It was a definite irony that the watercolour painting group (24 June – 1 July) spent their first two days surrounded by more rain than we had seen for a month. However, they hardly seemed to notice; instead, they applied themselves vigorously to their palettes and spent long laughter-filled days sketching, sloshing water onto paper, flicking around colours, experimenting with shapes and filling their minds and their sketch pads with all sorts of new things.

Of course the rain didn’t last forever; the wind blew the clouds away and so we all went to the beach…..and nearly got blown away ourselves. But most people pulled out a pad and started to capture the sight of the palm trees tossing around …here’s a photo of Jenny sketching, and here’s her palm tree too.

Malcolm Carver is a teacher with boundless energy. He taught long workshops that started after breakfast and spilled over into the early afternoon – and then still had enthusiasm to go out to the beach or take the boat snorkelling or dash off a picture for each and every one of his students before the week’s end.

It was a permanently and wonderfully happy group who turned out some equally wonderful work. Some of the artists were experienced watercolour painters; others had never done it; one was only focussing on charcoal sketching – but they all learned a great deal. And then in the evenings they sat around the long dinner tables of Daku learning each others’ stories, sharing jokes, meeting the other guests at the resort and celebrating the achievements of each day, come wind, rain or shine. And we had them all.

Malcolm’s 2012 Watercolours Painting Holiday will be 14 – 21 June, 2011. Read all about it here »

Last week Elena Parashko lead a group of artists at Daku Resort. Karen (attending her second art and painting retreat at Daku) writes below:

“This is my second time to Daku Resort to combine some learning with pleasure. I left with some concern as to whether the memories I had retained so vividly from last visit in September 2009 would actually set me up for a disappointment as my benchmark was already set so high.

Painting on the beach

Keni and Raj greeted me back to the ‘family’ as if I had returned home. And part of the Tadulala family we were, from the minute we arrived until it was time to leave. Mereoni made sure that we were well fed and combined Western, Asian and traditional Fijian food to ensure that we did not go hungry. It was delicious and healthy. Who’d of thought that seaweed could taste so good – really! The entertainment provided by the Tadulala children was presented with genuine warmth and an eagerness to please. The accommodation was very clean with bucketfuls of charm.

Despite my initial concerns, I was all the more pleasantly surprised when this trip was even better than the last.

Another day hard at work

Elena Parashko was our art teacher for this course and her teaching skills and ability transformed us all (she had 10 eager students of differing abilities) into artists with greater skills and far more confidence than when we arrived. It surely helped that the pick of locations would be the envy of anyone – paintbrush in hand or not. If the weather chose to spring a tropical storm upon us we also had the new purpose built Yoga Shala to set up our easels and paint away.

In the beautiful Yoga Shala

While there we had the pleasure of meeting another group who were there to appreciate classical music under the guidance of Mike Smith. Mike so very clearly loved his subject matter that he has inspired me to explore this music genre further.

So now it seems that I have presented myself with a real problem now that I have set my benchmark even higher. A challenge I shall gladly rise up to and return again in 2011.

Thank you Daku for being a little piece of paradise.

Karen McAllister

Tony and Demo with my painting

Leonie painting a heliconia

In April we welcomed Leonie Norton and a group of painters to Daku for a very busy week of botanical art AND holiday sketching. The difficult economic times have affected everyone, and we didn’t have enough people for two separate weeks of painting – so we put the two courses together and had a very productive week of painting and sketching.

The weather was generally lovely, but we had regular afternoon thunderstorms for three days so we switched around our schedules and went on sketching expeditions in the morning, and sat down to the detailed work of botanical art in the afternoon. The expeditions were great fun – we spent a very happy morning on Matuku beach across the bay, capturing the

Sketching at Matuku Beach

classic palm-tree edged sandy beach. Watching the artists sketch in the outlines and then fill in colours, I became aware of just how many shades of blue there are in the sea in the tropics –the turquoise of the sandy shallows, the aquamarine of the sea over the reef, the deep blue of the middle of the bay which turned to cobalt as the afternoon clouds started to build. And then there were the greens of the trees – palms, figs, creepers, and many local trees whose names I don’t know.

Yaukolo gardens

Another morning we went to Yaukolo gardens and enjoyed a fabulous morning tea made by the owner Louise. She has cultivated a beautiful garden over the nine years she and Jim have lived there, with fantastic palms, orchids, aloes and 26 varieties of ginger. We sat and
sketched the views from the gardens out to the reef in the ocean.

Everyone did both types of art – except for Joan, who was determined to just sit and paint a beautiful arrangement of croton leaves. This was Joan’s third visit to Daku so clearly she knew exactly what she wanted to do and was not to be deflected!

Last Saturday morning I went to talk to Kerrie Lester about the course she’ll be running at Daku in September. We are very excited that one of Australia’s top contemporary artists is coming to Daku – it really is quite a coup for us.

Kerrie Lester in her studio

What an amazing place she has, full of her artworks and the marvellous bits and pieces she’s collected over the years. She describes herself as a ‘bower bird’, picking things up from all over the place. The objects then appear in her paintings, forming the landscape in which her figures appear.

Mantelpiece inside Kerrie's studio

Landscape to Kerrie doesn’t necessarily mean a realistic depiction of trees or streets. Rather, it’s a series of suggestions about that particular figure’s setting. A seesaw and a jumping dog make the landscape in “Playground”; a beach and a few boats are the landscape for “In a hurry.” So how will this work when she comes to Fiji? She explained it like this:

“Oh, we’ll go out and see what there is. It’s all about getting an impression –I don’t paint from what I see, I re-arrange it.”

So, I wonder, will everyone need a lot of green paint for all the tropical backgrounds?

“No, not necessarily. They might paint the air, and that might be red. Painting landscape is about reacting to the surroundings, and everyone has a different approach. You can’t set up one standard. And green is a very difficult colour to use – a lot of painters say that. I went to PLC and we wore green blazers so maybe that has something to do with it too!”

"In a Hurry"

I’m catching the excitement and the laughter she brings to her painting as we talk. She relishes humour; she loves the larrikin side of Australia and seeks out the funny aspects of everyday situations. Her figures reflect this – whimsical little people going about their daily lives bathed in a light-hearted spirit. She makes it look simple, but she’s been painting for 36 years. “It takes 20 years to be a painter – it’s a learning experience, you don’t go to an art course and come out a painter. I’m still learning now.” So what can she teach them in a week? “I can give them the joy of discovering they can do it. I can show them how to see things, and to believe that their mark on the canvas means something.”

It’s shaping up to be a fabulous week.