Mmmmm Mulberries!

 

Today I had a lovely afternoon with my friend who lives around the corner. I sketched her mulberry tree while she pottered around in her garden. I just did the ink outline before I downed tools to help with picking a bowl full of mulberries. I added the paint in the evening.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Below are the ones I got to bring home with me! Yum!

 

 

Afterwards we enjoyed a cup of tea on her balcony where I admired her latest craft work and other spoils from her garden.

 

 

Below is a gorgeous old-fashioned rose bush she has growing near where we sat.

 

 

Meanwhile in my own garden the plumbago hedge is beginning to flower and will soon be a mass of blue.

 

 

My standard iceberg roses, which only weeks before, were nothing more than tangles of bare branches and rose-hips, are now lush masses of leaves and blooms after a brisk trim and a dose of liquid fertiliser. 

 

 

The rose below is hidden by the bin so I have to remember to go and admire it.

 

 

My hydrangeas are beginning to bloom but are only small having not been given enough fertiliser I fear.

 

 

The bougainvillea practically burns the retinas out with its high voltage colours. Just glorious!!

 

 

Now if you have got this far, please stay to enjoy some photos I took a couple of weekends ago when I visited the Groat Street festival on the edge of some local bushland. It was an event to promote sustainable community living. My daughters came along and we also met up with a friend. It was such a beautiful day with the stalls looking vibrant and interesting against the bush back-drop. It all felt very country-townish and was a very pleasant way to pass the morning. We joined a women's Aboriginal bush walk with a guide from Bindi Bindi Dreaming who amongst other things showed us which plants could be eaten as bush tucker. Having such a love of our native bush I really enjoy this sort of thing and had been on one of her tours a year or so ago at another bush reserve.

 

Marissa is a very entertaining guide and is a wealth of information about the local Noongar culture.

 

 The seed pods below lather up beautifully with a bit of water and make for a great bush soap.

 

This wonderful stall below made me feel like I was back in Glastonbury in the UK. It was run by Sarah who has a website at www.handmadewonderland.net

 

 

One of my daughters bought a few organic vegetable seedlings.

 

 

 

 

Tortoiseshell Sunglasses and Flowers

I did this super quick sketch (5 or 10 minutes) of my youngest daughter the other day while we were at a café waiting for our hot drinks to arrive. Her very glamorous tortoiseshell sunglasses had me in their thrall and I felt compelled to sketch them. You can see where I had to revise the jawline due to my initial haste and the likeness could be better - but it was fun to do!

Life has been frenetic these past couple of weeks so sketching and painting have taken a backseat. I did however write a travel article which was published in the travel lift-out of The West Australian this weekend - very exciting! I have also been tizzying up the garden now that the weather is so pleasant for sitting outside (although it poured with rain this weekend). I have enjoyed taking photos of flowers over the last month or two and thought they would be nice to share. So gird your loins people as there are quite a lot of them!

 

The following photos were taken at the height of spring when I went for a walk through local remnant bushland with my mum in early September.

The following were taken in my garden in October

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

These lovely roses below are in the garden where I visit my Dad.

 

I hope you all had a great weekend!

30 Sketches in 30 Days

A couple of days ago I thought I'd have to go back and scan all these sketches after discovering at the 11th hour that scanning would eradicate the grey/brown hue of the paper in the photographed versions. However, I was a puddle of exhaustion today so I went with what I already had. The one scan I did at the very end now stands out in a ridiculous manner amongst what I like to now think of as my sepia toned work. But I have come to quite enjoy less than perfect  outcomes. They tell the warts-and-all story of the evolution of things rather than trying to gloss over the shortcomings at the end. Am I rambling? Yes, I thought so! That's one of the side-effects of these 30 day challenges!

Thanks so much to everyone who has left comments and offered words of support and encouragement throughout the month. I'm sorry I haven't responded to all the comments, I will endeavour to lift my game!!! See all the other collages on Leslie Saeta's blog by clicking here.

Yay!!! Number 30 in the 30 Day Challenge

 

Ah! I feel both fulfilled and free all at once!

 

I'm thrilled to have completed Leslie Saeta's 30 day painting challenge for the second time. This time being a comparatively easier journey than in September last year because of doing sketches rather than acrylic paintings.

 I scanned this picture and realise now that the scanner is probably only the best option for black and white sketches - it seems to wash out the colour somewhat compared to a photo.

Now that the challenge is over, I have no more excuses not to get stuck into writing and finishing off my book!