Happy Christmas

Happy Christmas everyone! I hope you're having a lovely day. We're having a quiet family day, thunder is rumbling in the distance, so hoping for a good downpour to cool things down before I put the chicken in the oven!!

On my bookshelf 2014

 
I've just updated my 'books read 2014' list in the side-bar, which I hadn't filled in for about 6 months. 

My favourite novel this year was The Book Thief by Marcus Zusak, it's been out for a few years and very popular, but I'd judged the book by the cover, it looked too gothic for me !! Luckily it was a book group selection and I loved it, loved the characters, it's worth reading for the two handmade books that are incorporated into the story, and so much more. 

Other than that I've had a really bad run with book group books this year, very few are listed because I didn't finish them - we were reading Gone Girl when the movie came out, I was hating it, hating feeling so manipulated and that there wasn't one sympathetic character in there, and every time I turned on the tv or radio someone was reviewing the movie saying how good it was and how great the book was. I think I read half and then read the ending (sacrilege) which wasn't believable to me, so I didn't bother reading the second half...it got some very good reviews from my book group, so just goes to show how different tastes can be! 

Nearly half my list this year is non-fiction, and my favourite (other than the Matisse book!) would be David and Goliath by Malcolm Gladwell. I'd recommend anything he writes, it's always interesting and thought provoking, always turning what's accepted on it's head. 

I also loved Margaret Atwood's short story collection 'Stone Mattress', and so glad I finally got round to 'The Great Gatsby', I want to watch the movies now! 

As I have no art deadlines to work towards at the moment, I'm trying to take some time to play, here are some gouaches I've been doing, trying not to worry about subject too much and enjoy colour. 

end of year blues

Some weeks there isn't a lot to show, a tiny sketchbook drawing...

and a handful of cards...

On Friday I went into my kids school for the end of year assembly, it was lovely, the school band played and the choir sang, and lots of awards were given out. It's an emotional time of year for me, as my twins finish primary school in 4 days time, and our 13 year connection with the school ends (since my oldest started there.) I struggle with change, hate leaving behind teachers we know and love, feel sad that many of the kids' friends will be going to different schools or moving interstate, and at the same time try not to pass this on to my kids, so that they'll face the changes with open minds and even enthusiasm!

So there's been little time for art, and with all my xmas shopping still to do and xmas cards to write it might take a back seat for a couple more weeks...

Around the net - Kat McNally is running reverb, 21 days of blogging/journalling prompts to look back on the year. I'm especially enjoying the responses of Sarah's Heart Writes, so glad to have discovered her blog!

Bird life

I'm lucky that I live close enough to be able to walk to work. Some mornings when I'm running late I take a short cut across a tiny suburban park. It's just a patch of green with a playground, surrounded by houses. In the last few weeks the magpie geese have arrived, as I cross the park they take off in an eruption of honking and flapping wings.

I've had a look online, and I don't think they're migratory, I think it's more that by the end of the dry season there's not much left that's green out bush, so they come into town to the watered parks and playing fields.

Down near the beach the nuts are out on the casuarina trees, and the black cockatoos are enjoying them - very noisily and messily - squabbling over each branch and dropping a carpet of nuts and twigs to the ground.

It's hardly surprising that birds keep turning up in my artwork, here's a recent painting I did of a curlew.

Lovely to see some bird photos on Cathy Cullis's blog last week - which partly inspired this post!

Hope you're having a great weekend, we've had some decent rain in the last few days - at last!!- so I'm feeling a bit saner!

Crazy weekend

I've survived a crazy weekend, lots of choir rehearsals last week and a lovely performance on Saturday night (Darwin Chorale at the CDU theatre) followed by a craft fair at the waterfront yesterday. That was the really crazy bit, it's the build up here, temperatures up around 35 degrees centigrade, humid but no sign of rain - the craft fair became something of an endurance test. I'm amazed and grateful that so many people risked heatstroke to come out and buy their Christmas presents!! It's lovely to have the ambiance of an outdoor event by the sea, but sometimes I think an airconditioned venue would make more sense. I was so hot and grumpy I didn't even go for a stroll around the other stalls...

The last couple of months have been busy, not only with choir and craft fair preparations but with a commission - a lady who bought some of my prints many years ago and then moved away from Darwin, tracked me down online and requested some ginger cat paintings. Luckily this is a subject I was happy to tackle as I have a ginger cat who turns up in my paintings now and again! Here are the three paintings which I sent down south a couple of weeks ago.

Today I've got the day off work to catch up on exciting things like cleaning the bathroom!! and baking cookies and apple crumble for my neglected family!

Hope you had a great weekend, and hope we get some rain soon :)

new lino print cards

Last time I showed you some gouaches I'd done, and here is a lino print that developed from one of those gouaches. It's a two plate print, which I haven't done before, tho I've done lots of reduction prints.

Here they are on printing day looking a bit patchy. When I'm doing a 'serious' print to go under glass, I use proper printing ink and a beautiful holbein roller - not too hard not too soft! But when I'm making prints for cards or collage I use acrylic paint and a foam roller, and treat it more like a stamp. The results are not as clean and dense - but it doesn't matter because I work back into them with coloured pencils and paint, or cut them up and collage them. I think the fact that they're not 'perfect' makes it easier to be playful with them.

Here's a finished card, I'll have some of these at the Saltwater Craft Fair at the waterfront on  23rd Nov!! and hope to add one to my etsy shop this week...

I hope your November is going well, it's the hot and steamy build up here, also luscious mango season, and looking forward to the pineapples ripening in our front yard.

little gouaches

After I finished the acrylic paintings for the garden exhibition, I dug out my gouache paints with the idea of doing regular little post card sized paintings... of course I've only done about half a dozen before other projects have intervened, but I hope to get back to these in the christmas holidays.

this one done in the nick of time for the garden exhibition!

this one inspired a lino cut I'll show you next time.

Coming up next month is the Tactile Arts members show - on the theme of Cyclone Tracy, and the Christmas Craft Fair down at the waterfront, not to mention a customer request I'm working on, so I'm very busy in the studio at the moment!