More beach ... and bit more Gary

I had a gorgeous weekend at the beach - weather was good with just the slightest nip in the air in the mornings. I did absolutely nothing exciting at all other than enjoy the water, a bit of reading and a bit of painting. Delightful! There were a few surfers out on Sunday morning but I don't think they were having much luck.

I also drove past the retirement house on the way back for the first time in a year ... I haven't wanted to before because it makes me nervous, like it will never happen! I know that's silly, but I felt like it was tempting fate. Anyway I must be more confident now that we will actually make it out there, so I did a surreptitious drive by just to check it's still there (it is).

And some more Gary paintings.

More of an urban scene this time, for a change.

Yet more Gary

Still enjoying these strange little scenes. With strange houses.

Purple trees! I love them, and the foreground too.

Perhaps a European square at midday? I have never been to one, so couldn't tell you. 

Lots of strange houses, with a man and a dog.

My muscles hurt

I went for a perfectly normal walk on Sunday - about 12 km or so - and could hardly wiggle out of bed on Monday morning. This is what happens when you don't walk for a couple of months because it's too hot, or boring, or whatever ... my butt muscles and the backs of my thighs are still screaming, three days later. That is very soft, and I need to do more exercise. 

It has been hot though. Sunday was lovely and mild - even a little bit of rain. Not exactly sure I could say it's autumn yet, but definitely not a heatwave.

We met up with friends for brunch on Saturday, fortuitously next to the art supply place, so I picked up a couple of things that I didn't really need. I am trying not to buy stuff at the moment for financial and space reasons, and I'm generally doing OK. I filled and then emptied two on-line carts of fabric yesterday, which is very good of me. I am circling several leather tote bags (I need a new tote, my go-to is crumbling, so this is an approved purchase(i.e. approved by me, no-one else cares)) but only online because Canberra shops are hopeless. Can you buy a bag online? I feel like I want to heft it up and wave it around, because that's important.... 

Second half of the beach house project

We had a long weekend down the coast - Canberra Day - where I went for lots of swims and found the water RIDICULOUSLY cold because Darwin and Fiji have softened me up. But the weather was hot and the drinks were cold and the cat was happy ... friends came over for dinner and we dreamed of retirement (except for the one person that was actually retired, who is absolutely loving it). 

Anyway here is the second half of the concertina sketchbook, with more beach houses.

This is again in the order I did them - not so much of a marked improvement as in the first half - but I think you can tell where I wandered off and did a week of house portraits, or a week of abstract. It spills over.

I have certainly noticed a lot of things I never noticed before. Many of the houses have those fish-skeleton wall decorations, and there are a number of iron pelicans. 

This bessa-brick house is only one room per floor. You can see through to the other side quite clearly. I think they use the back shed for living as well, it had outdoor furniture (that was too fiddly to paint).

When this house was painted blue and yellow they carefully got a blue and yellow matching awning for the front door. I think this was decades ago because it all looks a bit garbage now, but at some point it would have been the chic-est of beach residences.

This one is a bit of an icon - the words La Mer are perfectly respectable things to have at the front of your beach house - but they didn't put enough of a gap between the words so it's always been known as "lamer". The one to the left is "lame" and the little yellow one is "lamest". 

This ugly orange brick one is where the husky jumped the (manifestly inadequate chicken wire) fence and bit Mishka, back in 2015. The house has been sold since then (but it's still ugly).

Individually nothing stunning, but they do look good as a group!!!! I can't believe I actually finished something, instead of darting about.

Happy happy houses

More Gary houses, in nice bright colours. He likes basing everything - grass, trees, roofs - on a strong yellow. I use new gamboge - I think he uses cadmium yellow - then we drop in some greens or burnt sienna as needed. It gives a very warm undertone that I love. 

These do all kind of look the same but I am enjoying it.

Because of the sketchbook I am doing them all the same size - he doesn't - so some are simple with lots of spare space and some are quite densely drawn. 

And lastly a winter scene. Snow that just exists because of a shadow. Cool ... but you can see a bit of bleeding there. That shouldn't happen on dry paper, I will try another sketchbook next time.

Darwin again

After never going there once, I have now been to Darwin twice in six weeks - we had three days up there this week for work. It is still very hot, very rainy and strangely unoccupied ... shops and restaurants closed and not many people about. Apparently the population doubles when the dry starts, which I can believe.

I spent a lot of time around the airport looking at various government facilities, and managed to get to the wave pool / waterfront lagoon as well. So lovely, floating about in warm ocean water, watching a huge storm build up. 

In the finest traditions of crappy out-the-airplane-window photography here is Canberra as we were taking off - work is the red dot and home is the green dot :) It was actually a lovely long swoop around the city where you could see all sorts of things ... but perhaps not my finest photo ever.

We went via Adelaide on the way there and here is a slightly better picture of Adelaide's CBD. Not much going on  (which is Adelaide in a nutshell) but at least this one is in focus.

We didn't fly over the Darwin CBD (such as it is) so here is some landscape instead. Very typical! So much water. There would be crocodiles in that.

More Gary Frederick

I'm filling up my new watercolour sketchbook just with Gary's view of the world ... quite a pleasant view, luckily.

I like it because it has all the certainty of lines, and pen and ink, but he also likes a good wet-wet wash for the sky or the ground or the trees. There are twenty pages in the sketchbook so I figure that will be a good place to stop.

It was more-expensive-than-I-usually-spend Winsor and Newton 100% cotton A4 book, and it's not very good. There is something about the sizing in the paper that makes it bleed if you paint over it more than about twice, which it shouldn't do. I will try something else next time.