This weekend is Central Coast Grammar School‘s Spring fair and Art show.

I was excited to be invited to exhibit this year, I have 4 coloured pencil artworks in the exhibition this is my first time in this exhibition so I am looking forward to visiting all the artworks on opening night and seeing some fabulous art.

“An exhibition of work featuring painting,
drawing, sculpture, photography, mixed
media, glassware and jewellery, by prominent
artists from the Central Coast, Sydney,
Newcastle and Wollongong. All works
are for sale and general admission is free.”

The art exhibition is open from 3-5th Saturday and Sunday,  Carlton Road, Erina Heights.

Please visit the Grammar Schools Website for more information.

Anyone for pencils ? June 2^nd Workshop 2010

Last Wednesday we had a really great coloured pencil workshop.

I covered an Introduction to Coloured Pencils,  which means my participants got to colour in a bunch of boxes and circles. – hehehe
In this introduction workshop I  try to cover important things when starting out in coloured pencil art covering things like paper, pencils other coloured pencil artists going onto things like strokes, blending techniques,  mixing colours etc. Participants don’t walk away with a completed piece but i hope they come away with some ideas and new ways of working and a understanding about how coloured pencil artworks come together.

It was really good, i had a great time, i am really enjoying the teaching process in these workshops, and its so exciting for me to see other artists getting excited by all they could create with their pencils.

In the next workshop which will be on the 16^th June,  I hope to get into some of the more advanced techniques maybe getting students to work on a section of a picture to get a feel for mixing colours, planning an artwork, perhaps getting to experiment with some other supports.

June 2010 Coloured Pencil Workshop

In conjunction with the CCAS (Central Coast Art Society), my workshops for the society are coming up on June 2nd & 16th 2010.

These workshops are some of the very few colouredpencil workshops using dry pencils happening in Australia and I am excited to providing these again, I hope some local coloured pencil artists and artists wanting to find out more information will come along and have a great morning of pencils.
Last year I was so inspired to have such a lovely group of people from all levels and teach them all about pencils and its been fantastic to see some of these artists exhibiting coloured pencil artworks following this workshop in both CCAS and various Sydney exhibitions.

This year I want to again try to cater to both artists who have had no coloured pencil experience as well as those who came last year so depending on how many we have of both on the day see how we go.  I will try to specify that if you are a beginner please try to come to the first workshop as I will cover beginner techniques specifically on that day.

I will also try to have some supplies for sale on the day such as stonehenge paper and some polychromos and prismacolour pencils. One reason being that you as can’t get prismacolors up here on the coast. If anyone is at all interested in purchasing anything else let me know ASAP so i can cater for it. I was considering perhaps purchasing some Zest-It as there were many people interested in this last year– anyone?

Time: 9:30am to 12:30pm

Location: Gosford Art Gallery – the Studios
32 Web St, EastGosford NSW

Cost: $10- Including Morning Tea

Date 2nd June 2010 – Introduction to Coloured Pencils

This workshop will be covering an introduction to using coloured pencils. We will cover different coloured pencil materials, artists, techniques, supports, skills and process used in creating coloured pencil artworks. In this workshop you will come away with an understanding more about working with coloured pencils as medium as well as being exposed to the basics in creating coloured pencil artworks.

Date 16th June 2010 – Continuing on with Coloured Pencil Artworks

This workshop is where we will go beyond the basics working with complimentary colours, planning an artwork more advanced blending techniques.
I will demonstrate my processes with various supports for different effects and speeding up work time. From this workshop participates will gain exposure to different ways of working with pencils used in completing a coloured pencil artwork.

Reference materials and photos will be supplied on both days, however if you have something specific you wish to work on please bring it along.

Materials: As a guide it is best to use quality artists pencils and good quality paper for pencil work or you will be frustrated with the results.
So please bring along:  Stonehenge paper - can be bought in large sheets at Eckersleys (cut down into more manageable sizes)  or bring along your best drawing paper.
Pencils: Either Prismacolour or polychromos pencils in at least 3 values of the 1 colour of your choice eg. light blue, medium blue & dark blue & white pencil.
Cotton buds for blending and makeup pads if desired.

I will have materials available for artists to “try” on the day and I will have a small supply of papers and pencils to purchase if you wish but not required.

You don’t have to be a member to enjoy the society so there is no excuse hope to see you there!

“Red Onions” by Belinda Lindhardt

I saw these glorious red onions at the vegetable shop still attached to their green bits   It’s rare that you see these like this and thought how great they would be to paint – I think I might be a bit strange to be inspired by fruit and vegetables…

Today, I thought I would write a little about life, and why I have been MIA of late.

The reasons for not posting anything much, is mainly for 3 reasons:

1. I have felt like I haven’t much to say, I have felt drained not able to “give” to anything other than one foot in front of the other.
2. I am at a point in my artwork and business where I need to sort out direction, so I feel like I need to work out where to lie my energies.
3. In trying to work out where my direction is, I have been trying not to analyse so much and just DO some artwork work just for the fun of it hoping that eventually I will find out where I want to go.  To be honest I have felt that my time was better spent just doing IT rather than talking about it.

So, as I write this blog post I am not sure I am any further in finding my direction workwise but thanks to some help (yes OMG I had to ask some people for help in a few areas that has been very stressful), I now feel like I have some energy back to at least give back a little and cope a little better.

Why am I telling you all this and why do you really care?

I am not sure to be honest, in one way it makes me feel better (yes being completely selfish here) but ALSO I am sure that I am not the only person to feel this way from time to time and if this is YOU, after reading this, I hope you can come away with the feeling that your not alone, take some time for yourself (AS LONG AS YOU NEED) and if you need to talk about it with friends and family YOU are worth it (and if that is hard for you) do it for those who love you. If that is difficult send me an email, I happy to help, completely non-judgmental and I have a bunch of links that might help !

Artwise I have been forcing myself to forget  about creating a specific or completed artwork, and have tried to get back to  experimenting.

This little ducky I wouldn’t even imagine to attempt to claim ownership of, I saw her in a book my eldest brought home from school which I just loved.  I thought she was so cute just wanted to have an experiment with textures  / colour rather than “thinking” about what to actually draw or concentrating on creating something specific so I just drew her.
The rose above is unfinished as yet, having fun with watercolour, not my usual medium wanted to do something with it for a while and experimenting with watercolour and coloured pencil to speed things up.

Anywho, that’s it for me for now, I have a weekend to myself this weekend and a 4th birthday party to prepare for and thats just about 1/100th of what is on my list, but trying to ignore all that for now taking this as my stress relief for the week ahead.

Take care.

One of my hurdles for 2009 (and past years) has been trying to find direction for myself personally and my business.

It’s taken me around 3 years, and i still don’t think i am quite there yet. To be perfectly honest I  would never have thought it would be such a long process, everyone else seems to have found their direction did it really take them that long ?? Or maybe my direction changed so I had to re-discover that which others have developed over their lifetime? Maybe that’s’ it? Or maybe its just that I never really gave it much thought and thought I would just figure it out as I went along ?

Whatever the answer is, I have come to realize that having a purpose is the core to everything else that I do and such an important thing to find out about myself. It feels like now, rather than  jumping from place to place, “going with the flow” and feeling unsettled everything now just seems to falls into place in many various areas of my life.
If you are at crossroads in your life OR business, I definitely that you MAKE time to work through these issues. Once your focus, purpose, direction (whatever you wish to call it) is established, it will drive you, fulfill you and very importantly you will recognize when you are spending time, money on things that are not important.

So how do you / I do it ?

There is not one specific thing that has helped me like anything worth doing you have to do the hard yards and there is no magic bullet. However, here are 3 tips I can offer that have certainly helped me:

Trust your instinct and gut, if you are not getting passionate, enjoying or getting excited about things in your life: whether that is a task or project or event/person: listen to this and trust THIS.If you have a feeling there is something “off” with it or you simply don’t want to do it or put it off..
This is YOU telling YOU  that it’s something that needs to be looked at.

I am not saying that you ALWAYS have to be or can be doing what you love because that is not reality but maybe there is a way you can change what your doing. Maybe could can streamline the way your doing it, get your kids to help so its a task you can all do together, pass it onto someone else, or decide that you will no longer take on any more projects of that nature. YOU can decide if you let yourself!

Just the same if there is something that DOES excite you (as is the case for me as I was having so many negative things in my life finding something positive felt foreign to me), acknowledge and recongnise this thing and trust that this is something you SHOULD or CAN be doing.

Write in a journal – I have found that regularly writing has helped me immensely, it just seems to allow me to get all the guff out of my head so I can think clearly and concentrate. Writing any thoughts that are circling around up there just feels good, it could be connected with the kids, work, clients, life or nothing at all very important, just getting down on paper it means you can purge it.
Journalling varies to blogging, blogging is with a purpose, journalling doesn’t have to make sense and no one will see it but me. Sometimes i do it at home or take it to a cafe and enjoy a coffee with it, it REALLY doesn’t have to be about anything specific but sometimes can be about my worries or frustrations, usually by the end of that session I have worked out what’s bothering and have a solution to move forward – all by myself

Test yourself often and trick yourself, if there is something you want to be ie. An artist, test yourself out, call yourself an artist, if someone asks what you do say”I am artist”. You will be surprised how this works in so many varying areas, you will soon start thinking and acting like the thing you say you want to do or be.
Another thing is to pretend to write an article or an advertisement about you and what you do, even if you dont show anyone or do anything about it.  You will be surprised about how thinking and writing about yourself in this way will define your way of thinking in the future.
REMEMBER its all a process, its not something you will come out of believing 100% at the time, but slowly and gradually without noticing you will catch yourself out without realizing it.

I did this for my workshop this year, I had no idea how to hold a coloured pencil workshop, sure I had seen some demonstrations online, but all cp workshops are all overseas I have no point of reference to go from. So I thought about, ok, what would I expect if I attended a workshop, as I  teacher I would want my students to come away with XYZ.  So I tricked myself into believing I was a teacher and thus came away with the knowledge and became a teacher – and I loved it

So there are a few  things that have worked for me, as I said before I feel like I still have a bit of a way to go, but i definately now know what to focus my energies on, whats important to me whats not, and that gives me direction of where to go or at least a starting point – one foot in front of the other and all that

And so comes the 2009 review, reviewing your year  i have been doing these for about 3 years now, just looking back on my old blog I have been blogging since 2006, and here was my first yearly review in 2007.

WOW!  My life has changed so significantly since writing that post, i think even in the midst of writing that things were changing that i probably didnt want to post about on my blog. In reading it again its interesting to note that  some of the things on that list are still my goals for today. It would be easy to go to a negative spirals and  think well, so you havent achieved those things in 4 years, but at the same time I am choosing to look at things this way:

Sometimes your path is not always as straight forward as you think, sometimes you need to take extra steps to get on with your journey, the fact that these goals are still relevant means that they are good important goals ones i need to continue working on, and celebrate just that bit more when finally they are achieved.

The fact that I am able to look at my goals even just from 3years ago, illustrates just how importannt it is to look at yourself through this “third eye” assess whats going on in your life at regular intervals but also its shows that you cant be a slave to your goals things change so do you so you have to move with it they are goals not rules.

What’s most important for me (because i tend to forget to do this ) is to CELEBRATE what you do achieve and not just pass it off as something else you have done, onto the next thing. FEEL GOOD about it! (SOOO hard for me to do).

2009

2009 Has been another big year for me, to be honest the whole year has felt like a long haul, and in starting to write this post I really didn’t think I had achieve a lot on my list.  In looking, I actually realized that so many things on my list at the beginning of the year on my accomplishments without consciously trying to achieve them throughout the year. Which i find amazing its like i must have been on auto pilot and tricking myself into doing them PLUS I have also achieved many other things that weren’t on my list so all in all that is fantastic.

Major achievements & Goals for the year:

- October, coloured pencil workshops : feedback from the workshop was fantastic have 2 more scheduled in June with the CCAS, considering offering smaller personalized workshops from my studio in 2010.

- Became a hosting reseller, steelkey offers hosting to clients, while I am not aiming to sell hosting day to day being able to look after my clients offer this service to my clients is fantastic.

-  Newsletter, while this only recently happened (Dec) my original plan would have seen me have other newsletters throughout the year, but to be honest I just wasn’t ready so glad i achieve this at least once

- Created and  maintained a mailing list for both design and art clients (i didnt have one at the beginning of the year, now i do – its not huge but its a start)

- Network in real life more! – I attended quite a few networking events this year  BMN conference, CCBiZ events, accelerate women, CCAS & art events, had client meetings, and networked with people in my office and at theirs.

- Do one thing at a time – whilst this is a pretty broad statement, what it essentially translates  for me is to  get the task at hand done. Don’t get distracted,  it’s a ongoing discipline I am getting better at.

-Attend  life drawing classes, for a good 6month period I attended life drawing classes often once a week sometimes fortnightly until recently when family commitments meant I couldn’t but this is a fantastic discipline for brain and artistically.

-Help people .. this year I know I have helped lots of people one of those being CCAS, they asked me during the year and I was honored to accept becoming a committee member. I find this commitment (and it is a commitment) rewarding. Providing a service to the community, in a topic i love art.

-Take my boys on a good family holiday. I was so lucky to be able to do this in August, it was the first real holiday i have had in about 10 years, the boys loved it  something we all will remember for a long time

So these are just a few of the goals and achievements for the year, one of the biggest parts for me has been finding my direction, which will be in my second post.

2009 has proven to be a big organisational year here in the studio.

I wanted to share with you some of the processes I have created to help track my work, time and family life that you could also do yourself.

Here is my weekly folder, it is an expandable file which contains 6 folders which hangs down like this, I bought it from officeworks and I can fold it up and take it with me anywhere if need be. It means don’t have piles of paper laying around. FANTASTIC!

I have labelled one “folder” for everyday of the working week and then a combined one for the weekend.

MY PROCESS
This is very cheeky of my I know but would you like to read more… ?

This info is from my latest newsletter, you will need to signup to read more (otherwise its not fair to my current subscribers – you understand

Gathering Strength – Belinda Lindhardt, coloured pencil on Stonehenge

I am a little annoyed, well alot annoyed but at myself which is even more frustrating.

Part of my inspiration for the above piece “Gathering Strength” was instigated by the fact that i wanted to do something for International Womens Day which is March 8-9. Last year really wanted to enter something which “said” something and so this was my result.

I had been planning to enter it into Gosford Art Gallery – International Women’s Day exhibition which was under selection criteria this year. I have had the application for a few weeks. It was required to have statement about the event to go along with the application which i have spent a good part of the morning doing (also putting it off for weeks not sure what to say).

I for some unknown reason had written down the date for the application to be in by the 29th or the 19th Feb (which is today). So as i am filling out the form i see that the date was actually on the 9th of February and so i have missed out !!! I am so annoyed, i was planning on entering another exhibition also for the Multi Arts Society (this application date is the 29th Feb, hence the confusion) so looks like i will only be entering in that. GRRR!

Anyway, with the view not to waste a mornings work i figured i might as well post here the statement for International Womens Day i wrote regarding this piece. So here you go!

International Women’s Day 2009

Last year after hearing about International Womens Day, I remember thinking that I would like to create a piece for International Womens Day 2009. I remember thinking about what it was to be a woman and what it meant to me.

For most women becoming a mother is time when you usually change to some degree, some more than others. From the moment a woman becomes a mother she is forced to start making decisions and sacrifices for her children so they can have the best start possible.

I knew I wanted to do piece about becoming a mother as it’s had such a profound effect on the woman I am. I am a mother of 3 children 1 lost during pregnancy at 5months in 2002, and today i have two wonderful healthy boys 3 and 5 years old.

During 2008, I was challenged by events that were occurring in my own little family, I was going through a separation and an unexpected change of life. During this difficult time, the love and need to look after my children gave me strength. It was through and for them I was able to pull through and just get through each day moving forward. I remember thinking that it would be the same for all of us, especially during difficult times that our children give us strength, they weren’t doing anything directly they were just there and needed protection and love and that is what spurred me on and still does continue to inspire me everyday to help them grow and learn.

So my piece “Gathering Strength” was created. It was to challenge me artistically by being my largest coloured pencil piece to date. I wanted to explore various ways of laying down colour in a way that loosened my style up but also wanted to experiment in new techniques to help cut down on some of the time involved in creating large coloured pencil pieces. It was also to challenge me composition wise as I wanted to convey a story and pull the viewer in to try to see something happening in the piece rather than a standard portrait.

Here is what was written in my online art journal during the works in progress stage:

” I don’t choose to see it as a sign of weakness but a sign of strength, that you can come through something difficult with your head held high. The truth is, although this is good in theory its not always easy to find that inner strength. This piece is about how I have been gathering my strength, its through the wonderful support of friends and family but especially through the love of my two boys.

So, for all the mums out there i am sure at one point in your lives you have had to pull yourself together and find strength from somewhere. This piece is about being a mum and the strength that loving your children and them loving you without them knowing it can give you.”

This artwork took over 70hours and 2.5 months to complete.

This International Womens Day I am in a much happier place and more settled place. I know I have an inner strength to deal with all the unexpected changes that life continues to throw up and I will come through doing what is right for me and my children.

This day is exploring and showcasing individual’s journeys and what being a woman means to them. This piece all is about what it means to me in 2009.

“Gathering Strength” – by Belinda Lindhardt.

Prismacolor and Polychormos coloured pencils on Stonehenge paper.

Frame size = 71 X 83 cm

Artwork size = 41 X 55 cm