Hillary and I did a few yards today in more than one sense of the word… first 55+ lengths water walking (with vigour) at Jellicoe Pools, then breakfast at the local ‘Library Cafe’ – a beautiful historic building in Onehunga. Hillary patiently tried to teach me to do a map of my journey, but I am like a child with ADHD especially when I work with my left hand!
Excerpts from a recent trip out of town 
….. and then some good ‘ole Kiwi ingenuity … our very own river monster
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First EDM post since June – been busy with the 100 Days Project. No pencil under-drawing, just a fine black ballpoint
Inspired by the crew at Designworks who are doing “yellow” as the daily theme for the 2013 100 Days Project, and by my love of colour themed photography I did on our last Europe trip e.g. “Orangestrial” I felt the urge to put a yellow grid together today. These were photos that I took on a trip to Dunedin & Queenstown in February 2011. I did not take any of these photos with a yellow theme in mind, but this tells me that subconsciously my mind embraces colour.
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Okay, I admit I gave up on this one, it’s a long winded exercise in complex tonal values and I’m out of practise. I will make up for it with the egg carton.
Gosh, I haven’t done an EDM drawing since January this year. I’ve been trying out a new fountain pen called a Duke 209 which I saw Laure Ferlita use in a You Tube demo. It has a hooked calligraphy nib and is capable of producing very fine lines as well as very fat lines. I have drawn with it every day for the past 3 weeks so the process has obviously given me some confidence back and I am really enjoying exploring its capabilities. Hillary will be pleased that I’m back in the EDM saddle, so to speak.
 Tuesday, 21 May 2013 Hillary and I met up again at the new Trafalgar House Cafe in Onehuhga, for a morning gossip, coffee and a very quick entry in a selected journal. This morning I took my Left Hand Journal along and captured the image painted full size on the cafe wall, and then proceeded to write as much of the menu as I could on top. I think my left hand script was becoming easier as I got to the bottom of the page. The staff are very pleasant and good at making coffee. Their barista, ‘Junior’ took a big interest in our drawings last time we were there (last week), and we casually said we would make him a book too. During the week, Hillary made a beautiful coptic bound book and I bought a set of Staedtler pencils to go with it and we presented these to Junior today. He was speechless. The owner also took a big interest in what we were doing and took a photo of this page to put on the Cafe’s facebook page. |
On a recent trip to Melbourne, my friend Alana and I checked out the Fitzroy Market on a hot Saturday morning. A myriad of vintage delights were on offer including the Ukulele Band who turned up to entertain the crowd. Alana left with some impressive purchases and my special find was an 80’s Milano watch.
 Beautiful Fitzroy architecture |  The Ukulele Band heats up |
| What’s not to love? |  Alana and I at the Vegie Bar |
 Fitzroy Street Art |  On Yer Bike |
Alana recently bought a Canon 1100D camera and is learning about it’s manual functions. I gave her some guidance, then sent her on a colour mission round the market. She chose purple as her colour theme and off she went. The brief was to photograph 9 purple items, but once she started there was no stopping her! Check out Alana’s blog and purple post here http://www.copescuriosities.com/ In the mean time, I chose red and here’s what I found in a short space of time…
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What a great day we had Alana, thanks so much.
Today Hillary and I introduced Jan to our sketch meetings. We spent about 3 hours gossiping, sketching, drinking coffee, eating and there was a show & tell.
This was my left-handed attempt at capturing the scene as if I was a fly on the ceiling.
I started this in watercolour, it didn’t work, I spat the dummy and brushed a large red cross through it and folded the page in half in disappointment. Hillary (ever positive) encouraged me to salvage it, maybe try gouache, so I did. I bought some tubes of gouache many years ago when I learnt calligraphy and I only had 5 colours to work with on this ‘resurrection’ – prussian blue, lemon yellow, deep lake red, white and dried up black. Can’t get the fold out of the page, but you can’t see where the big red swash was, so not a bad recovery I thought.
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| After a look around the Naval Museum at Devonport, Hillary and I found ourselves at the Stone Oven Cafe & Bakery for a scrummy lunch and some cussing while we tried to work in our Left Hand Journals – always a challenge. Hillary says we are “future-proofing” ourselves i.e. if anything were to happen to our right hand, we should be ready to use our left hand. Got a way to go I think. |  |
Gosh it’s been hectic lately – packing and moving house in Winter is not much fun. Hillary and I took time out today to get back on the sketching track. Neither of us are confident sketching people and in particular faces, so we set ourselves a challenge list of 10 different types of faces to find in magazines and try to sketch. We both found it difficult, but the good food, gossip and antics of Asher cat kept us going. |
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After Hillary and I finished our morning’s gossip & sketching, we ventured out into the sunshine in the small park next to Brick By Brick Cafe in Onehunga. We challenged each other to take six “postable” photos. I thought they were to be of six different things. Hillary thought they were to be six of the same thing. It doesn’t matter, both posts are interesting and a good start back into our photography practise. p.s. Did you see the heart shape formed by my arms holding the camera? I couldn’t do that if I tried!
Hillary and I decided to while away a few hours at this cafe in Onehunga. This is a collection of collections inside the cafe…
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