Mitcham street scene

Yesterday we were in Adelaide for my mothers Birthday, but as we were a little early we sat under a shady tree in the car and I sketched the houses up from us.
Not a terribly good sketch but at least I did manage to do something.
time for sketching has been pretty minimal for a while.
I think my mother had a lovely day, she was 96, what an age! We had a both her nephew and niece and their partners along too, and she hadnt seen them for a while, of course whether she remembers who they are is a moot point but it didnt seem to matter.

2nd week of a spread of sketches

Here is my second week of a spread of sketches that Nina challenged us to do.
I have a new printer/scanner and i am still trying to work out how it works, took me ages to get this far but I dont know if the scan is large enough. If you click on it it will enlarge.
An odd assortment from a bush in the garden the scene of the Bluff and wright Island done on a walk, pegs to indicate I was hanging out washing, the clematis which is flowering so well and the little blue wrens that we call flying mice who inhabit all areas of the garden and then the fairy shoes I am making.
Still very hot and dry but not as bad yesterday as the weather bureau was predicting thank goodness.

Play with spray paints

I rather like this and it was fun. I am not sure if it quite belongs in this blog but here it is.
I have some wonderful new spray paints called shimmering mists or some such name and I was using them to spray some textiles/mixed media stuff and this was the base of what I was spraying. It looks absolutely luscious.
I have been doing a small sketch a day to go in my sketchbook spread but that is about all I have time for as suddenly the weather is hot, that means trying to keep the garden alive, and there are a heap of birthdays which means presents etc, and then Christmas is coming and I usually make presents for that and at the moment I am absolutely stuck for ideas.

My week long spread

Here is my small watercolor journal with the first of my weeks spread in it.
The second page had sketches done on the beach at Pt Elliott, and a piece of brain coral I found and sketched,a few of my collection of fish in ceramic and tin, the opium poppies who are flowering in my garden at the moment and roses on the front terrace with a bit of the wrought iron.
None done in great detail, some just for fun, but when time is of the essence at the moment this id keeping up my interest.
After yesterdays heat and wind today it is quite cool and damp and misty, lovely but not a great deal of actual measurable rain.

Half of a weeks spread

Nina on EDM put out a challenge to do a weekly spread across a journal page, doesnt have to be finished, well here are 4 days so far, I have not had time to do much at all, nor lets face it the inclination, so this has at least started me back on a few small sketches.
Last sunday on our walk we saw this very strange down pipe on a small shelter, then gum leaves off the tree out the front, my short sansavieria in a pot in the sun room and this old shearing shed right by the road where John stopped to have a pain killer on the way home from Adelaide and the dentist!
A small offering.

Flowers in the garden

My back is not being kind to me so not a lot is getting done but the Irises and valerian in the garden looked so nice around the pergola post that I had to paint them.
It is warming up so things wont last very long, the subsoil is dryer than last spring so summer doesnt bode very well I am afraid. the rain has just not been there and we can only hope for summer rains to come, and we usually only get them if a cyclone has formed off the Western Australian coast.
What a world we live in, but I still love where I am and what I have.

My bedroom at Geelong

My scanner is back!! Hooray.
This is a very sketchy sketch of my bedroom while I was at Geelong, there was never much time to sketch or do anything so it was a miracle I even got this done. My student hadnt attempted to move much out of his room so I had very little space.
Cold and damp here, been pretty busy and still not getting much done which is frustrating, typical of spring when there is so much to do and no time to do it.

The garden shed

I have finally resorted to using the camera which I dont think does such a good job as the scanner but as I am still without the scanner I was feeling I really needed to put something up.
I think it looks better this size, if you enlarge it you will see all the dreadful things I did to it!!
This probably looks a bit dotty but that is the way I see the geraniums and succulents that are surrounding the garden shed, not to mention the trees which are now all coming out into leaf.
A very busy time since I got back from Geelong, a new baby great grand son, visitors, my birthday, heavens how did I get so old!!
Lots of birthday celebrations although the big seven o is next year. Actually I think the birthday celebrations got mixed up with the baby as well.
I have had very little time to paint or sketch and when I have I am afraid I have been feeling a bit tired but today I did actually manage to get some sort of paint onto paper.
Thank you to all who sent congratulations on both the baby and my birthday, it is lovely to think that people sometimes do read my blog.