Ayers Rock - Blast from the Past

In the 1980s I had an eight month stint working as a waitress at the Sheraton Ayers Rock Hotel in the newly built tourist town of Yulara. Yulara is situated 20 kilometres from the iconic Ayers Rock (Uluru) in the middle of Australia. I painted this while I was there - not by looking at the rock itself as you'd expect, but from a postcard of all things!! At the time I was very enamoured with the pointillism technique developed by the French post-impressionist painter Georges Seurat and tried to emulate his style.

I was recently composing an anecdote from this period in my life to include in the book I am writing at the moment. In my quest for supporting material I got in touch by email with one of my friends who I worked with at the hotel. We hadn't been in contact for at least 20 years and it was so nice to hear his news. Below is a photo of the two of us taken with his camera standing at the base of Ayers Rock.

It turns out that my friend has since become a very successful professional photographer. He is an award winning specialist car photographer and writer. You can check out his fantastic work at his website here - James Mann

Below is a photo taken "in the day" of me dressed for a toga party in front of my painting. And the last one was taken the day I was leaving Yulara to come home to Perth. It was such a great time of my life. I can't believe it's nearly 30 years ago! But then I look at my reflection in the mirror and it's not so hard to believe after all!

Australia Day Weekend

            

Snap Happy - acrylic on board 15cm x 15cm (6" x 6")

I painted this today from a photo I took in December while on my morning walk. I took over 70 photos and thought I had some great shots amongst them. But when I got home and downloaded them, I discovered to my horror that there had been a smudge on the lens which had blighted most of them. At least I can ignore the smudge when using the shots for art reference. 

I rather liked the colours of the palette near the finished painting and couldn't resist photographing it. Also, I thought people might be interested to see how I am now storing my most frequently used paints. I commandeered one of my acrylic greeting card stands which makes them so much easier to find. Usually I'd have to scrabble through a messy pile of them just lying next to the easel. 

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We recently celebrated the Australia day long weekend.by spending several days in a fishing town north of Perth. There are some huge and spectacular sand-dunes to be seen on the trip up. As the years pass they march slowly across the landscape. You can understand how they get around when you see the sand blowing in the strong winds. If not for the heat and the vegetation you could be forgiven for thinking they are smacking great snow drifts. They made me think of all my fellow art-bloggers who are getting a lot of snow lately.

The beach house where we stay is authentically 1970s and I love it! It still boasts most of its original decor. This macrame owl wall-hanging is just like the one I aspired to making in the 1970s but never did. Back then it seemed like the last word in style - haha! I did however make a mission-brown pot-plant hanger which I was very proud of at the time.

Dreaming of Escaping the Heat

Pen and watercolour on paper 13cm x 13cm 

My dear art blogger friend Michael Perchard recently posted some stunning snowy scenes that looked very exotic to my heat addled eyes. While his part of the world was getting extreme winter temperatures, we were getting extreme summer temperatures. It reached 43.3 degrees Celsius (110F) the other day in Perth and a snowy landscape seemed a rather appealing place to be. But of course, in reality it would be far too cold for comfort as my pink and grey galah discovered. 

It was the combination of Michael's great photos and the extreme weather conditions from one hemisphere to another that inspired me to do this quick illustration. It was a quicker option than painting too! The writing is still winning by a long way at the moment. 

Time Flies!

watercolour illustration circa 2006

Please excuse the quality of this reproduction. I just took a quick snap of it with my old camera. My new camera has turned it's toes up, but hopefully someone will be able to resuscitate it for me.

My youngest daughter recently received the good news that her exam results will enable her to go to her university of choice. So we are all very proud and excited for her.

It's the end of an era! By March I will have both of my daughters going to university. Here in Perth most kids live at home while attending university - mine included, so it is nice to have them living with us for several more years at least. A few of my friends and I were marvelling at how recently it seems that we were going in to their pre-primary classes to help out, and here they are (seemingly 5 minutes later) all grown up.

I did the above illustration when my daughter was around 9 or 10 years old (again, it feels like 5 minutes ago!). She is in the middle with her special friends of the time. I tried to keep all their heights in proportion to each other and they all described to me what they wanted to be wearing in the picture. It was so much fun to do and the girls all loved the finished picture. I sent it to a greeting card publisher in the UK in the hope of selling it - but no luck!

At the moment I'm still in a writing frenzy and I had to pull myself away from the manuscript to post this. I had a moment this morning when I thought I might rear up and do a painting, but the moment passed and the writing won. Hopefully the paintbrushes will be called into action by the end of this coming week.

Three more sleeps!!

This is a Christmas card design that I sent out to family and friends a few years back. I did this illustration in watercolour and ink. It is a medium I really enjoy and hope to do more of in 2014.

I didn't get cards made from my recent Christmas painting in the end. Unfortunately, it turned out to be too expensive to do a small print run. I will hopefully do a few more Christmas designs and get a larger print run organised for next year.

I'm still struggling to get over my back pain. It has put me off painting because sitting is the worst position for it. Hopefully it will resolve soon and I'll be pumping out paintings in the new year!

I've been walking along the beach a lot lately and I took my camera with me yesterday. Divine conditions and looking set to be similar for Christmas day. Rather than having a white Christmas - we are more likely to have a white-cap Christmas if there's a good swell!

I hope everyone has a very Merry Christmas and a healthy and creative New Year!

I've really enjoyed this past year of getting to know so many people on-line and really appreciate all the support and encouragement that has come with that.

Singapore

My youngest daughter and I have just spent a wonderful week in tropical Singapore. I particularly loved the lush tropical vegetation. When we returned home to Perth everything looked browner and drier than ever in comparison. But it is summer here of course.

I loved the Singapore Botanic Gardens which are home to the Orchid Gardens.

The above orchids were at the front entrance of our hotel near Orchard Road.

We couldn't go to Singapore without visiting the Raffles Hotel for high tea.

We had breakfast with the Orangutans at the Singapore Zoo

Above is a scene from China Town

Now I need to get myself back into painting and writing mode!!

Simple Pleasures

 I haven't had time to paint just lately as there are other things afoot. So in the meantime I thought I'd post some photos I took the other day of simple things around the house and garden that bring me joy. I was at a garden centre the other day with one of my daughters and we had never seen such ridiculously cute sunflowers before. I couldn't restrain myself from buying one. It is equally beautiful from the back.
The cat that featured in one of my recent paintings is now a very regular visitor.

A ladybird thought it was beautiful too!

The flower below is a native trigger plant (Stylidium) that my mum and dad bought for me recently. You can see some smaller varieties at the base of the larger plant. If you prod the flowers a little hammer is triggered and springs across your fingernail. Of course the hammer wasn't designed with fingernails in mind but instead for visiting insects as a heavy handed tactic to ensure pollination . 

I had only ever seen smaller varieties before I was given this larger specimen. It was in bud at the time and I waited with baited breath to see what the flowers would look like. It seemed they would be huge, with hammers big enough to bruise grown men. In the end they were smaller than anticipated but still beautiful. I feel a bit cruel when I trigger them off because they have to reset themselves. It must take up a bit of energy - particularly after having already expended energy by being cross that it wasn't an insect that had triggered them off in the first place. 

See the tiny little trigger flowers at the base.

We were pleased to have our resident bob-tail goanna visit a couple of days ago. We only see it once or twice a year - usually with its mate. Hopefully its mate is still hale and hearty somewhere in the garden.

They blend in so well with the sand and leaf litter it's no wonder we don't see them more often.

We have a nest with two Wattle bird chicks in it. Huge chicks about the same size as the mother.

I haven't seen them for the past day or so, so maybe they are already fully fledged!

For Me?

                                            Acrylic on board 15cm x 15xm (6" x 6")

I finally reared up late this afternoon and finished off this picture. I was quite happy with how it came out in the end. The photo's not so great though as it was dark by the time I finished and this was taken in artificial light. Ironically, I have my daylight lamp which is great to paint by but it seemed to do weird things to the photo.

I was going for lots of great walks along the beach recently until I strained a few muscles last weekend. I feel I'll be ready to revive my walking routine tomorrow. The girls and I found some beautiful abalone shells on the beach last week. The three together are much smaller that the big one taken by itself.

Below the abalone are pictures of the beach taken a month or so ago when there was a lot of seaweed around. I find some types of seaweed to be very beautiful - like the specimen below.

A Bit Stuck

This is an illustration in progress. I was attempting to do a Christmas card illustration with an Australian theme to send to my overseas friends and family this year.Usually I do illustrations in watercolour. I begin with a pencil rough and when I'm happy with the design, I use my lightbox to trace it onto the thick, smooth paper ready to outline in ink and then paint in watercolour. I thought I'd try an illustration using acrylics for a change.
 I invented this beach scene without a clear idea as to exactly what I was going to do with it. Once I got it to this point I decided I would add a couple of festive koala bears into the scene to liven it up - either sitting or standing on the beach towel. I felt it would be too easy to spoil what I'd already done if I began trying to paint the koalas without a preliminary drawing first. So I did that but then found it too hard to transfer it onto the board.
 Doing the pencil rough stirred me up to do some more illustrating in my usual style as I quite miss it. I've barely done any illustrating since embarking on this acrylic journey at the beginning of last year. So I began to wonder if I should leave this painting in limbo for now and just do the whole thing in watercolour and ink. The indecision has caused me to do neither and now I feel there is a bit of a barrier to getting to it at all. How easy it is to derail a good run of painting! It isn't helped by the fact that my painting time is competing with my writing time and both are competing with all the other things that are currently on my plate. The writing has been winning over the painting lately. I've got quite a few hours under my belt this past week or so which I'm pleased about.

Blogger Friends

The other day I met up with my art blogger friend Karen Johnston who was holidaying here in Perth. We enjoyed a lovely lunch together at Hillarys Marina. It was so exciting to meet face to face and to be able to chat about art together. It is the first time I have met up with a blog buddy - such fun!
Karen is a New Zealand artist who does amazing work in oils. click here to see the beautiful work on her blog. Hopefully it will be the first of many catch ups.

There has been a lot happening here with my youngest daughter going through the final throes of graduating from high school and getting through the last of her exams. Lots of stress and excitement all at once. I'm still getting a bit of time for creativity and am halfway through a small painting that I hope to finish in the next few days. I'm also making some progress on my writing. I hope you are all having a great weekend!

A Visitor to our Garden

                                          Acrylic on board 15cm x 15cm (6" x 6")

I painted this over three separate days this week and I also spent a few hours on my writing. Not as much as I would have liked, but there was a lot going on in other arenas so it couldn't be helped.

Palettes and Perth

I use disposable vegetable parchment palettes for my acrylic paintings and these are the ones I used in the 30 day challenge. They looked too pretty to throw out and I thought they would collectively make a nice work of art in themselves. I was waiting for a nice sunny day to peg them on to the clothesline en masse. It was rather windy but I got a few good shots amidst the buffeting.

I set myself a challenge to spend 10 hours this week working on my manuscript. I did over 11 hours and was pleased to fulfil the challenge considering how tired I was this week. I hope to do more writing hours next week and a small painting too!

For my blogger friends who have shown an interest in the area where I live, I found this short video promotion of Perth that you might find interesting.

A Collage of 30 Days of Painting

30 days of painting. Not in chronological order.