The Emerald Isle

I've been doing and seeing so much whilst here in Ireland, it has been hard to find the time to post on my blog.

After a nightmare trip over which involved three different flights, three long waits at three different airports and over 40 hours of all but no sleep, we arrived in Dublin. After a good night's sleep my sister and I were collected by my brother who lives an hour and a half south of the city with his wife. The view of the seats in front of us had been burned into our brain so it was wonderful to swap it for the gorgeous one above which is the view from my brother and sister-in-law's diningroom window.

We were well looked after and they drove us around to see all the local beauty spots. The windy hedge-lined lanes were dotted with rustic cottages and beautiful gardens and everywhere we looked was beautifully and quintessentially Irish. 

I've really appreciated all the comments that everyone has posted on my previous few posts and I'm sorry I haven't responded. I may not get much time to do so while I'm away but I really appreciate all my visitors!! I hope everyone is keeping well!

We are now spending a few nights in Dublin.

Waiting in the Departure Lounge

Yay! my first sketch and we haven't even left Perth yet.

Testing, Testing

After much gnashing of teeth - and with some help from my long-suffering husband - I have finally worked out how to do a blogpost from my i-pad!
I had to buy a special attachment to be able to upload the photos from my camera onto my i-pad, so I took my camera with me on my walk the other day to get some new snaps to upload.
I spotted this shag drying it's wings in the breeze.
So, I think I'm all set now for blogging all over the world!!

The Details are Sketchy!

Brighton Living Room - 1985

Historic House in Albany - 1989

Federation Home - 1989

I have some exciting news! Soonish, my sister Jenny and I will be spending five weeks in the UK together. It will be an early celebration of my fiftieth birthday which is still a few months away. The fact that I'm soon to be half a century old is almost as hard to believe as the fact that I will soon be swanning around Ireland, Wales and England. The latter is much more exciting of course!

We plan to take sketching materials along in the hope of creating some blogworthy works of art to accompany the photos I intend to post along the way. This reminds me that I will need to work out how to post via my i-pad!

It is a long while since I have done much in the way of sketching and pen and ink drawings, so long in fact that I had literally forgotten of the existence of the second and third of these three pictures. I found them this morning while hunting for the top one. While it is the least accomplished of the three it has a lot of sentimental value to me. It is the one-and-only ink sketch I did while on a backpacking holiday around the UK and Europe when I was twenty-one. Near the beginning of my eight month adventure I stayed for a few days at a friend's house in Brighton in the lead up to Christmas. I was totally entranced by their beautifully decorated town house and felt inspired to try my hand at sketching their living room. I didn't do any preliminary pencil drawing as you can see by the wonky walls, but worked in ink from the beginning. I suspect I used a Rotring pen which was a favourite tool of mine at the time. I definitely drew the second one in pencil first as it is too neat to have done otherwise but the tilt and looseness of the third makes me suspect I may not have done much preliminary drawing first at all.

I confess to being a bit startled at some of the techniques I used in the second sketch as I don't remember ever having these skills under my belt. I was very keen on ink drawings at the time so I probably familiarised myself with different cross-hatching styles before beginning; something I want to do again now in the lead up to going away. I'm not sure exactly what style I will come up with while I'm away. Before I found these I had imagined just doing a light ink outline with a watercolour wash - or maybe just pencil alone. Who knows! As long as I at least produce a few pieces of art I will be happy!

I have been very remiss with creating and posting of late but my excuse is that a lot of my time has been taken up with booking this holiday. Also, I needed a bit of a break. I wasn't getting enough down time as my stiff shoulders and continuing sore back could attest to. As for my book - I was a bit precipitate in announcing it was near completion. After getting further feedback from my latest round of readers, I know I have more culling and honing to do. It will be at the top of my list of things to do upon my return.

*****

I am also posting some photos of a beautiful hand made note-book my daughter made for a friend's birthday recently. I thought to post it after visiting Celia Blanco's blog where she showed how she'd cleverly made her own sketch book and asked if others had made similar items.

My daughter had learnt how to bind her own sketch book during an art class she had taken as a broadening unit at university last year. She has used hand-made paper bought from Oxfam for the cover and used some paper she'd bought in Japan for the end papers. She sewed it all together with bits of cotton she found around the place. I have dropped some VERY heavy hints that I would like a book like this for my birthday!!

The Lizard Whisperer

2007 - My daughter sketching a lizard from life 

 It was interesting to see the varied reactions to the photo of our "pet" goanna in my last post. It made me wonder if smaller reptiles would elicit the same response. I grew up in a bush setting where such creatures were a common sight so I had no fear of them. Taking their cues from me, my daughters also grew up not fearing them and as children would catch little lizards to play with - my oldest daughter in particular. There was a time when she'd often have a clutch of them in an ice-cream container in order to pamper them with all manner of interesting fare - like grass and flowers - before letting them go. Other times she'd have them trotting up her arm or sitting quietly on her hand. It's not in their nature to socialise with humans and they usually dart away if you get too close, but my daughter seemed to have such an uncanny way with them they became unnaturally docile in her presence. We called her the "lizard whisperer". These photos were taken at the height of her powers in 2007 . I was incredulous to find this cute little lizard sitting patiently for ages while she drew it meticulously in her sketch pad. She did a beautiful job!!

I was thrilled to win some of Canadian artist Shawna Lampi-Legaree's beautiful cards recently which she sent to me from Ayers Rock (Uluru) while visiting Australia recently. Click here to read about her Australian adventure and check out her stunning artwork.

Canadian cards now at home among the gum trees!

Getting Ideas on the Table

 While I've been waiting for feedback on my manuscript from a few readers, I have been toying with ideas for the book's cover. I got out a pile of beautiful reference books to inspire me while I did a couple of sketches of a concept I'd had rattling around in my head for a while. The following day I scanned my best black and white drawing and painted it in watercolour to see how it might look. I have another version in my mind's eye that I want to get on to paper and hope there will be still more ideas to come before making the final decision as to what my book will look like. I'd intended working on it today but the day evaporated before I had time to get to it. So I'm off to cook dinner instead!

I was delighted to spot this baby goanna in my back garden the other day.  

Happy Easter Everyone!

coloured pencil on watercolour paper 1999

I have always loved doing illustrations and I'd often send them to greeting card publishers in the hope of selling my designs. These two were among those that I sent off - to no avail.

Easter for us happens in autumn and has very special memories for me from childhood. The first hint of a chill in the air always gets those magical Easter memories flooding back. I also had beautiful children's picture books that depicted Easter in the northern hemisphere where the spring flowers seem to go hand in hand with the Easter theme. Hence the inspiration for the above illustration. 

In the last few decades in Australia the Easter Bilby has come on to the scene to also deliver eggs. The Bilby is an endangered marsupial that lives in the more arid areas of the country.

coloured pencil on cartridge paper 1994

My Pet Tree

                                           Watercolour and ink on paper 10" x 15"

I've been wanting to try plein air for a while now, as well as try my hand at watercolour and ink beyond illustration. The ink outline got a bit lost in the end and I regretted painting the background first as I made a dog's breakfast of it - I wish I'd left it out. However, I thoroughly enjoyed getting outside and painting from life on a glorious, sunny, autumn day. I love this eucalyptus tree that is in our garden, and have been wanting to paint it for years. The trunk looks stunning in the dappled light (in real life that is!). I painted this over the course of two hours this afternoon and by the time I'd finished, the shadows were getting much more pronounced. I began to deepen the shadows as you can see on the right hand limb but then I realised I was losing the nuance I had captured originally. So it is a rather flawed piece but successful enough to inspire me to try again.

I want to get a light-weight outdoor easel so I feel I can go further afield. Now that the weather is cooling down I won't get burnt to a crisp. I didn't have a very practical set up today. I just sat on a camp stool with the paper clipped to a board and I held it on my lap. I brought down an old kid's chair to put everything on.   Here are some progress shots.

Oh Yes, this is the best shot I've been able to get of a stingray so far, so I will keep trying! Yes, it is that black shape in the middle of the photo!!

Dappled Light at Houghton

                                                    Acrylic on board 15cm x 15cm

I've been making excuses lately about not having time to paint because of being on a writing bender. While it's true that I've been writing at every available opportunity, it doesn't mean I can't make more effort to fit things in around it. In fact, I had been managing creative balance quite well for a year or two but I got derailed when I hurt my back last October and haven't managed to get back on track since. Michael Perchard's comment on my previous post somehow permeated my writing fog and I now hope to revive my weekly painting habit. Thanks Michael!

Say Hannan's

Oil on board circa 1990

Once again I am reduced to scraping the barrel of my lean body of work in order to post some art work. There has been no lack of creative energy pumping through my veins lately but it has all been channelled into my writing. I took this snap while visiting my mum and dad today as it hangs in their dining room. The colours have come up quite gaudy in the photo I'm afraid.  I had painted the hotel from a photo I took while visiting the gold mining town of Kalgoorlie-Boulder in the late 1980s. "Hannan's" was the name of a local beer and "Say Hannan's" was their slogan. There are a lot of places and things in the area that incorporate the name Hannan, due to the first person to strike gold in the area being an Irish prospector by the name of Paddy Hannan in 1893. The town sprung up around the consequent gold rush. In real life the hotel was on a bituminised street in the town but I made up the background by drawing inspiration from some other photos I'd taken of flowering everlastings in the local bushland.

Flowers and Wildlife

Begonia in Blue and White Pot

Acrylic on board 15cm x 15cm

Not long ago this beautiful begonia was the first thing to greet people that came through our front door. I took some photos for art reference while it was in its prime as I knew I wouldn't get a chance to paint it from life for a while. Lucky I did, as the poor thing has since gone to meet its maker and is probably having a good old whinge about me with all the other begonias that have suffered a similar fate at my hands. 

I began painting this yesterday but downed tools when we heard there was an unusual visitor at one of the suburban beaches. The girls and I whipped down to Sorrento Beach to goggle at a giant Elephant seal that had hauled itself out of the sea and was enjoying a bit of R & R. It was a monster, I couldn't believe how huge it was - apparently around 2,000kgs and still just a teenager. It is a very rare occurrence to see them this far from home as it has come all the way from Antarctica. It must have been feeling the heat - 37 Celsius. I took a couple of snaps but it was hard to get a good view of it's head as there were a lot of other spectators there too along with news crews. 

Unlike Elephant seals, something that I do commonly see when I walk along the beach are stingrays gliding through the shallows but unfortunately I haven't seen them on the days when I've taken my camera. They are such beautiful creatures.

Another wildlife treat I had recently was when my husband and I were celebrating our 24th wedding anniversary at a restaurant on the river called Mosmans. I was impressed to see how healthy the Swan River is looking these days - the water is crystal clear. To our delight a black swan and its two cygnets swam right past us. Black swans are native to Australia and our river was named after these black beauties.

Look at how clear the water is!

Oh yes, check out my latest Banksia Lane Press post if you want to see more of Western Australia.

                           

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!