Painting with Pastel Colours by Therese Vahland

I enjoy painting all sorts of subjects and on all sorts of surfaces, from regular canvases, watercolour paper, wood and tin, furniture and even walls. I have also decorated different flower pots from plastic or ceramic. The more variety the better.

Shades, Colours, Tints

I also like to vary the density of colour used in my paintings. Sometimes I will use pastels shades and other times, very bright colours with lots of vivid colour. 

Pastel Paintings 

These paintings have an 'old world' effect and so are done in pastels.

On wood

On watercolour paper

 Beautiful Australian cockatoos have some more depth of colour for the Australian bush. The white cockatoos stand out from the darker green, giving an overall pastel effect, although the green was quite dark.

 

Australian cockatoos on watercolour paper

Vintage teacup on watercolour paper

This vintage teacup is also on watercolor paper. This has a pastel effect because of the central cup and doiley. However the dark brown gives a depth of colour. This dark colour makes the white stand out. 
Think of using dark and light together, even if you painting has a painting mainly with pastel colours. 

For lots of bright colour, follow me on Instagram @tossyv or on Twitter @Tossyv 

The most important thing to do is pick up your paintbrush and start painting!

Backyard Gardening

I love the old fashioned flowers for my garden. 

They have stood the test of time. 

Old fashioned plants are often drought tolerant, needing little water. They are good at keeping the weeds down. 

They are good at flowering, often repeat flowering.

Flowers are good colour therapy. We plant the flowers that we are attracted to in shape and colour. 

Colour is very important in our lives. 

 Australian hibiscus - Alogoyne, flowers in the summer months.

 Beautiful golden rose.

 

Belladonna lily flowers in summer before the leaves come.

Echiums grow into a big bush. 

They have lovely blue, stately flowers. 

They look just as lovely when the blue flowers fade and the large head is all green. 

I never need to water these flowers. 

This hot pink pelargonium is bright and stunning.

 It flowers for many months. 

It is very drought tolerant.

The Magic of Colour

An Angel in Byzantine art

Colour is Magic

Today we are surrounded by colour, all the colours of the rainbow and all tints and shades of these colours. Primary colours of red, blue and yellow, as well as secondary colours of purple, green and orange are available to us. 

Artists use these colours with joy. I love making my paintings very bright. Others use pastel colours, and still others delete colour and go for black and white. It saddens me that architectural colours for modern houses are charcoal grey. For decades, the insides of houses have been painted cream, but the current colour in Australia is a grey. I find it so boring and lacking in feeling.

The Beginning of Red, Blue and Purple

About 3000 years ago it was not so easy to get colours. People used natural colours of the earth or those they could get from plants or ground rock. 

Only royalty or the very rich were able to use the colours of red, blue or purple because of the expense and difficulty of making the dyes. 

In the book 'Secrets of the Knights Templar, the hidden history of the world's most powerful order' by SJ Hodge, he explains how these colours were made:

'The dyes used in the veil in the Temple (of Solomon) were red, blue and purple. The red was extracted from the blood of beetles and the blue and purple dyes were extracted from sea snails. The dye is believed to have originally have been produced by the ancient Phoenicians (the Phoenicians were a race who lived at the eastern end of the Mediterranean and who became an important society between 900 and 700BCE)

The red, blue and purple dyes were highly valued and Tyrian purple in particular was prized as it did not fade but grew more intense over time, even if exposed to sunlight. Extracted from the glands of particular sea snails that are found in the eastern Mediterranean, it was extremely costly to produce. This meant that few 'ordinary'
people had seen such colours on fabrics, so when they were used in Solomon's temple they were talked about with wonder, as if they were substances acquired by magic or from God.'

(Tyre was an ancient city in Lebanon on the Mediterranean coast.)

Modern Colours

 We are so lucky today that all colours are readily available to us. Fifty years ago, silver and gold were not readily available in paints or pens. Today the new inks have made pens of silver, gold and copper colours available. They are also readily accessible in acrylic paints. 

Irridescent colours adorn birds and beetles. We can add irridescence to our paintings made with acrylics. Paints, pencils, colour and availablity have changes the artworld so that our children and grandchildren cannot even imagine a time without 

RED

BLUE 

&

PURPLE

Backyard Chickens, Heritage Breeds

My Garden Treasures Heritage Chickens

I have been busy in my backyard for eight weeks now. I had an early batch of chickens. In July our hens started to lay. It is the first year we have had a rooster for a while. We hatched him ourselves from an egg less than 12 months ago.

Gold Penciled Plymouth Rock hen and chicks

He is now a very handsome Heritage breed rooster, a Dark Barred Plymouth Rock Bantam. These are very difficult to find. 

Dark Barred Plymouth Rock Rooster

He mated with a pen full of my other heritage breed hens - Rhode Island Reds, Gold Penciled Plymouth Rocks, and Columbian Wyandottes. All bantams. 

The hens and rooster just love hanging around the back door waiting for a handout

I had plenty of eggs so we put them in the incubator, and watched and waited. And out popped some little black chicks.

Eggs and chickens in the incubator

These little balls of fluff have all turned out identical except for their crest. The chicks from the Plymouth Rock and RIR hens have the normal zigzag crest, while those from the Wyandotte hens have the typical flat, broad crest, close to the head.

Very Dark Barred Plymouth Rock cross chicks

The chicks are growing well. Aren't they pretty? Chicks for sale.

I also have another batch by a young mum that hid herself out in the garden and hatched these five chicks. Again, all the same as the first lot. 

Columbian Wyandotte pullet and chicks

Anyone one want to buy some chickens?

This mother and her chicks are for sale too. 

We are in Australia, right down south.

The Sustainable Garden by Bevan Vahland

How to plant a vegetable garden

Follow Chef and gardener, Bevan Vahland as he plants his spring garden with vegetables and fruit trees for summer and autumn harvest.

He had a great harvest last year so we look forward to even more produce this year as his garden space has grown.

Enjoy

(Remember to click Like and Share please)

 

pizza how to make

How would you like to have this guy cooking for you everyday? He makes some delicious food. Follow Bevan on Twitter

Bev_Vahland

@food_to_eat

Practice your Painting

If you want to be a good painter, you must PRACTICE.

It really doesn't matter if it turns out good or bad. It will never get any better until you do it. 

This is the same for anything, whether it is

• being a good cook
• riding a horse or
• playing tennis

Just practice. 

Here's my practice for the day. Without practicing painting you cannot experiment. You often learn wonderful things when you experiment with a paintbrush and paint. 

With this simple oval piece of wood I used a few methods. 

Background  

Painted in black. Dry.

Background Decoration

Painted in blotches of red, green and yellow, all bright colours. I mixed flow medium with the paint and put the paint on fairly thickly. 

Over the top of that I placed a piece of plastic wrap. Yes, the wrap did stick to the paint and it did take some of the paint off. That's why I put it on thickly and kept it moist.  

This left a more muted background. Dry.

Flower

Draw on a simple daisy. Remember, this is only for practice. Paint the petals of the flower white. Let dry they paint again, still white. 

Leaves and Stem 

Paint in a mid green. Dry. 

Drying your Painting

Never put a second layer of paint over a layer of wet paint as the second coat will lift the first coat. Acrylic paint doesn't take long to dry. While one area is drying, paint a different area.

Using paynes grey, add flow medium to it. You only need a teensy bit of each. add shading to the white petals. Let dry and deepen again. 

Decorating  Leaves and Stems

Add commas in a creamy green to the leaves. Touch up the atems with rich gold. Then add shading of paynes grey to the stems again. 

Edging

Add a gold edge to your painting. Mix flow medium to your paint to make it spread more easily.  

Putting the Final Touch to your Painting

Using rich gold mixed with flow medium and a flat brush about 1cm or 1/2 inch, make criss cross patterns all over. Let dry.

Give 2 or 3 coats of varnish to your liking and enjoy.

Painting for sale - by Therese Vahland 

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