I went along to the September meet-up of the Canberra Urban Sketchers yesterday - this time we trotted along to the Canberra Museum and Gallery. There were about thirty people there all doing wildly different things. I went around the exhibitions and was taken by a corner of one of them that showed landscapes of Canberra and some black and white footage of the city being built. You can't use wet media in the exhibition spaces so I did a quick sketch then spent a very happy two hours at a table in the foyer drawing and painting this masterpiece.
Clearly not a masterpiece, but I had fun doing it, including the little paintings. Feels like cheating to do a painting of a painting! It was a lovely sunny afternoon so many people stayed outside and did the courtyard that leads onto the gallery, and the Legislative Assembly, with umbrellas and a cool statue. This is the throw-down.
Some very talented sketchers ... astonishing how you can give people exactly the same scene and they see such very different things. I enjoyed it - it's not really togetherness because everyone is doing their own thing but there is a sense of common endeavour.
And other than that we have been continuing to through boxes and tubs of random stuff. I have thrown out lots of things but there are treasures that must be kept, including all the letters I got when I was at uni. Look at this congratulations card! My older sister cross-stitched it for me (at least I think she did, she has always been a lovely cross-stitcher).
Speaking of sisters, this photo also showed up - it is me and my sisters at my cousin's wedding in 1985, so I must be 15, my older sister 20 and my younger sister 12 or maybe 13. Look at our glorious pastel ensembles. My mum sewed mine, I think my older sister made hers and if I remember rightly my youngest sister got hers from a shop!!! How fancy!!!! Probably doesn't quite make up for the entire lifetime of hand-me-downs that she had lived at that point ...
So much to like in all of that. The sketch, the pastels and the home routines. I stick by my opinion three and a half decades later. Same as tattoos - body self mutilation is a sure sign of insecurity, regardless of culture. Not a popular opinion around here! And you grew out of underlining pretty quickly.
ReplyDeleteYes I will claim the cross stitch - and also sewing my own dress to wear to a wedding, strewth!!! Although I generally try to refrain from exclamation marks, for the same reasons as the underlining :-)
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