Last of the Ian Fennelly

 This is the final sketch from the excellent Ian Fennelly course. I decided to be a bit less wonky and wild, because that seems to be more comfortable for me, so the walls are a teeny bit straighter here. And the colours are slightly more within the lines.

I thought this course was great - I learned a lot about perspective and how to use the various types of pens - and how much you can get away with in terms of not-strictly-accurate to get the effect that you want. Very helpful.

This is another from-life dodgy small town building - peculiar 1980s Memorial Hall. Hopefully I captured the strange brickwork and peculiar statue thing (it's not me, it's the building!). 

Darwin

I have had a few days in Darwin at a conference - somewhere I have never been before - right at the top of Australia. It's a very long way away - four and half hours flight from Sydney so all day travel from Canberra - it just seems so unfeasible to my NZ brain that you can fly for so long entirely over land. Darwin doesn't have winter or summer, just wet and dry, and January is very firmly in the wet. It was 30 degrees and rainy every day, including some absolute buckets of rain. Luckily I didn't get caught in any - I was inside conferencing - but everything was damp.

This is me on an early morning walk still looking reasonably fresh. I was dripping and miserable by the end of the walk, but at least I got some exercise. 

Darwin is on an escarpment overlooking the sea, which is all very tropical and pretty, except it is PACKED full of saltwater crocodiles that will eat you quick as look at you, and if they won't get you the box jellyfish will. So you can't swim, except in the lagoon behind a seawall (crocs) and fine mesh nets (stingers). Or you can do what I did and have a dip in the nearby wave pool which is a swimming pool that has artificial waves every twenty minutes. It was peculiar but tremendous fun - more of a slosh than a wave but I'm up for that.

And here is the Northern Territory Parliament House - very tropical, look at those palm trees.

Distraction painting

It probably doesn't seem like there is much intellectual challenge involved in dodgy paintings of ordinary buildings ... but for me there is. You have to think about what to include, and where to put the lines, and sometimes I just don't feel up for it. So I spent a fair amount of time over the break making distraction paintings.

Number two bought me some lovely metallic watercolour paints for my birthday that I have been so happy experimenting with. It really gives some interest to the backgrounds.

And my husband bought me a sketching fountain pen for christmas - you need permanent/waterfast ink for this so I got a  TWSBI Swipe pen that sucks up the ink into a little barrel. It's lovely to draw with and fountain pens give a bit more variation in line than fine-liners.

So I had quite a bit of fun doing all of these - very contemplative and enjoyable.

They are all A3 size, I have put them in a drawer, what are you meant to do with all these random pictures? At least they store easier than quilts.

There were heaps more than this but I think you get the idea.

One good beach day

I had an extended weekend down the coast as part of my piecemeal summer holiday - husband and cat came down Friday night - and Saturday was an actual proper nice beach day. With sunshine, good waves and clear skies. It was just the one day though, the mizzling and 19 degrees was back on Sunday, and Monday evening when I drove home it was 13 degrees coming through Braidwood! What the hell. So one day we ignored the beach and drove around looking for interesting buildings for me to try and draw. 

Here is my rendition of the church of St John the Evangelist. Below is the original photo - I couldn't figure out why there were so many cars in the carpark but it was Sunday which is, apparently, a thing with churches. I shouldn't be surprised.

It's a fairly rudimentary sketch and not exactly accurate, but quite satisfying to get it from photo to paper. And this is what the beach looked like most of the time. Atmospheric but not at all what I wanted.

2023 reading

 I'm still recording what I read into the Goodreads app - when I remember that is - I think only about two thirds make it on. But that's OK, it gives me a better idea than I used to have, which was absolutely none! Twice in the past year I went to add a book and discovered I'd already read it, which is embarrassing, because I had totally happily read it all over again without realising. Anyway here is the 2023 list:

The Supernatural Enhancements	Cantero, Edgar
Nona the Ninth: 3	Muir, Tamsyn
The Book of Form and Emptiness	Ozeki, Ruth
Station Eternity (The Midsolar Murders, #1)	Lafferty, Mur
Her Majesty's Royal Coven (Her Majesty's Royal Coven, #1)	Dawson, Juno
Happy-Go-Lucky	Sedaris, David
The Space Between Worlds (The Space Between Worlds #1)	Johnson, Micaiah
A Few Days in the Country and Other Stories	Harrower, Elizabeth
Terry Pratchett: A Life With Footnotes: The Official Biography	Wilkins, Rob
Love All	Howard, Elizabeth Jane
Less Is Lost (Arthur Less, #2)	Greer, Andrew Sean
The Art of Memoir	Karr, Mary
A Devon Night's Death: The gripping cosy crime series (Devon Mysteries, 5)	Austin, Stephanie
Beyond the Burn Line	McAuley, Paul
Nobody Gets Out Alive: Stories	Newman, Leigh
Now Go Out There:	Karr, Mary
Remainders of the Day: More Diaries from The Bookshop, Wigtown (The Diary of a Bookseller, #3)	Bythell, Shaun
Mr. Breakfast	Carroll, Jonathan
Now Is Not the Time to Panic	Wilson, Kevin
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow	Zevin, Gabrielle
A Little Life	Yanagihara, Hanya
Star Bringer	Wolff, Tracy
Everyone and Everything	Cohen, Nadine J.
From Bad to Cursed (The Witches of Thistle Grove, #2)	Harper, Lana
The Hundred Loves of Juliet	Skye, Evelyn
Beeswax and Tall Tales	Crowley, Jane
A Bird in Winter	Doughty, Louise
Terciel and Elinor (The Old Kingdom, #6)	Nix, Garth
The It Girl	Ware, Ruth
Fractal Noise (Fractalverse, #0.5)	Paolini, Christopher
The Sinister Booksellers of Bath (Left-Handed Booksellers of London, #2)	Nix, Garth
White Is for Witching	Oyeyemi, Helen
Mickey 7	Ashton, Edward

There are a lot of light reads in there - cosy murder mysteries, modern witches and non-challenging science fiction. Most of them I can't remember much about at all. If I had to pick my top two from the list it would be A Little Life - I cried. I don't cry when I read, but I cried at this one. Amazing - and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow - this was great, I wished it was twice as long. I also loved the latest from Tamsyn Muir - should be another one due soon, which I am very much looking forward to. David Sedaris is always great, and the biography of Terry Pratchett was very good too.

Ian Fennelly course

I took advantage of a Black Friday sale and bought a course from Ian Fennelly - superstar urban sketcher - yes, there are such things. I love his shaggy style and random colours but it's too removed from my natural inclinations for me just to do it, so I thought a course was called for. I have done three of the four modules / drawings and it has absolutely been worthwhile - I've learned a lot and some very different ways of doing things.

The first one was a bridge. I don't love this, but I like that he has us working on A3, bigger is easier in some ways. And I was consciously trying to have the colour be more indicative than realistic, which is what gives his stuff a lot of its charm. This was a beginners course and it's scenes around Shrewsbury; I am envious of having picturesque things to go and draw. I am enjoying drawing the little beach houses of my beach town but there isn't much architectural variety and exactly zero interesting streetscapes. 

A street with shops and stuff. 

A half-timbered street with a church at the end and cobbles and other cool things that don't actually exist in Australia. I've really enjoyed this course, lots to think about.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

Hello to 2024!!! Unsurprisingly I have been down the beach after a lovely quiet Christmas (also unsurprisingly) ... number two came up from Melbourne late on Christmas Eve after working that day (retail, such a delight) and number one + girlfriend came over Christmas morning for a lovely day of eating, drinking and a bit of Scrabble. And we re-visited the 2010s Trivial Pursuit which was a disaster for the oldies (again). The weather was dreadful but I had perfected the christmas 2023 signature cocktail (passionfruit mojito, absolutely delicious if I do say so myself) and general good times were had by all.  I got all three of them the traditional christmas rashie (swim top) from Kmart but only number one wore it all day. 

Boxing Day we had brunch with friends and I went down to the beach in the evening to avoid the traffic - absolute disaster because I got caught in a massive storm and had to pull over several times. You could see the lightning spiking down from the sky so I pulled up nice and close (but not touching :)) to a tall car with a caravan. The roads were flooded at several points so chaos on either side - I waited until a smaller car than mine made it through then took the tiny car splashing - not a great idea generally but by that point it was floods to the front and floods to the back so not much choice... worst trip I've ever done.

Then husband and number two and cat came down the next day and we've had a delightful week hanging out. It's been so lovely to have a kid at the beach again! The weather was a bit cold and rainy but we still did a bit of swimming, lots of scrabble, some walking, many episodes of RuPaul's Drag Race (hilarious! who knew?) and much eating and drinking. I wore my excellent christmas present - towel cover up. Practical and pretty and much loved by primary-schoolers and me.