Birds in Watercolour Workshop

I am very excited to announce my first workshop in early February! There are only a few places left. I am looking forward to seeing you there!

Australia Wild 2018 Exhibition

Australia Wild 2018  exhibition has been a great success, we had many visitors and it was such a pleasure to meet other artists, share their processes as well as meeting the public and answering all their questions. I was told more than once how my work was an inspiration to some, which I found flattering and I felt very thankful for it.

The Pale-headed Rosella watercolour was awarded the People's Choice Award and all but one of my paintings sold. 

I had lots of fun while demonstrating, here is an unfinished Mulga Parrot.

Thank you to the Queensland Wildlife Artists Society members and volunteers and to all the visitors from the Mt Coot-tha Botanic Gardens.

Upcoming Exhibition: International Nature in Art 2018

I am very excited to present my work during this upcoming exhibition. It is my first exhibition and there will be many other artists from the Queensland Wildlife Artists Society Inc, a society I recently joined as an exhibiting member.

I will be exhibiting eight of my original and framed watercolours and they will be for sale. I will be there at the opening night, see details below, and also on another date in April (to be confirmed) to give a live demonstration.

I hope to see you there!

Follow the link to book for the opening night before the 14th of March.

Botanical Studies, Markets and a Creative Exchange

During the past holiday weeks I decided to start working on some botanical sketches of leaves, just to start looking into the never-ending shades of greens and how to achieve them. I'm finding it very daunting yet fascinating. During the last year or so I started studying colours very thoroughly and in doing so I took out all the colours of my palette that didn't have the features I needed to achieve my goals. I ended up using a rather limited choice of favourite pigments which has been able to provide me with any colour I needed so far. I like keeping it simple to get the best and most varied mixes out of them. It worked, until I started mixing to match those greens... Any thought from the botanical artists who follow this blog will be much appreciated.

I started selling my art at the Bardon Community Market which takes place every Sunday 6am to 1pm in Baroona Road, Paddington, Brisbane. This was my very first time trying to sell at a market so my equipment still needs to be improved, my stall still looks small and rather flimsy, but there is a good choice of small-size prints, original artworks, greeting cards, bookmarks and origami. It has been a very nice and rewarding experience so far to be able to show my work to people outside the Internet and I'm very grateful to all those who stopped to take a look, ask questions, sign up for my newsletter, buy or just to have a chat about the local birds. By the way, there is a family of three Boobook Owls roosting inside the thick foliage of a big tree just in front of my stall, so, for all Brisbane residents who are following my blog, you are very welcome to come and say hi and take a look at those amazing owls. I'm planning to sell at the Bardon Market at least two Sundays a month, depending on the weather.

This is a beautiful sculpture I commissioned to the amazing sculptress/artist Harriet Knibbs, I have been following her blog for a while and I am in awe every time I take a visit. Her life-like sculptures of animals have a special effect on me as they remind me of my childhood, when I used to play and collect small toy figurines of all sorts of animals. Also, I have a soft spot for animal sculpture in general and I always thought that if I ever was to commission somebody a sculpture, that had to be Harriet. So I did, but what we ended up doing was a reciprocal creative commission, I asked her for a Common Pheasant and in turn, she accepted an original painting and asked for a Turtle Dove, which I painted for her with much pleasure. I chose the Common Pheasant because it is a bird I've been fond of for a very long time, and it is part of many good memories. I must admit that I miss not seeing it here in Australia. So there it is now, being a good totem on my desk, watching over my creative endeavours.

Turtle Dove for Harriet Knibbs

On Life-changing Books - part two -

I found this French book of the American bird artist Louis Agassiz Fuertes in a second-hand book stall at the summer Sunday street market in my hometown Porto Recanati. I was a teenager and at that time I had no idea about who this artist was, but I was into watercolours and birds and the book was a good bargain and I could read French. I was surprised to read that he was self-taught and also stricken to see the level of detail and yet expression and movement.

Red-breasted Merganser ©Louis Agassiz Fuertes

At 22, self-taught, Fuertes (1874-1927) was considered the most talented American bird artist of the time. An intimate knowledge of his subjects' lives and behaviours allowed him to truthfully represent birds expressions and attitudes combined with an exact ornithological rendering.

He took part as an artist and illustrator in ornithological expeditions and scientific explorations over USA, Greater Antilles, Mexico, Colombia, and Ethiopia. Definitely an inspiring life.

Killdeer ©Louis Agassiz Fuertes

He used to work from life, patiently and rigorously observing the living bird relying on his prodigious visual memory to flawlessly capture expressions and attitudes, he also worked from dead specimens to take life-size measurements and other details both drawn and written very thoroughly.

I found a beautiful website-archive with many of his paintings and sketches which is really worth a visit, click here, I hope you'll enjoy.

Common Potoo ©Louis Agassiz Fuertes

And this is also the last post for this year, with many more on the way about my latest endeavours, I would like to wish all the readers and followers, regardless of what religion you may follow, if any,  a good time spent with loved ones, and best hopes for the new year to come.

Take care                                     Matteo

On Life-changing Books - part one -

When I was a kid, my mother, knowing about my passion for drawing and nature, got me a book which I regard now as one of those few that propelled me into seeing things in a different way. The book is called 'La natura e' meravigliosa' or 'Nature is Wonderful' in English, but the original Dutch title is 'Een zucht van verwondering', published in 1990. A huge collection of watercolour paintings and drawings, detailed yet as simple and humble as nature can be in her smallest forms: nests, insects, leaves, animals and birds, which all together narrated the events of nature, the changing tides, the migration of birds, the change of season, life between the dunes of sand by the northern seas, and then into the woods and the countryside of the Netherlands. Everything was narrated by a crystal clear text explaining the ways of nature and the interaction with man. I was stricken by the simple beauty of bare pencil and watercolour.

© Marjolein Bastin

After this book I decided I would have become a watercolourist. Marjolein Bastin (1943), the artist behind it, is Dutch, and clearly shows how the closer we look the more we see. Her strong bond with every living being, no matter how small and ordinary, has always been part of her life and has motivated her to start drawing and sharing her discoveries to the world. Worldwide renowned for her illustrations and licensing products, Marjolein Bastin has never stopped looking at things with the curious eyes of a child, capturing the hidden and overlooked beauties of nature, just as she sees them, imperfect, yet beautiful, small, yet no less important.

© Marjolein Bastin

Nature artist, writer, children's author and illustrator, Marjolein Bastin divides her time drawing inspiration from the nature of her homeland, the Netherlands, Missouri, Cayman Island and Switzerland.

Her books are among my most treasured ones, still reminding me to look at things closer to find something more and new and to change my point of view to find a new perspective.

http://www.marjoleinbastin.com/nl

© Marjolein Bastin