graphite? That will be me. It feels pretty nerve racking, but I'm also looking forward to it, as it's a really positive move in the right direction for me. I've deliberately picked a small graphite piece to put in the show to support the workshop booking. I'm also fiel

So it's very (very very very!) exciting, as I've had a piece selected for the SBA Plantae open exhibtion!!! I entered two pieces - one small and one largish. The smaller - Quince 'Vranja' - was selected and I am soooo delighted. Here it is, just in case you haven't seen it before. So it's all framed up now (by Fabulous Frames in Norwich who are brilliant), and ready to go up to London. In fact, it's not a totally done deal, they could turn it away at the last minute but that's unlikely as I'm not going to present them with anything unexpected (I don't think!). Gosh. I still feel a bit fizzy every time I think about!!!! That feeling won't go away until the show is over I expect. Here's the info...

A while back I did an online course, it was a nice easy way to re-visit some basics - something that I think always pays dividends. And it has, as since then I have agreed to deliver a day workshop in botanical drawing in the summer. I'm turning my thoughts to prepping for that workshop so I revisited some of things I did on the course. At the time, I was not much taken with this small (life sized) drawing of a wonky little pine cone. But looking at it now after a while away from it, I think it's kind of cute and I rather like it.  There's a really useful lesson here I think, for me at any rate.  Mainly it is that in the moment of making or doing, judging one's own work is not easy. Literally too close to the wood to see the trees. It's always worth tucking a piece away for a while, long enough to get some distance from it. That way you you will be able see it genuinely afresh, without the burden of the labour, or creeping doubts such as imagined failure

New year again. Not going to resolve to keep up the blog in any significant way as such (been there too many times before, pffft!), but am going to share a little bit about my plans for botanical art making over the next year or so. I am, at the very least, nothing if not optimistic (pretty sure I've said that before too... mmmm....less saying, more doing is in order I think). So, here is a little image, which quietly but neatly illustrates the very small beginning of what I hope will be a really fulfilling extended process and project. Without giving too much away - I'll save that for future posts - this is not a 365 project, but it does have a kind of 'whole year' feel about it, so hopefully will result in the production of some really cohesive drawing and painting, plus a bit more blogging than usual as a bonus!