Merry (second) Christmas

We had a very quiet second Christmas and over to friends for Boxing Day - I think knocking over Christmas on the 21st should happen every year! Makes it all very chill. The museum exhibition wasn't fabulous - lots of wonderful items and the explanations were good but it was just in one big room and felt a bit bitsy. Like it had all been dropped in a space, which we know is really unfortunate given how much thought goes into these types of things, and how many people with PhDs contemplate the thematic groupings. 

But we did thoroughly enjoy our cold drink on the cafe balcony afterwards, with this view of a very serene and empty Christmas Eve Canberra. Just a few go-boats slowly wandering past. Canberra clears out at Christmas as people go back to where they really come from. We walked around the lake on Boxing Day too and it was HOT and STILL. Not a breath of wind, but good to get some exercise. The fountain was completely vertical.

I burned myself making Russian fudge for number two to take back to Melbourne. I put it in the mixer to beat it and turned it up too high so it went up the sides of the bowl and flicked 135 degree fudge (soft ball stage) across the kitchen, including over me. So I had to put it under running cold water while my husband dealt with the fudge and cleaned it off the cupboards. Yay for me .... it was delicious though.

Merry (early) Christmas

We had Christmas on 21 December this year - number two had to work so came up for the week before, we had our Christmas Day and now he's gone back. To hopefully an actual christmas day with friends, but I don't think he is too bothered. And neither are we! Having christmas early is amazing, we are having an extended five day boxing day with nowhere to go and nothing to do or buy. I went for a long walk this morning, my husband is mowing the lawn, and at 3 we are going to see the Feared and Revered exhibition at the National Museum. It is probably not going to be crowded but you never know - people go to museums on christmas eve?

Our christmas day was very normal, had a big breakfast, exchanged presents, scallops for lunch, attempted Trivial Pursuit 2010-20 edition (so obscure, number two won EASILY), home-made dinner for pizza and general relaxing. It was lovely to see the younger one again, so many stories about his university and Melbourne antics! Even the censored-for-mum versions were entertaining. 

And number one has also moved out! Found a new-ish townhouse fifty metres from the tram stop on the other side of town with three bedrooms for the three of them ... so much excitement. We went to IKEA yesterday as part of the christmas present :) they have actually done quite well with free furniture but needed some shelves, a desk, doormats, dish rack ... Literally hours of fun, but 2023 might be a bit different round here.

Low concentration levels

I can't seem to concentrate on anything complex on the art front at the moment. Not surprising given the time of year I guess. So that means nothing complicated, just doodling. Some doodling inspired by random internet stuff, and some just splashing the paint on and drawing over the top of it. From Youtube we have this attempt to paint along with Shana Circe .

And this with Diane Antone again. Brad asked if the rabbit was preparing to get eaten and I said no it is WHIMSICAL.

Tiktok tried to teach me how to draw a chrysanthemum, or dahlia, or something. Just marker pen, no paint, but still quite satisfying.

And here are the splashes-with-doodles. I don't even know what to call this.

Or this.

Yet more beach

I took a day off and very happily went down for an extended beach weekend. The traffic on a Thursday evening is delightful compared to Friday! And only one speed camera, which is a record. Every trip I see either a police car, or a speed camera, or a random breathalyser, or any combination of those three ... my record is SEVEN police cars with speed cameras, which isn't bad for 130 km of road. And one of the many reasons why I don't bother speeding. I just take my time, singing along to random hits of the 1980s and country music and using unladylike language towards other road users.

The bank that was washed away is starting to re-grow, you can see the green bits. Fascinating process; first a few twigs get washed up, then the very sturdy plants start sprouting, then the plants catch more debris and dirt, so other plants start ... it will take a few years but you can see how it would cycle up and down, assuming we have no more Extreme Weather Events. Look at the colour of that sky, it really was beautiful.

I had a lovely long swim each day. It was sunny but not super warm, but a very good swell and that is enough for me! I caught some waves and ate some sand and got suitably windblown and sunburnt. I also made a dress which turned out OK but was an absolute curse to sew - a very light polyester print that did not want to stay put when I cut it, or pinned it, or sewed it. Nightmare, but it's red and christmassy, so I wanted to finish it.

Number one has finally got a rental application approved so we may be empty nesters before the end of the month!!!! It's a bit of a shock now that it's all happening - I think someone is getting a fish slice and a vacuum cleaner for Christmas. Perhaps in a laundry basket, wrapped up in new towels. Classy.

Circus tent shirt

I wore a slightly more colourful shirt to work than usual yesterday - end of year frivolity! Wow. It is a large stripey shirt so obviously reminiscent of a circus tent ... but comfortable. It is a cotton/linen mix I think but I can't remember where I bought the fabric, or what pattern I used to make it with. This is part of my auditioning shirt patterns to find the perfect one, and I think I decided this wasn't it, although it is perfectly fine.

Unlike my selfies, which are dreadful. Either dodgy bathroom shots or incredibly untidy sewing room shots. I am not cropping the mess out of this one, it is what it is.

We put the christmas tree up earlier this week while baking a double batch of chocolate chip cookies to take to various morning teas. Easier to do them all at once, and the cookies are really really good. Very chocolatey. 

Here is number one with the finished product. You will note a half metre of no-ornaments at the bottom because of the pear-shaped pirate. The cannoli of carnage. The destructive dirigible. She managed to climb up the inside, but not very far, and we think the tree is safe now.

Quiet weekend

Parliament finally got through the last sitting week of the year, which is always exhausting as they try to get all the laws through ... and everyone is tired and cranky and also having christmas parties. But we made it, and then a very quiet weekend. Our car has died - we had to get it towed it was literally undriveable - and turns out the clutch is completely stuffed and we have to get a new one. Lots of money and a week with only one car to share, which is a pain. It's only five years old, which I think is quite recent, in car terms :) - but I suppose we should expect more problems with it than when it was brand new.

It was a bit warmer this weekend but I still went for a walk. The gardens are looking beautifully green because of all the rain. 

The cat is not sure about her first summer, she was born in autumn so this is new to her. She spent all of Sunday stretched out asleep, airing her tummy. There is a lot to air. She got tickled a LOT.

We went out for dinner on Friday night with some friends and I wore a new dress that I'd made - rayon, light, floaty, very comfortable. This isn't a great picture but there's not much to see from a fashion perspective! It's a very basic pattern, McCalls 8214, not much fitting, cap sleeves. Great to wear. I did view B.

Shit beach photography

My husband follows a Facebook group 'Shit bird photography' which he finds highly enjoyable and even contributes to on occasion. I took a photo of a pied oystercatcher in the creek that probably qualifies ... although he says that if you've got all the bird in the photo and you can actually tell it's a bird then it's too good for the group.

He also follows 'Shit brick fences of Melbourne', which is apparently another winner. I like 'Disapproving Corgis' (where people post pictures of their corgis looking disapproving) and of course God who is very funny. Here is an arty photo of those fluffy things on sticks that mean beach and summer to me. I have never known what these things are called so I googled "fluffy beach plants" and they are apparently hare's tail or bunny tail grass, native to the Mediterranean but naturalized in Australia and NZ (lagurus ovatus). There you go, I have learned something.

I had a great beach weekend - slightly longer than expected because there was a crash on the highway coming home. There's a sign about twenty minutes in with road information and it said there was a crash about an hour further on, and delays expected ... so I called my husband to google it and it was road closed in both directions, people trapped in cars, helicopters etc. So I turned around and went back to the beach house for another night and drove up Monday morning. Which is tiring, but better than sitting for four hours in a queue, without snacks. Or indeed better than being helicoptered to a hospital, poor things. 

Realism and Russian fudge

I have taken a brief foray into realism / illustration thanks to Youtube videos by Nia - another talented watercolour artist with wonderful drawing and painting skills that I feebly copy. And get cross. I slow the videos down to half speed and pause frequently ... but even then there are things I just can't do. Kind of fun but kind of frustrating. I did the yarn balls.

And the ice cream van.

I am currently half way through a view from a window that is NOT going well. I know intellectually you just have to push through but I might give up, it's not looking good. I did a hedgehog with a bee from a Diane Antone video ... I don't think I can really call this realism but it is an identifiable object!! surely that counts.

After enjoying my sister's signature Russian fudge in NZ I got the recipe and tried it for myself ... there was a lot of swearing, I think sweets are hard. I even used a thermometer but it just didn't look right so I boiled it for a couple more minutes and then of course it set in the bowl while I was beating it. But I bashed it into the tin, chopped it up and it tasted AMAZING. I do not think there is anything russian about it but NZers know what I am talking about.

Flowers

My walk on Sunday took me through the rose gardens and they are looking very beautiful. The roses in our garden are pretty good too - but not a patch on the public ones. It's late for roses but the weather has been so cold and wet it is not really surprising. 

The walk was very windy and I took a shortcut to avoid the long exposed stretch by the lakefront. I do not need a mouthful of brown mucky lake water. Pam, scary beaches in Australia are the ones with waves that knock you off your feet and rips that drag you out to sea - it is hard to tell from a photo but that beach had plenty of them! I do not trust a beach at all, especially the suspiciously flat patches, which have currents that can drown you quick as you like ... Uck. But much better to walk along than dodgy coffee-coloured artificial lakes.

Anyway I took inspiration from these flowers and drew another bouquet on the new bamboo paper I bought in NZ. It's lovely - I can't really tell the difference from ordinary cotton paper except it is a little smoother. This picture wasn't a very wet wash one, so perhaps I will try that next time and see how it holds up.

This is a different take on flowers - the background is a wet wash with salt for the white kind of bits. Then draw the flowers in marker pen and basically colour it in from there! I do like colouring-in, it is very soothing after a hard day of work. Even the drawing is quite meditative, although there is no botanical accuracy in those flowers. 

Even more beach

I had a second beach weekend in a row and went down with my husband ... and the cat. We are trying to get her adjusted to travelling as a kitten to make it easier in the future and we think it's working? maybe? She did angry meowing for the first half hour on the way down, before settling, and it only took about fifteen minutes on the way back up before she was resigned to her fate. So if we keep doing it she should be perfectly chill in the future. Maybe. We don't really know how cats' brains work. Once she was there she was perfectly relaxed and happy. 

I had another lovely swim on Saturday but Sunday was rainy. We went down to a beach a bit to the south to explore - there are about half a dozen houses at the end of a dirt road and one is for sale. We'd never been to the area so thought it was worth a look. It's lovely but the beach is too scary to swim at, which defeats the purpose in my mind. Wonderful view though.

We walked down and went along the beach. Beautiful... but I'm not leaping in there. Especially not on my own.

Number one had an exam so it was probably good we were out of the house - more time to study. Or panic, whatever comes. I didn't do any sewing or anything useful, just read books and sat about. I took another photo of the cat because she is so pretty.

More flower paintings

Here are some more Diane Antone flower paintings of quite different styles. First up a 'loose bouquet'. Description is accurate!

Secondly pen over background wash; this is where you make a background of various colours with a very watery wash, then tip salt over it and leave it to dry. Actually you 'sprinkle' salt over it, much more ladylike. Then you have a good look at the different colours, how they have mingled, what effect the salt has had, then draw flowers and leaves accordingly. And add a bit more paint (or pencil, or anything!) to demarcate the various flowers and put in some leaves, and outline with the pen. I don't know if I love it but the background is super fun to do.

Lastly we have a wreath collection of more autumnal tones - I played with almost all of the Kuretake paints for this one - they make a good dark. And there's a really nice deep greenish blue that makes lovely purples and browns. 

The wreath is on new paper that I bought in NZ - just a standard UK brand but I haven't seen it in Canberra shops so I thought I'd try something new. It's only 200 gsm rather than the 300 gsm I usually use but lovely .. a bit smoother than the Arches and a brighter white. Paper is fun :)

First swim

I made it back to the beach and had the first swim of the season! Normally I would be a bit tougher and just swim every month; but the clouds and rain we've been having has made that extremely unattractive ... this weekend was sunny at last. Not exactly warm, but warm enough for me to leap into the water. It was just lovely to splash about again. The water temperature should be bitingly cold at this time of year, but it wasn't, which is probably suspiciously awful climate change. At least everything is looking beautifully green with all the rain.

Here is the beach at twilight. I'm not sure the photo captures it but it was very soft colours, very pretty. Other than the swim I made a top which was a disaster so stopped sewing, pre-washed some of the mountain of fabric I bought in NZ (I went overboard in the fabric shops, oh well), and read some books. 

Most stressfully, there was a snake on the path over the dunes that I use - it was sunning itself on the black plastic stuff - of course this is the path I merrily wander along in bare feet or jandals at the most. I about had a heart attack because even though Australia is RIFE with venomous snakes you don't see them out and about very often. For the rest of the weekend I stomped heavily along the middle of the path with my eyes PEELED.

Back into it

It's been a busy week - I've moved into another job within my same organisation - similar work to what I've done in the past but each area has its own unique quirks! I think I'm going to enjoy these quirks, it is interesting subject matter. But there is a learning curve, and my brain isn't quite as flexible as perhaps it once was. Or maybe it's my personality that's the problem (curmudgeonly).

This is a thing I did before I went to NZ - covered over my fabric shelves with corflute attached to the shelving, and now I'm using it as a display wall. There's a double benefit in that it covers up my fabric which was getting dusty and also sun-faded on the edges, and gives me somewhere to put my pictures! Or my favourite pictures, the crappy ones get put in the cupboard. They are definitely easier to store than quilts.

These are all more Diane Antone tutorials/copies - pen and watercolour. I like the wall, and being able to see what I've done. I still don't think I'm getting any better - I think I understand more about shape and colour, but it's not reflected in the quality of the pictures themselves. And like all these things they look better en masse than individually. 

These birds are ink with gold pen details. My birds are still very peculiar shapes. The flowers are outlined with the dip pen, that gives a wide/narrow element to the lines. And because you can really only draw in one direction with a nib, there's a swoosh to the lines that is quite different to using marker pens. 

These flowers are very simple, and very broad brush (literally), but I like them. 

Week in Wellington

Here are some photos from our lovely week in Wellington. We averaged about 15km walking a day according to my phone - interspersed with stops for a coffee and a cheese scone. I went on a personal cheese scone tour of NZ; all were excellent but the Aro Cafe does one with a touch of spinach that I can highly recommend. Our airbnb apartment had a very Wellington view (and the weather was like that nearly every day, outstanding (and unusual)).

We went up the cable car and took an old person selfie with the view.

Then we walked back down through the Botanic Gardens to where we used to live and took an old person selfie of the front of our little townhouse. We thought it was very fancy at the time.

We went for a walk up Mt Vic with a friend and sat and had a chat at the top. With no wind, clear skies and sunshine. It was one of those four days every year that Wellington uses to tempt visitors and homesick Australians. Stunning. 

We went to Zealandia for some nature, did a Parliament tour for laughs, my husband went to Weta Workshop to see the models, and bought a print to hang on our walls. And we did a lot of shopping, a lot of eating, caught up with old friends and spent a lot of time looking forward to retirement, when we can do this kind of thing Every Day.

Holiday in New Zealand

We have spent the last two weeks having a lovely holiday in NZ - the delayed July adventure for my Dad's 80th. The kids couldn't make the rescheduled trip (they will go separately in January) so just the two of us, and we had a fabulous time. Lots of family, lots of food, lots of talking and then a nice touristy week in Wellington walking about and catching up with friends.

I won't share photos of the family as they might not like being plastered across the internet. But here are my Dad's tangelos. The citrus is crazy, we stuffed ourselves.

We snuck off for a night mid-family to a coastal resort - beautiful and felt very isolated. It wasn't really (just an hour out of Auckland) but lots of sky and sea and not many people.

Black sand beach on the west coast - the picture above - the one below is on the east coast so white sand. It is less than an hour from where I grew up but I'd never been there! It was wild, apparently someone got taken by a shark there last year and I can totally believe it. 

We had lovely weather but apparently they have had truckloads of rain. This is the Waikato River running behind the Hamilton Botanical Gardens ... looks full and dangerous. The gardens were amazing though, well worth an explore.

Different again

So this is more Diane Antone that is different again - not delicate watercolour but mixed media with a bit more oomph. At some point she said that if you’re not sure about a painting just keep going adding things, which is very different from the more intellectual angle that many watercolour painters take. They like to call it the ‘thinker’s medium’ because you have to preplan, and plot out your whites and lights right at the beginning, and plop your water on then your paint and leave it alone … none of this touching up you can do with acrylics or oils. Apparently. Not my forte, pre-thinking, but I like the plopping and leaving alone. 

Anyway, these pumpkins were the effort of ten minutes at a time each evening for about a week. More orange! More paint! A bit of coloured pencil. And some pen. Then more paint. It’s still not great (they look like large orange pouffes) but a different way of attacking it.

This was straight mixed media - a sort of landscape. Maybe. Diane also says that if you put a wiggly kind of border around it then people know you don’t mean it seriously, and it takes all the pressure off. Makes no difference to the picture at all, but suddenly nobody is under the illusion that this is Art, and you can do whatever you want. Just by putting in a wiggly border. Genius.

And here we have a mushroom forest scene. Probably more from life if you do live in northern France and not eastern Australia… although with the rain we are having I expect mushrooms to start sprouting from the carpet soon. Such a tremendous wet - I know it’s terrible climate change but it’s hard to just not be grateful for rain after the bad dry.  And lastly we have a colourful sunflower, paint, white gouache and watercolour pencils and marker pen too.