Lone Karri - plein air landscape in oil

I headed down to Denmark on Friday to check out The Old Butter Factory.

The premises had operated as an art gallery for years until it closed down about two years ago. It has now re-opened as a cooperative art gallery featuring paintings and sculptures by a handful of Denmark artists. There's some beautiful work on view and you might even catch some sculpting in progress in the downstairs workshop.

If you're in Denmark (Western Australia), check it out.

After visiting the gallery, I took a drive out along Scottsdale Road and several other roads in the area that I just happened to turn down. The region from Denmark to Walpoloe is spectacular - and quite different to any other location in Western Australia.

Large rolling hills are a big part of what makes this area different but on top of this you get majestic karri trees and numerous creek lines. Roads wind their way through the farmlands and there is a lot of potential painting material along the way. The only difficulty is the lack of safe parking (or even standing room) exactly where you want it.

But I did eventually find a spot to park coupled with a view to paint. I wandered around for a while, checking out different vantage points before settling on one looking almost directly into the sun. The farms around here are bounded by mostly-remnant karri forest and most farms have old karris scattered throughout. This tree was set high on a hill, almost as if it was standing guard over the region. It was begging to be painted.

I completely forgot to take a location shot of the finished painting so you'll have to trust me that this is 100% plein air. Here's the painting as it stands.

(Lone Karri. Plein air sketch. 25x30cm oil on board. © Andy Dolphin)

Back in the studio, with the sun no longer threatening my retinas, I can see a few things that need adjusting to enhance and strengthen the overall composition. At the very least, it could use a bit of saturated warmth in the foreground. I may make the adjustments on the painting itself when it's dry enough, or I might use it as reference material for another painting.

Woolorama win!

Correction: The information I posted earlier was apparently incorrect. 

I've just been advised that my painting "Unndiup" has taken out the major prize at this year's Wagin Woolorama art exhibition.

This is a plein air painting of a gravel road near Torbay Inlet on the south coast. You can read a little bit about it at Unndiup: plein air landscape in oil.

  Unndiup. Plein air sketch. 
25x35cm oil on board. © Andy Dolphin
SOLD

I'll be at Woolorama tomorrow to check out the exhibition which has traditionally attracted some beautiful work from artists around the state.

UPDATE:

Here I am with Natala King, coordinator of the Woolorama art exhibition.

Art and scams don't mix!

I received an email today asking about one of the artworks displayed on my old website gallery.

Hi there,
My name is Richard,im from phoenix,was browsing through the internet and my eyes caught this particular work(Emu Beach Path),will like to have it for my new apartment probably this month.please let me know if the piece is available and if yes let me have the detailed price and more information about it. i will be waiting to read from you.
Regards.

The name of the sender on the email is "Richard _ "  (I won't give the full name used as it matches that of an actual artist and I'm certain he has no involvement in this whatsoever). The message repeats the claim that the sender's name is "Richard" - but the email address is mmmoreef@gmail.com which bears no resemblance to the sender's name

Scams of all kinds happen to be one of my pet hobbies, so at no point was I under any illusion that this was a genuine request. I've seen all this before and this one might just as well have had sirens and flashing lights attached because my brain said "ALERT!" before I'd even finished reading the subject line (which was simply "Artwork").

But people do fall for these scams so I've decided to comment on it as we need to shine a light on these things before someone we know is affected. Once you become involved with these criminals, it can be difficult to stop the process and the outcomes can be tragic.

The first thing I did upon receiving this email was to confirm my suspicions by doing a quick search for part of the text. In this case I copied and pasted "was browsing through the internet and my eyes caught this particular work" into Google and, sure enough, the first results are all scam alerts. If that didn't work, I'd try other snippets or the email address (which also works well in this case).

Scammers don't have the time or education to be particularly creative. They don't need to be because it's just a numbers game. They send out thousands of these emails with virtually the same text and often with the same sender name. Even when they change the supposed name of the sender, the email address is usually still the same and still bears no resemblance to the sender's claimed name. It's not particularly sophisticated but they only need one or two people to bite to make the scam worthwhile.

I should point out that the email I received might seem convincing because it actually does name an Emu Beach Path painting that is on my website. But anyone who's ever used mail merge for addressing letters or envelopes will be familiar with how this process works. In short, the computer fills in a blank space using titles selected from different sites for different email recipients. The computer most likely found all the information for the scammer too. The human scammer has likely never seen my website.

My search today not only confirmed that "Richard" is an inveterate and semi-literate scammer but that he seems to have trouble remembering his own name. Other people have received the exact same email offer from someone supposedly called Michael. Although Michael apparently has trouble spelling his own name in his copy, mistakenly calling himself "Micheal", the emails otherwise contain the very same poorly written text and have the same reply email address.

Whoever "they" are, "Richard" and "Michael" are almost certainly involved in a cheque overpayment scam.

So how does this scam work?

• The scammer contacts you and offers to buy something.
• You reply, accept the offer and set a price.
• The scammer might want to organise freight themselves.
• The scammer sends you a cheque for far more than your agreed price.
• The scammer makes an excuse for overpayment.
• The scammer asks you to return the excess funds by money transfer or...
• The scammer asks you to transfer the excess funds to the freight company.
• You refund or forward the overpayment (could be several thousand dollars).
• You send the artwork.
• The original cheque bounces.
• You lose the artwork and several thousand dollars of your own money.

Individual cases may or may not involve a supposed freight company - the freight company is also the scammer by the way - or the overpayment might instead be explained as a mistake. Regardless, there will be some bizarre reason why you now have a cheque for a lot of money and another bizarre excuse for why you need to do something with that excess.

The conversations are likely to be surreal with the scammer explaining how unbelievably hectic their life is and how desperate they are to get this deal done urgently. They might go on to express their delight at dealing with you and their amazement at technology and the internet and sunshine and clouds and whatever else might make them seem sincere. Everything will be incredible and wonderful and you will be the best person in the world as you bring them great joy. They'll probably "bless you" too.

But at some point you will be asked to pay that excess money back.

Now, you could, maybe, cover yourself by doing nothing until the cheque has cleared but you won't win. You're dealing with criminals. At the very least, your own bank might hit you with a bounced cheque fee.

If you receive an offer that you suspect might be a scam you should always do a little "Google research" and if you're still not sure, there are websites like "Stop Art Scams" dedicated to throwing a spotlight on these criminals. And let's not forget that most governments in Australia have some sort of fair trading authority who are there to help with information on scams that are known to be doing the rounds. Some, like WA's ScamNet, even have mailing lists you can sign up to so you can receive regular scam news updates.

One of the simplest rules, it seems to me, is to never send any money to someone, or on behalf of someone, who is supposed to be sending you money.

Oops! I forgot to mention that had "Richard" actually looked at my online gallery, the only place where Emu Beach Path is featured, he would have seen that it was sold. Sorry to disappoint, Richard.

Art Scams

Oil and water don't mix!

Ever since I started painting, I've favoured scenes with sunlight and shadow. I love the hard contrasts of dark against light, warm against cool. And it's not that it makes painting easier, it just happens to be what catches my eye even when I'm not actively seeking out things to paint.

On the one or two occasions where I've painted on overcast days, the results have been less than spectacular.

And yet, I see other artists turn out beautiful paintings on what can best be described as dreary days. Their skies are grey, their landscape is grey, nothing is bright and shiny - but the end results of their efforts are very appealing.

With autumn here and the clouds already rolling in, I decided that this year I was going to push myself to paint outdoors on overcast days. With that in mind, I headed out to the coast yesterday afternoon to see if I could find some grey-day inspiration. I finally found something that looked promising and started to paint.

Ten minutes in, it started to rain. It wasn't cold so I just kept painting.

Here's the palette after about 20 minutes. The painting itself had almost as much water sloshing around on it.

Then it stopped raining for a while, before starting to rain again. "Oh, this is fun", I thought to myself.

It's actually lucky that oil ad water don't mix, otherwise my painting would have little more than a puddle on the shell-grit beach. As it was, the oil repels the water just enough to allow you to keep working. But it was messy and it took a bit of effort to get paint off the palette, onto the brush and then onto the painting.

Anyway, after a little over an hour, I ended up with something that shows promise. Here's the location shot taken just before the next lot of rain arrived.

And here's the finished piece. This quiet little beach offered an interesting shape, a range of textures and colours and some stark tonal contrasts even on this very cloudy day.

 Near Quaranup. 
Plein air sketch. 
30x25cm oil on board. 
© Andy Dolphin
SOLD

I took this photo this morning. If you click to enlarge the pic, you'll see some dried-out rain drops are still there.

So, it's not fantastic but it is something. I'll mess with it a bit and see what I can salvage from it.

Misery in the studio

I liked my little plein air oil study of Misery Beach so much that I decided to do a bigger version in the studio.

I added a few extra colours to the palette for this one just to give me a few more options for playing warms against cools. One downside to a three-colour palette, like I used on the study, is that all colours, whether in light or in shadow, have to be mixed from the same base set. It delivers a level of unity to the finished painting but reduces the opportunity to reinforce contrasts.

So I added a cadmium yellow, cerulean blue and permanent crimson to the original ultramarine, burnt sienna and yellow ochre. The cad yellow would find itself added to most sunlit areas and the crimson gives me wonderfully purplish shadows on the sand.

Here's the main stages the painting went through. You'll notice that I gave the primed board a wash of yellow ochre before I started.

Here's the "finished" piece.

 (Misery Beach Dunes. 48x35cm oil on board. © Andy Dolphin)

I'm not entirely convinced I'm finished with it just yet. Time will tell.

Art at Woolorama

 Wagin's giant ram. Photo from "Nachoman-au", Wikipedia.

If you live in southern Western Australia, or feel like a holiday, you should get to Wagin next weekend, March 8 and 9, for Woolorama.

Wagin is an historic country town situated somewhere left of almost nowhere (depending which direction you're travelling), though not quite as far away as the fabled Black Stump. To be more precise, it's east of Arthur River, south of Narrogin and north of Katanning. (Google map)

Woolorama is Wagin's annual agricultural show which has, as the name implies, a strong focus on woolly things - like sheep. It's on for two days, Friday and Saturday, and is a great day out for the family.

Best of all, Woolorama has an art exhibition, competition and sale and it always attracts art of a high standard of entries from around the state. If you don't care much for sheep, go for the art.

I'll be there on Saturday afternoon. I'll most likely be sitting watching (and listening to) someone playing guitar somewhere. There's always someone playing a guitar.

Maybe I'll see you there. I'll be the guy in the hat.

Seascape painting; Misery

It's not as bad as it sounds...

On Wednesday I headed down to Misery Beach, near Albany. I'm not sure how this gorgeous and secluded little beach got its name but one popular suggestion is that waste products from the nearby whaling station used to wash up here before the facility ceased operations in 1978.

Conditions were mostly overcast when I arrived but the sun did break through in short intervals every ten or fifteen minutes, or so. It was windy too!

It's been a long time since I've set up the easel on beach sand and it's always an interesting challenge. The legs have to be fully extended and pushed into the sand - because they're going to sink in anyway and you don't need that happening while you're painting. And you have to be careful not to get sand into everything when you're doing stuff you normally don't need to think about.

Oh, and don't drop a brush full of paint into the sand. It's a nuisance. I know because I did it. Luckily it was only my rigger so it was easy to clean. If you drop your main brush, you'll almost certainly end up spreading grains of sand across your painting unless you have a large jar of solvent you can rinse it out in.

Anyway, here's the location shot. I had to fold up the easel and lean it against a stair case because the wind was threatening to blow it over if I walked away while it was still set up.

And here's the finished piece with no adjustments or additions made later.

 (Misery Beach. Plein air sketch. 30x25cm oil on board. © Andy Dolphin)

I used a very limited palette for this one to keep things simple. Because of the overcast conditions, I went for ultramarine, burnt sienna and yellow ochre. I chose these colours because the actual scene reminded me of one of the paintings in the "oil painting in different palettes" exercise I did last year.

It was mid-afternoon when I painted this. The key to it, and what attracted my attention, is the shadow being cast half-way down the face of the dune and the way this shadow-highlight line zig-zags into the scene.

One hour earlier that shadow wouldn't have been there at all. One hour later, as I was finishing, the shadow covered the whole face of the dune. Either case might still have offered the opportunity for  a satisfactory painting but each one would have a different feeling.