More Norfolk Island pictures

Here's some more of these, probably the last to be honest, so I didn't quite fill my sketchbook. But it was good fun, both to do there and then to do at home from photos, like a lovely reminder of the holiday. Here's something historic, with a disintegrating boat. The colours are quite muted, which is fine, but when you paint it it looks a bit dull.

Here is when we went to lunch on Anzac Day at the RSL. I think at this point I'd decided to brighten the colours up to what I thought they should be.

This is one of the historic houses that we went into - fascinating - and quite lovely. It looks back over the ocean, so would have been very pleasant, in the intervals between violent penal colony / isolated hell-hole / involuntary re-location etc. 

And this is the privy out the back - perhaps not so pleasant. I was trying to paint the stones / bricks / concrete, which are really cool colours and shapes. I did not succeed, but it was fun trying.

This is a different technique, where you use a non-waterproof pen to do the sketch, then a wet brush to create shadows and darkness from the lines, where you want them. Clearly I have not yet mastered this technique - some bad smudges! - but it gives a whole different edge to both the lines and the shadows. I might play more.

Retro fashion

I must have been inspired by the colours of the autumn leaves, because I wore a shirt to lunch with friends that I think I wore every day in the early 1990s. I loved it so much that it still hangs in my wardrobe, despite not having had an outing for at least 30 years. 

Flowers! What is not to like. Despite having worn it so much there is little photo evidence - never a party shirt as such - but here is one with my oldest niece, so that dates it probably mid-1992.

And here is my other retro purchase - new shoes, but based very much on the white Reeboks that I desperately wanted in the mid 1980s but could never have afforded. They were about $200 back then I think - out of the question. 

These ones were only $70, and clearly not the same quality, and also targeted at old people like me :) But I like them and I like wearing them ... giving my inner 14 year old a present she probably didn't deserve (she was a bit of a pain, on reflection :)

Such rain

I went down to the beach on Thursday night - to work from home on Friday and maybe get a beach walk in - and it rained from the second I arrived until Sunday afternoon. And not just the occasional shower or a bit of drizzle - it was solid rain with occasional really heavy rain. Which is good for my work productivity but not good for exercise or even possibly getting a swim in. 

This is from Sunday afternoon before I left. The ocean was very brown with a big swell which meant lots of wave foam. I quite like it - it's not pollution, just organic things that have come down the rivers then make a soup that can be stirred up into foam.  So one little walk, but lots of sewing, and several items that I might actually wear! I'll take a photo when I do.

This little fellow gave me a hell of a scare when I opened up the extractor fan - I think he must have come down the vent from the outside. I don't mind lizards really but it was quite large and very speedy. I tried to shoo him into a tub but he dropped to the floor and took off behind the kitchen cabinets ... where he probably still is.

Autumn leaves

Every year I do this because every year I am amazed by how lovely the trees are. When we were away it went from early autumn to late autumn in a week, so I took some photos while it was still lasting. This is from my walk around the lake on the weekend. It was grey and cold but still good to stretch the legs.

Here you have two police cars stopping a busy road - you can't see in this picture but the queue of Sunday traffic on the left went for a very long way. And in the other direction, a forlorn truck slowly and unsuccessfully backing up. And then unsuccessfully trying to turn over the median strip (too steep). 

I think at some point after the off-ramp the truck realised it couldn't fit under the bridge at the far right, and called the police. Which is better than taking out the bridge I guess, but chaos ensued. When I came back over the bridge two hours later it had all cleared, but it was probably the most exciting thing that happened on a Canberra road that morning :)

The lake, uninviting but pretty. I would like to try and paint that but I'm not doing very well with landscapes. I still need the straight lines of buildings and things.

This is the sports oval by the primary school that they turned into a hospital at the start of 2020 and are slowly returning to being a sports oval. The buildings and carparks have gone and they are re-turfing and re-seeding now. A slow process but it will be nice when it's done (it was a bit scrappy before anyway). At least they kept all the perimeter trees, which are the most wonderful yellow.

More Norfolk Island

Here are some more photos of Norfolk Island and - worryingly - my interpretation of the scenery. I bought a new sketchbook to take over with high ambitions (too high, 24 pages is too many for one week) but it is a lovely little book with very nice paper, so that's good. The actual sketches? Marginal.

This is where we stayed - I painted it once from the front and once from the back - once kind of realistic and once all Ian Fennelly splashy. I like the splashy.

This is the view from the back of the Sirius museum, which I actually started while I was sitting there, which is something I want to get more comfortable doing. It feels awkward to draw in the open air, and I have to get over myself. But the perspective is better than if I had tried to draw it just from the photograph. The buildings look closer in real life than they do in the photo.

And this is the same buildings looking back the other way. My cows are terrible. I wanted to give them a go because there are so many cows about and they are quite pretty in their own way ... but mine are not good. The one on the left looks like a person in a cow suit.

And another historic-type building.

Norfolk Island

We have been on holiday for a week, to Norfolk Island of all places. This is a strange little Australian external territory in the Pacific about two hours flight from Sydney and home to just over 2000 people and many (mostly elderly) tourists. 

It is absolutely beautiful and a wonderful place to chill for a week. My parents-in-law have gone there twice a year for at least half a dozen years; they rent a big house sometimes and family come and share part of their holiday! We went over last Sunday for a week to eat good food, walk about, see historical things and generally have a lovely time.

Norfolk is very peculiar . It had a brief period of Polynesian settlement but they all left about 1400 AD ... then the British set up a convict colony in 1788 but that failed and in 1814 they burnt all the buildings and left ... tried again with another harsh convict settlement from 1824-1855 but moved them all back to Tasmania ... then in 1856 they decided to re-settle the Pitcairn Islanders (i.e. children of the Bounty mutineers and the Tahitians they had kidnapped) there because Pitcairn is tiny, pointless and overcrowded. Norfolk has never had a proper jetty or harbour and only got an airfield in WWII. 

So, of all the things you would expect a tiny isolated island - that is literally populated by descendants of people who tipped Bligh into a longboat - to become, would you pick a favourite haunt of senior citizens in small tour groups? There are four flights a week from Australia, and it is one of the easiest, most chill places I have ever travelled to. When we flew out we left the hire car unlocked in the airport carpark with the key under the floor mat. I will post again because we really did have a wonderful time but it was not at all what I expected. 

Painting from life

I'm trying to do more painting from real life scenes and not copying other people's art on the internet. This is quite difficult for a number of reasons - not only is my local environment fairly dull, but I do all my painting after about 8 pm so it would have to be photos, and most of all it's REALLY HARD to make decisions about what to include and how to go about it. Much easier when somebody has already done that work and all you have to do is trot along behind. But, because I am committed to continuous personal growth (I'm really not) I am giving it a go.

I did a sketch of folk festival scenes. Coffee and ice-cream! The inflatable ice cream on the van did totally look like testicles in real life, it's not just my drawing.

My people are genuinely awful. The ones in the back are meant to be dancing.

A house on a street from my walk a couple of weeks ago. It is quite a nice house and I have not done it justice. I can't see myself being one of those artists that post little sketches through the letter box as a nice surprise for the owner (yes, it happens, google it).