Pointy-nose people

 I'm doing a really good Domestika course by Sarah van Dongen who is an illustrator. She draws people doing normal things, with detailed backgrounds and a full range of mixed media, and I'm really loving it. She says there is always something to draw even if you're cooking dinner ... as evidenced by some cool drawings of her cooking dinner! Anyway she tends to do pointy-nosed people doing day to day things, so I now have pages of pointy-nosed people doing day to day things too.

In the one above you can see another of the blotted line drawings on the right. I did about five of the doing-the-finger guy to try and get the face right. 

If you want to have a busy scene then you need to have objects, so we drew a raft of objects that might go in your rooms. Sewing rooms, in my case.

Lots of fun. I had to buy some marker pens, but so far am resisting the gouache crayons, the water-soluble markers, the water-soluble crayons, the brush markers and the really expensive colour pencils. Even though they are all quite lovely and I'm sure if I had more of these I would be a better artist. 

Walking again, finally

I managed a two-hour walk on the weekend (very slowly) after feeling so knocked over by the silly covid for so many weeks. It was lovely to be out! Look at this wonderful blue sky ... after a very cold and foggy morning. I'm glad I left my walk until later in the day.

Parliament started again this week, and a change of government means starting at high speed as a rule. They want to put in place all the things they've been thinking about for the past few years on the opposition benches, which is fine, but a head spin for the support staff. It is nice to have the building full again (covid and all, I'm assuming I am still immune). We got word of a group of illegal protesters inside the front foyer on opening day and police carting them off ... footage reveals NUMBER ONE shouting about the climate, waving a banner (upside down) and being shown off the premises. No arrests were made but my eyes about rolled back in my head. 

I have also been doing a bit of drawing and painting but it's hard with a little helper. She continues to be completely adorable - curled up on my chest for an hour with Netflix yesterday and purred like a champion. Very much at home already.  

We've got a kitten

Since our dog died last year my husband has felt the lack of a pet - I would describe it as the freedom of not having a pet - but he doesn't like a pet-less state so has been keeping an eye on the rescue cat forums for a while now. He has spent a few weekends driving around Canberra visiting various rescue cats ... in the true nature of rescue cats they are mostly "three lovely old boys, bonded and must be adopted together, one is incontinent and the other two are blind" or "beautiful little kitten, has had a few tough breaks and is terrified of people, children, other animals, loud noises, and carpet". But he was down the coast for the weekend and thought he would look up the local RSPCA - went and visited the foster family and snaffled this little one on the way back home.

She is nearly five months old, so not a tiny kitten, but still very kitten-ish in many ways. She drove back up quite happily and has settled in incredibly well. Exploring everything and wants to know where we are, but happy to curl up and sleep when needed. Certainly hasn't hid behind the sofa or anything (has gotten stuck behind the sofa on an exploration mission, but that's acceptable). We've had to put up the cords on the blinds and the lid down on the toilets - and buy a cat palace of a scratching post - because it has been a very long time since we had kittens in the house!

Black and white cats are quite hard to get good photos of. Especially if they are rolling around getting their claws stuck in the carpet. Most of the photos are like this.

But no doubt I'll take more. We are not getting anything done in the house, just getting distracted by the little fluffster. She has a very loud purr. 

Blotted line drawing

This new little arty rabbit hole has been a lot of fun - blotted ink line drawings. Firstly, I had to do some online shopping and buy a dip pen, which was cool. It is Japanese and has five different nibs, so I can do cool anime, if I could draw, which I can't. You just take off the nib and jam another one into the end. I didn't know about the sparkly yellow holder when I bought it, it was a pleasant surprise. 

The technique is really simple; trace (or draw, I trace) outlines of a picture onto tracing paper, tape it to normal paper on one side like a hinge, use your dip pen to draw about an inch of the line onto the back of of the tracing paper, then fold it onto the normal paper and press it down, then lift up, do another inch, press back down etc. Because you can't quite control the amount of ink in a dip pen it pools and breaks in varying widths that make it look interesting. And you can do the same drawing many times if that interests you, which it does. I tend not to get better.

Andy Warhol used this technique and then filled in the outlines with solid colours, so I did a bit of that. These are from Oyster magazine, including number one, back in the modelling days.

You can also use pictures from "Baby Animals of the Americas" if your house only has one fashion magazine. One baby puma and one adult moose. 

Art books should be good but are actually quite hard, because you have to make decisions about which lines to include. This is a Hilda Rix Nicholas. Hours of fun! Faces are very unpredictable.

Oops, two weeks later

No, I haven't died of covid, I have just been grumpy because I'm not in NZ and very tired all the time. It has been a very flat couple of weeks. A weekend at the beach definitely helped - I didn't go for any walks but sat on the beach when it was warm enough, did a lot of sewing, and met up with friends for brunch. Which was all fine but I will be glad when I am back to full puff again. Between this and the flu it has been quite a lethargic couple of months.

On the way down I did a drive by this house and this house. We are not going to buy either of them - just scouting locations - but the locations were quite lovely, even on a very wintry day. Big sky, lots of space, wind whipping over the tundra :) 

Sunday was a beautiful day, although fiercely windy. The creek (and the ocean) were a gorgeous clear green and I might have been tempted to swim if it hadn't been so very cold. And I was a bit worried that the cold water would knock out what little air I had left, and leave me gasping more than usual.  

We are gearing up for the opening of parliament next week, which is always interesting although with the covid cases in Australia just continuing to go through the roof it might turn into a super spreader event! I had hoped it would have burned out by now and we'd be over masks and screens but it's not looking like that will happen any time soon. 

Drawing cars badly

The guy on "Creative Drawing Techniques for Beginners" suggests drawing things we don't usually enjoy, or aren't very good at ... which is fine for him but doesn't narrow down the field much for me. But he said for him it's cars, which sounds reasonable, so I spent a few hours drawing cars.

Drawing cars badly.

On the health front, we are feeling much better. Number one came back from Sydney after a very light dose, I get out of quarantine tonight but I'm not sure about going back into work (still coughing, and very tired). I am very bored though. No housework has been done. The new suitcases we bought on Saturday morning ten days ago are still sitting in the lounge room, waiting. Newly. It's very sad.

COVID

We finally got the plague last weekend - my husband first (from his work) then me a couple of days later. Number one hadn't been home much due to a hectic social life, so isolated from us, took numerous negative tests and headed off to a pre-planned week in Sydney ... and then tested positive of course, so is spending a week isolating in a small apartment with a presumably less-than-delighted Sydney friend.

We've both been quite sick but nothing worrying, and finally now at about day five/six are starting to feel better. The weather has helped by being cold, windy and rainy, so sitting about hasn't been too much of a hardship, and we're fully equipped for working from home, although most days we haven't really been able to.

The real hardship is having to cancel our much-anticipated two-week holiday back to NZ for Dad's 80th ... first time I'd seen my family for three years and we were having a full family birthday weekend reunion plus staying with everyone around the place. All four of us were going, but the timing with the covid was impossible  ... NZ does covid tests on arrival, and the odds of getting out of quarantine at midnight, travelling 15 hours the next day, testing negative when we got there, not being contagious and infecting Dad (and not feeling like shit, I don't think I could do it) were about zero, so we cancelled the whole thing. Spent half a day unpicking flights, accommodation, cars etc and got out of it without too much hip pocket pain - well, quite a bit, but we expected worse - and we'll go later in the year.

Honestly, two years of pandemic and we get it at exactly the worst possible time. Huh.