Landscapes
At the Foot of The Flinders
These paintings are of the area at the foot of the Flinders Ranges near Port Augusta, South Australia.
When I got to the Flinders Ranges I had a beautiful, still, sunny day to drive around and identify possible locations for plein air painting. The next day I spent all morning picking up my canvas and easel, as the wind came roaring down through the ranges. I could not keep anything upright and ended up ensconced in an old wool shed for the duration of my short stay.
These two paintings are memories of the Prom. A magical glade on the walk to Sealers Cover and a burnt out hill top, on the walk from Refuge Cove to Little Oberon.
On the return from my painting holiday we flew over Mildura. I pointed the camera out the window and just snapped randomly. I decided to challenge myself with a detailed artwork, collaging the images together in a way I thought was interesting. (Why do I do this to myself, all those fiddly little bits drive me batty.)
This one was a thought bubble. My vision for this work included a spattering of trees across the canvas, however I had shamefully managed to splash a few pinhead sized blue dots onto my red dirt. They were annoying the hell out of my so I painted the first trees on the pinhead dots, stepped back to have a look and decided I was done; no more trees required
Still into art holidays I wanted to try landscape and headed outback NSW. I wasn’t impressed with anything I had painted, until on the final day, I sat down and painted this, shed ‘en plein air’ (outside). Thankful for one good work and a bit peeved with the trees – my tree tops / foliage was horrendous. My challenge going forward.
I then began to think about painting some of the amazing places I’ve visited in Australia. My landscapes are not literal or photographic representations; I try to capture my response when I first saw the land. Some of my landscapes are painted solely from memory and some I might use a reference photograph.
Medium: Acrylic on canvas
Dimensions: 41 x 50.5 x 2cm (Photograph by Tim Gresham)
Artist: Wendy Tanner © Title: The Bungle Bungles
Medium: Oil on Canvas Dimensions: 76 x 152 x 4cm (Photograph by Tim Gresham)
DImensions: 100 x 150 x 2cm (Photograph by Tim Gresham)
Portraits
Much of my early painting began with portraits / life drawing – start from bottom of this page and work your way back up to here.
After a while I decided I wanted a pair for Carmine, so tried (and failed) to replicate my skin tone recipe and painted “Carmen” from another long pose session. But again that’s OK – the model is a strong vibrant women and I captured that.
Medium: Oil on Canvas
Dimensions: 101 x 76 x 2cm (Photograph by Wendy Tanner)
The Art Room was running a long pose Life Drawing session (6 hours). I decided to use paint and a new recipe for skin tones. However got my recipe badly wrong. So instead of attempting to paint a ‘traditional’ image I had wanted to do, I mentally scrambled for an alternative and just grabbed some chalk to do a high-level outline and winged it from there. Sometimes mistakes work out great (and sometimes not but I don’t take pictures of the stuff ups!) This is one of my favourite paintings.
I enrolled in a two day workshop with Michel Peck. Day one, went home wanting to cry – nothing had worked for me all day. Next day, everything worked and I painted “Carmen”; went home thinking “wow, maybe I actually can paint.”
Medium: Mixed (Oil and Acrylic) on canvas
Dimensions: 101 x 76 x 2cm (Photograph by Tim Gresham)
Subsequently, created another favourite.
(Photograph by Tim Gresham)
After some early classes on learning to work with colour and paint portraits, I painted this chap. It was so much better than my first attempts at portraits and yet there is so much wrong with it, but I love the colour scheme. Still enjoy looking at it.
Medium: Acrylic on canvas
(Photograph by Wendy Tanner)
Follow My Blog
Get new content delivered directly to your inbox.
Wendy Tanner's Art 