Cast iron front gate

A busy day in Adelaide, visited my mother, late, had my hair cut, hung around waiting for John's meeting to finish.
It was at the Waite Institute and there were no car parks so I found a place in a street nearby and sketched these lovely front gates. It had a nice garden behind too but he rang to say he was finished before I could get any further than this.

The shearing shed

I have sketched this before but it is getting older and rather more interesting and with the elm in her winter undress behind looked rather gorgeous.
I havent done anything for over a week, been tired and not feeling like doing much and I have an eye, my bad one playing up a bit so well that is the excuse.

Granite island and beyond

I dont feel quite so wicked as I have finally managed to get paint to paper.
This is sort of looking from Granite Island back to the mainland.
I am still trying to get rocks and things right, also more depth to my watercolor. In this I only used three colours, warm red, yellow and blue and finding how to deepen those for rocks was interesting.
I really dont think I am getting any better but to do something like this takes time and that I am finding I dont have a lot of.

Renovated cottage

I dont think I got my sketchbook quite straight on the scanner!
Anyway a small sketch of a renovated cottage at Encounter Bay.
Very wet and cold today, lots of rain with some hail as well as the fellow who came to put a new flue in the chimney, so no fire, and they got very wet.

wedding gowns

Just to prove I am still doing a few things. While John went in for a quick beard trim I sat in the car and next to me was a shop full of wedding gowns so I sketched these two, sorry they are a bit faint.
We were in Adelaide for most of yesterday and came home to more destruction of the garden where they are trying to replace old pipes. I suppose it will look better one day.
Freezing cold here today.

Arum Lillies and Strelizia

Not much in my garden but the arums are all beginning to flower and I found one wonderful Bird of paradise or Strelizia flower out.
The weather is far too warm, we have been lucky and had some rain but not enough and a lot of wind, destructive winds.
I have been pretty busy doing things in the house and trying to get some of my commitments finished, a vain hope I think but I did find time to paint these today.

Limestone walls near Clayton

today John and I went for a drive around the River Murray and the lower lakes looking at some of the problems there due to the drought.
There are massive problems with salty water where it should be fresh and just the general lack of any water at all.
I took lots of photos and did manage some sketching.
I loved the look of these stone walls, there is so much rock around that this is what is done with it and this particular one had been capped, most of them are just dry stone and no capping. Unfortunately this one was also breached in several places.
We dont have a lot of areas around here with stone walls so I find them exciting.
It was cold and windy and interesting to explore this area which is quite close and yet feels very remote and I havent been to some of these areas for about 40 years!
I am doing a new on line course called Studio journaling, a designers work horse with Sharon Bloggon and it looks really interesting. I found it on Joggles.com. I am just worried about how much time I have to do all these things I have signed up for, I wish they didnt all happen at once.