“Wait in your car until your GP calls you”. We forget we’re still under the cloud of Covid (and now flu). Sketching Buchanan Park from the parking lot of our health provider on 2 separate occasions.
What a beautiful white gum behind the fence! There seems no vehicle entry to Buchanan Park and people are parking illegally in the medical clinic’s parking lot!
Marker pens, Handbook Journal 5.5" x 5.5".
Sketching from live TV coverage on my comfortable couch at home was better than being there! Thank you BBC!
I should have sketched scenes in the abbey when people were mostly stationary but I was too afraid to miss anything.
A page in history.
#Sailorfude pen, watercolour, #Stillman&Birn Zeta Sketchbook, 7.5”x 7.5”
I love sketching action so the parade and ceremony at the War Memorial in Berwick, Victoria for Anzac Day was too good an opportunity to miss. It was just a small ceremony in this outer suburb of Melbourne but nonetheless meaningful. Quite well attended and the cafes did well after.
Note the soldier in the photo below marching in a WWI uniform.
#Sailorfude pen, watercolour, SeawhiteTravelJournal 5.5" x 5.5".
A timely visit to Cruden Farm after watching Episode 1 of the documentary The Murdoch Empire. This is the main house at Cruden Farm in Langwarrin, east of Melbourne. It was the childhood weekend home of media mogul Rupert Murdoch. His mother Dame Elizabeth Murdoch spent her long life (she lived till 103) redesigning and maintaining the lovely garden. It is considered one of the most significant gardens in Australia as the initial design was done in 1930 by the renowned woman landscape designer of the day Edna Walling and the estate still maintains many interesting features from that time. The giant tree in front of the house is a magnificent hybrid oak, a cross between a Pin Oak and a Macedon Oak. It is known by the Cruden Farm gardeners as the Laughing Oak as it sheds its leaves at a different time from other oaks.
After the coldest start to April in umpteen years, I wasn't expecting to feel hot sketching in Pioneers Park, Berwick. I don't know what trees these are but they are pruned hard each year and look cute as they start to sprout.
#Sailorfude pen, watercolour,#Stillman&Birn Beta Sketchbook, 7.5”x 7.5”.
It’s been 5 months since I added anything to my Garden Sketch Journal! I think our potted plants need to be featured so here’s two sketches which also takes me to the end of this sketchbook dedicated to my garden which I started in October 2021!
Our ferns and Elephants Ears are doing so well after we moved them to the shady side of the deck last winter.
Moving the potted Mona Lavender and the Curry Leaf Tree to where we can see them from indoors has given me much pleasure. The Blood Leaf plant (given to me by my friend Carmen) is now three plants!
#Sailorfude pen, watercolour,#Stillman&Birn Beta Sketchbook, 5.5”x 8.5”.
I was trying out a few new techniques here – painting in the shadow areas first instead of the usual method of doing them last, using more water in a wash at the bottom to give some variation in paint thickness and leaving some of the sketch unpainted. The shadow areas needed to be much darker than I had anticipated so they required a couple of layers of paint. The thin wash areas at the bottom ended up somewhat insipid and timid but I liked the unpainted right side of the sketch. So all in all, mixed success.
This is One Price Store, Emerald Hill, one of my favourite places in Singapore. I have sketched this building on-location twice before but this is a virtual sketch from Google Maps.
#Sailorfude pen, watercolour,#Stillman&Birn Zeta Sketchbook, 7.5”x 7.5”.
