Boat

I hope this ends in the correct blog, I wasnt thinking and originally it went in the wrong one. This is another small sketch I did a week ago.
My computer has been misbehaving and John finally got to it and did a few re installs and it seems to be a bit better, although our IT man says it sounds like a computer on the way out. I hope not for a while as we have just had to buy a new washing machine and a new computer as well maybe a bit too much for the bank balance to cope with at the moment.
We are in for a very hot spell of weather over the next few days, actually I think the next week. I am not looking forward to it and nor is my garden.
I have been sewing not sketching, very naughty of me, but there it is, my painting room gets pretty hot so sewing I can do where it is cooler.
John has just rung to tell me he has fish so maybe that will be what we have for dinner, I had been thinking of a frittata as I have plenty of eggs and I bought some lovely fresh vegetables at the market this morning.
Oscar will be pleased, although he has been telling me he is hungry, but there is some fish for the cat I was told so that should keep him happy.

Portrait and more people

She does look a bit odd, I couldnt get any white in her eye but she is reasonable. Not at all like the photo we were supposed to follow but then when do I ever follow on faces!
More of my people, they are such fun.
I havent had time to paint a thing for days and hope that tomorrow I will try something, I spent most of the day doing household tasks, how does a house get so messy when you are not in it!
Thanks to every one who has said kind things about my paintings, it wont be long before I go back to my old habits but I have a couple more classes lined up so I hope that will keep me on track for a while.
We walked a cold and grey beach this afternoon, the weather has been so odd, drizzle this morning and I had wet clothes on the line. Later on this week I think it is supposed to heat up. I dont much like the heat so I hope I have time to veg out and not do too much. I feel as though I have so much to catch up on, and well maybe I will get a day to myself.

Trees

more from my workshop last week. I rather like trees and the first was using granulation and a monochromatic colour scheme, not sure mine was quite monochromatic but I was really pleased with this, inb real life the grnulation looks terrific, and before this week I had never heard of granulation!
The next was a small exercise making trees using dry brush and the edge of the brush, reat fun, the scan is a bit washed out. I am still having problems with my editing.
The third was supposed to be using soap as a resist but it didnt work so over the top I tried out an idea I had from a photo I had taken one early morning with an incredibly pink sky and the hills and lone poplar in the paddock behind the house. I quite liked it.
I got so much from these few days of class, but when I will have time to paint again I am not sure.
The weather is warming up and I have so much to catch up on, some stuff I need to do to sell, some on line classes that are calling and may take me ages to get into, let alone catching up on domestic stuff.
On top of that I have a sinus problem, one nostril is running, always happens at this time of the year. Bother it so I feel a bit under the weather.
On my other blog here I have a bit on what we did yesterday watching the Tour Down Under at Pt Willunga, a magic day.

More paintings

I had a lovely week and am now so sad that it is over, still, there are more classes to come thank goodness.The top one, I love doing these figures, theya re so easy and great fun to do, this lot look a bit as if they are being led out to sea and the one 3rd rom left looks rather zombie like.
the lower one is me practicing trees using the brush in different ways the colour hasnt come out quite right but it was a good exercise.
So when will I have time to paint again, I am not sure but it will happen. I have to catch up with having a week off and all normal duties on hold. tomorrow we are out to lunch and I have a busy day.
I also hope my computer is up to speed a bit more than it is at the moment.

Painting class

I had to come home early todaty as I was so tired, a bummer but there it is. I have been enjoying this class but this afternoon we had a lovely but rather complicated painting to try doing washes with and my brain just wouldnt get around it.
the first painting was done on the first day and the second was a pen and wash we did this morning, before my brain turned to mud! Sitting outside the studio looking at a rusted rainwater tank between the back wall of the pub and the cottage next door.
I am definetly the worst in the class, perhaps I try to do too much but I have learnt a heck of a lot, I dont want to be a top drawere or a top watercolourist, I just want to enjoy myself and that is what I am doing.
Just that last night I was up half the night with leg cramps so no wonder I was tired.
Looking forward to tomorrow.

The pond

In a blog I follow and I cant remember which one some one suggested taking a picture they like and making it their own. I was rather taken with the very Japanese look of the sylised trees and turned it into a pond with a woman feeding fish. I have to say this is nothing like the colour I painted it in, as I am still trying to come to terms with various editing functions on different sites, this is part gimp and part picassa and nothing has really worked.
I have been terribly busy and my computer has had a lot of problems, I really think the time is coming for a new one but I need to be able to afford it.
Yesterday I could get nothing out of this one which is attached to the printer. Really annoying.
Today I had to be up early, and wasnt, to go to a Welsh Show, our youngstock show, just as well I hadnt left terribly early as we had problems with our entries for one of the poneis, but a phone call soon fixed it.
Abut 11/2 hour drive from home but it was thank goodness a pleasant day. I didnt wait to the end as my cream colt had gone Supreme in one ring and I had a feeling the judge in the other ring would do something odd, and she did.
Out to dinner last night with Tabby and some of her girls and her John, who is probably now flying back to Perth. He was only here for the week end.
Tomorrow I start a 5 day 9.30 to 5 painting course. I hope I make it all the way through as I find it very intense and very tiring. Thank goodness I cleaned the house last week as it will have to last this week.
January and February always seem to be terribly busy months, so much happens, I suppose it is summer and one of the times we manage to catch up with people.

More leaves

For the sketchbook challenge I think I nominated leaves as being one of my most highly prized items, we didnt really have to nominate anything but this to me was one of the most important parts of our lives. I have gone through all this before so here are two leaves, the fist is a sort of drawing, then painting of the second leaf which I used to print with, having sprayed it with starburst sprays first. This was the second print I made.
Unfortunately my sketchbook pages are not terribly thick and the leaves I drew on the previous page using a sharpie showed through. I have played a bit with paint and pitt pens and other stuff on both. None of which have done quite what I wanted them to do when I edited them.
I am having trouble with a shoulder which hurts when I lie on it so I have not been sleeping terribly well so a day of not doing much, so far, I have done the weekly marketing but we are supposed to be going to the opening of the Rotary Art Show later this afternoon.
I am trying to get sketchbook pages prepped using watercolour so they are ready to go, nice easy work and fun at the same time.

Agapanthus

I dont really think this looks much like agapanthus but from where I was sitting in the house on this damp and rainy day this is what they looked like, a cloud of blue, so that is my splashy painting for the day.
We didnt think we would get much rain but it has just quietly and steadily done it for most of the day.
I have taken the opportunity of the cooler weather to clean the house. That thank goodness is done for another week or so. I am not a terribly good housekeeper and with only two of us in this large house these days the bits that get pretty used are the kitchen, my workroom and the sitting room, the rest I do as I go. I must admit it was a bit dustier than I thought! Maybe that is why John has been sneezing.
The Queensland flood disaster is now almost into the clean up stage in some areas, and I think that is worse than when the water actually rose, at least there appears to be not much rain for them in the next few days, but then what?
I have got to the stage where I could not watch or listen to the media repeating stuff about it any more and have had a few cd's blaring all day to keep me company.
I really dont know how people cope in those situations, I know we are a resilient lot but for some I am sure this is going to become just one disaster too many.
Have to say that I thought our PM didnt cover herself with glory but the Queensland Premier Anna Bligh has been incredible in being the face of sense in a terribly difficult situation.

Peacock feather

Sketching for the sketchbook challenge and for my own enjoyment.
The male peacocks are losing their tail feathers and they are lying all around the garden. I do collect them every so often, they are very beautiful but the male birds llok terribly tatty with only a few long feathers left.
Watching with horror the on going tale of the Queensland floods, 3/4 of the State is under flood emergency, thousands and thousands homeless and more about to be as the rain just keeps on coming in some instances 100mm in an hour. All the dams are full and where do people go? Who will feed them, small communities are cut off others are under water. It is a total and unmitigated disaster and although the government is trying to help there is more rain coming and it is getting harder and harder to get around. Brisbane airport is now closed, food is not getting through, coal mines are flooded.
Many people who moved up from the south must now be wondering if they did the right thing. It is over 34 years since this last happened, and there are far more people and houses and roads etc there now than there were then.
People predicted it would never happen again, well it has and that is what happens in this wonderful, unpredictable country of ours, droughts and fires in the west, floods in the east. Those of us in the middle seem to get a bit of both.

Leaves

I have been playing in my sketchbooks, yes this is from two sigh, I cant seem to make up my mind.
I have decided that things I like to do are playing with colour and my most favorite well probably almost most favorite, thing to sketch are leaves.
The top one has stamps as well as sketched leaves. I am also playing with background colour, the top one is using twinkling h2o's which I have but rarely use and the bottom is water colour paint using a water brush, after I had used sharpies and a gel pencil that I dont know where I got them from but are more like a crayon.
So fun and games with a bit of written nonsense as well.
I cant settle to any thing properly so these sketches for the Sketchbook Challenge are fun and very relaxing.
The weather has changed and is cool and windy.
I am still hating not using Adobe starter edition for editing but it has been taken from me so now I have to learn how to do other things. Nikon is so slow as an editing tool and picasa doesnt quite do what I want it to do, and I have to find where things are, and I dont like it!! I spent ages trying to refine my scanning but hope I have finally got it under control. Urgh!~! I suppose in a few weeks I will wonder why I am complaining.
I think I prefer to do my blogging from blogger and not picasa but as I cant edit to my satisfaction any where else and the only way I have found to upload from picasa is with picasa.
Enough whingeing, on to sewing silk flags.

Playing in my sketchbook

The sketchbook Challenge words for this month were Highly Prized, or words to that affect. With the new camera came a lot of cleaning out of stuff on my computer so I am having to learn how to do new things with scanning etc.
Finally I have these up, and I hope I am doing things correctly. the first photo is what I think I prize highly, the world around me, birds, flowers, mother earth. Not a greenie but there are things we should be aware of and look after.
The second page was a list of things that perhaps I prize some more than others!
I am trying to play in a more colourful way with this little exercise, which goes on for 12 months. I think at the very bottom of the page on this blog is a thing to click on and find out about it all.
In some ways I think it all looks rather messy, but then it is terribly hot and sticky and the brain doesnt work terribly well under these circumstances.
I think my head is so full of computer stuff, not the way I usually do things at all and that iis going to make things a little more awkward than it was, but I will get there eventually. (I hope!) I have so much written down, now to keep it somewhere safe.

Day Lilies in a Japanese vase

My dear friend P went early this morning, so I have had a day of cleaning and fiddling and did manage a quite long walk on the beach this morning. It was quite cool and windy and after 3 photos my camera lens stuck.
I have sort of fixed it.
Cathy in South Africa had painted some of her day lilies in her garden but I went and picked mine and put them in the Japanese pottery vase from the Bizen pottery as its wondrous browns looked just right with the very orange of this particular day lily.
So a few more chores done and the hoses on and I feel that perhaps if I could just stop eating and keep on walking I might lose some of the weight I have gained.
I think I need to clean out the frig to a bare minimum and not have a wine and nibbles before dinner, but that is one of the joys of life!
I hope to do more sketching and painting over this year, I have had times when I havent felt like doing much, but I am now a member of the sketchbook challenge (I think at the bottom of my page I have the badge for it) so is this just one more thing I will do for a while and then not get going on? I hope not.
This months challenge is Highly prized. I suppose you could say that the plants in my garden are highly prized and so this is the start.

All the best for 2011

To all my blog friends may I wish you a rewarding and joyful New Year, with no health issues, some pleasant surprises and lots of fun.