Spending Christmas day at my brother-in-law’s, I sketched my sister-in-law’s lovely garden and the fibre glass hippo they made for their daughter 40 plus years ago. He’s still going strong and is called Tamus as in hippopotamus”.
We had our wedding reception at this house 50 years ago and my sister-in-law made the wedding cake! I added the paint after lunch, the sun had changed by then.
#Sailorfude pen, watercolour, #MoleskineWatercolourAlbum, 5x8”
We had a couple of nights in Geelong (a regional town west of Melbourne city) to attend the Melbourne Urban Sketchers' year end sketchmeet plus we made it a weekend to celebrate our 50th wedding anniversary!
What glorious weather for sketching at the Geelong waterfront. Sketching some sketchers was a challenge, wish they would stay still!
The Carousel (housed in the Information Centre at the waterfront) was constructed in 1892 and is only one of 200 Armitage Herschell steam driven carousels left in the world. 24 of the 36 horses are actually original (now painstakingly restored to their former glory) and even contain real horse hair in their tails. Children were allowed in at intervals to ride on the carousel.
Here's a few photos of myself and the group. (Thanks Helen Wilding for the photos).
It was good eating in Geelong as well. On Friday night we went to Mav's (voted best Greek restaurant in Victoria and Tasmania by the Restaurant and Catering Association). Crowded, long tables of happy diners, absolutely jumping. Very noisy but the food was good, the chargrilled scallops exquisite!
A northern Italian place for Saturday dinner which was just excellent! I had wonderfully smooth tender black linguine for the first time. I believe it's made with squid ink!? Why is my home cooked pasta nothing like this?
Below is the ferris wheel along the Geelong waterfront.
The Berwick Inn Hotel, a view from up the High Street. Established in 1857, it is presently a restaurant. As an inn it was the last stop for the stage coach from Melbourne before the goldfields of eastern Victoria.
Quick sketching and Vietnamese Rice Rolls for a takeaway lunch with my spouse in the park on High Street, Berwick, Victoria.
Casey sketchers (a group which has its roots in Casey U3A) had an end of year Christmas sketchmeet and lunch at The Old Cheese Factory in Berwick, Victoria. Here I've sketched a couple of sketchers and the corner of the 1860s Springfield Homestead. An old cheese factory also sits on the property and with its nice gardens is a popular venue for weddings.
I tried a looser style of sketching on this occassion and like it! Much kinder for arthritic fingers and an old brain.
Here's photos of the groups' sketches (tepees were being erected near us for a wedding) and the great lunch spread!
#Sailorfude pen, watercolour, #Stillman&Birn Zeta Sketchbook, 7.5”x 7.5”
A short trip to Ballarat, a small city west of Melbourne. This was the first time we've taken the VLine (country train), a one and half hour trip. J attended a conference, I got to sketch and interesting breakfasts at Lola’s where the decor and crockery was all BLUE.
This was my first tentative foray into serious sketching again after 6 months of cataract surgery issues...but now I'm sketching with my thumb in a strap due to an injury!
Second sketch: #Sailorfude pen, watercolour, #MoleskineWatercolourNotebook, 5" x 8.25”
For something different, I went to sketch at a home auction! House prices have dropped lately and the auction was passed in at 1.4 million dollars. It's a beautiful house on a large lot, worth closer to 2 million in my opinion. It drew a biggish crowd but people were mostly onlookers like me.
All over in 10 minutes! The auctioneer is the figure in the striped suit.
The Garden Journal which I started a year ago has gone well. The sketchbook is only three quarters full so I’ll keep going for another year!
After a very wet winter our spring garden is looking extra lush. This wasn’t planned but all the flowers in our courtyard are complementary colours (sort of).
It's been a bit hard going sketching with poor near vision but not too much longer now till I can get reading glasses after my cataract surgeries!
8am, the power is off in our house, our street is closed but there’s a lot of activity outside. 6 huge vehicles have rolled up! AUSNet is replacing an old wooden power pole. First a man is hoisted up to trim the oak tree next to the pole. It’s a heritage tree, one of 35 oaks planted in 1918 to commemorate those who served in World War One.
Then the old pole was pulled out on a winch, laid on a vehicle for removal and a new metal pole put in its place.
All the trimmed vegetation was then bundled into a big tarp, hoisted up and dumped into a vehicle. Then all the wiring had to be reconnected. A BIG job!
The foreman showed us the tag which was on the old pole (he’s keeping it as a souvenir). The tag says “30 GG 1928 (30 feet tall, a Grey Gum and installed in 1928)!!! The new metal pole is UGLY!!!
He said we’d all remember today - 9/9/22. Queen Elisabeth passed away.
These are my first sketches with 2 bionic eyes all done on location. I had my second cataract surgery done just 3 days ago and am pleasantly surprised with the impressive result!
Marker, coloured pencils, Handbook Journal 5.5" x 5.5".
After an uncomfortable 4 month wait after the first surgery, my second cataract surgery is finally done! It was a very short wait before being called from the waiting room so I hardly had any time to use my new Tombow marker. The people were sketched while in the waiting room and I filled in the solid shapes during the...sigh, unexpectedly long wait to actually hit the operating table. The whole hospital visit took almost 6 hours again!
The result of the second surgery is much better than after the first. I feel like I’ve had a missing limb replaced!
Now comes the long recovery...
Tombow marker. Handbook Journal 5.5" x 5.5".
After a very long wet and gloomy winter, I'd quite forgotten what blue sky was was! Pioneer Park is a favourite sketch venue of mine. It was the site of the Berwick Primary School from 1869 till 2003 when it was located to a new site. Donations and fundraising efforts by the local community eventually convinced the Council to acquire the old School House and site for a garden park (instead of the planned car park!). Generous contributions also came from various foundations and heritage societies. Opened in 2005 it's a small but very pleasant park much used by the local community (especially during the height of our Covid outbreak when meeting friends outdoors for coffee became very popular).
To read more on the history of the park, click here.
#Sailorfude pen, watercolour, #MoleskineWatercolourNotebook, 5 x 8.25”
#Pioneerpark
Sketching with my two very uneven eyes (one cataract operation done and still waiting for the other to be done) AND being sloppy obviously doesn't work for inorganic subjects! That is very wonky looking garden furniture! It's good to know what works and what doesn't with my present eye condition.
I'm enjoying the process rather than the product and this was a rainy day at-home sketch.
Not my usual (or preferred) subject matter but we had these two blood oranges crying to be sketched. They were a bit on the small side but I do like them and ate one as I was drawing it.
The painted version is badly overworked but I enjoyed the splashy bits.
#Sailorfude pen, watercolour, #Stillman&Birn Zeta Sketchbook, 7.5”x 7.5”
A month ago we noticed that there was pile of vegetation on our bathroom window-sill. A nice warm and sheltered spot. J shone a light onto what looked like a furry brown lump in what was obviously a nest of some sort and was greeted by a BIG round eye!!! A young Ringtail Possum! They are a protected species here in Australia. We named him Charlie.
If he didn't make so much mess (vegetation and poop) we would have loved to have a possum to watch but this was just too much, we had to move him along. J poked a broomstick into the tree next morning and had a startled Charlie leap onto on his shoulder and scamper away!
Next day Charlie was back in the Conifer again.
I read that possums hate the smell of Blood and Bone fertilizer. A generous sprinkle of the fertilizer around the Conifer tree made Charlie vacate his Conifer abode but he didn't go far – just across the courtyard into our Bay Tree where he continued to make a daily mess of vegetation and poop.
J took a broom to the Bay tree one day and out popped TWO Charlies which scampered away!! One morning we dislodged Charlie who sat on our clothes hoist long enough for me to take a photo. He was scungy and his fur was bristling. Certainly not the cute fluffy critters you see in photos in Google!
Now a month later, he seems to have moved away! A friend told me that Possums live in about 5 different abodes...
#Sailorfude pen, watercolour, #MoleskineWatercolourNotebook, 5 x 8.25”
Just a view from our window, catching the last of the afternoon light. I never knew so many cars came, parked and went.
We have 3 bins - green (rubbish, collected weekly), red (green waste and kitchen scraps, collected fortnightly) and blue (recyclables, collected fortnightly). We share the bin area with our neighbour behind us.
Each of the countries we’ve lived in had different and interesting garbage collection methods but unfortunately I wasn’t a sketcher then and never documented the rituals.
#Sailorfude pen, watercolour,#Stillman&Birn Zeta Sketchbook, 7.5”x 7.5”
I vowed to keep a Garden Journal for 12 months and the time will be up in 3 weeks at the end of our winter.
Still waiting to have my second cataract operation (and not being able to get used to my new one eyed bifocals), I tried sketching this without any glasses. I am pleased with the result!
This is a familiar scene for me, I guess it helps when you know the subject. It's our tiny courtyard garden in the dying light of an unusually sunny winter afternoon.
Art teachers always tell you to squint (or remove your glasses) so you can’t see details. I presently have in-built slightly blurry vision so that is an asset!
Should I add more or leave the blank space for some text!?
#Sailorfude pen, watercolour, #Stillman&Birn Beta Sketchbook, 5.5”x8.5”
Another page from my Garden Journal. We bought these 2 Sarracenia (Trumpet Pitcher) plants last December from Mitre 10 in Beaconsfield during our summer and they did well in a sheltered spot under our bird bath. (Mitre 10 is mainly a hardware store but they do sell some interesting plants!). I sketched them from life over a period of several days April-June but only added the text today. They've now withered and are dormant over the winter. Going by the advice I read from a business that specializes in these plants, we have cut them back to within a couple of inches from the base. Hopefully when spring comes in September we will see them come back to life!
#Sailorfude pen, watercolour, #Stillman&Birn Beta Sketchbook, 5.5”x8.5”
Inspired by Urban Sketchers Nishant Jain (Vancouver) and Leonie Andrews (Canberra), I went back to finish this sketch of a street library in an outer suburb of Melbourne, Australia. It's housed in an old bar fridge with a plastic box on top. I spoke to the owner who told me his street library got featured in an article in the local gazette! He's an artist and the picture on the front of the fridge part is a print of one of his paintings. From the turnover of books it apparently is popular with the neighbourhood.
I had started this sketch a week ago, standing up with my sketchbook on the footpath but due to lack of time and cold I didn't finish it until yesterday afternoon when it was unusually warm and sunny (it has been a very cold winter). This time I took my stool to sit on and finished the sketch in comfort, adding colour from my tiny Art Toolkit palette. Mine is an empty palette filled with my own choice of colours.
#Sailorfude pen, watercolour, #MoleskineWatercolourAlbum, 5x8”
When we lived in Canada, we enjoyed a display from our Zygocactus plant every December and we knew it there as a Christmas Cactus. Here in the southern hemisphere it blooms in June/July and ours has done well this year. Unfortunately I didn't think of sketching it till this week when the blooms were nearly gone.
#Sailorfude pen, watercolour, #Stillman&Birn Beta Sketchbook, 5.5”x8.5”.
