Your Mission Should You Choose To Accept It …

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…

What a great day we had Alana, thanks so much.

Left Hand Journal pg 44

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.

Left Hand Journal pg 43

Yet another entry in my left hand journal.  Another satisfying session in a cafe with a friend, a journal and good coffee  :)

EDM 90 Something With Wings

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.

Left Hand Journal pgs 41 & 42

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.

EDM 89 Buttons

It’s been a long time since my last post but it feels good to be back into it.

Yeah Baby

 

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.

Shadows in Tin Tacks Park

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!

A Morning At Brick By Brick Cafe, Onehunga, Auckland, New Zealand

Hillary and I decided to while away a few hours at this cafe in Onehunga.  This is a collection of collections inside the cafe…

May – the month of one of my very favourite fruits - figs

con.cat.e.nate conclusion

I started this 2012 year with great gusto and I thoroughly enjoyed the challenge I set myself for this project.  It made me stop what I was doing at some point during the day, pick up my sketching gear, and take time out to look at my cats in a new light, and in a multitude of interesting poses.  After settling in to the discipline of drawing one or other of the cats six out of seven days a week, I really began to enjoy it.
It is with sadness that I have to let this project go.   In the time since the last main post for my con.cat.e.nate project on 27 January , there have been three big events in my life:

• My Mum passed away unexpectedly on 28th January
• I had some unplanned major surgery in early March and have still not recovered from it, and sadly  …
• One of my two cats, Sammy, was run over while I was in hospital, broke her leg badly, and had to be euthanized.  I didn’t get to say goodbye to her and it hurts. 

I love my animals to pieces and cannot continue this project with just Bella because it will make me think of Sammy constantly.  It was a good idea at the time, and maybe in the future I will resume cat drawings.
In the meantime, all is not lost.   Today I have spent too much time scanning/reading blogs and websites of those artists that I really admire and have to say that my drive to make my own books, sketch, attempt to use watercolours, and revive my journalling has been spiked.

025 - 030

A week of negative images, in a week where my life was turned inside out with the sudden passing of my Mother

025 Sammy	026 Sammy	027 Sammy
028 Bella	029 Bella	030 Sammy

A Time To Reflect …..

A small tribute to my Mother, blowing out her candles at 90 years young 

Emma Caroline Johnson  18/8/1921 – 28/1/2012

Go in peace Mum, we love you

con.cat.e.nate 019 - 024

019 Sammy **NB Sammy doesn’t have a tail, due to another kittenhood accident ** 10 mins, Pocket water brush & Art Graf (w/colour graphite)	020 Bella 10 mins, Pocket water brush & Art Graf (w/colour graphite)	021 Sammy She has a blue nose; maybe it was  tattooed as a kitten. Harder than I thought and took too long Dry Watercolour pencils
022 Sammy 4 minutes, Lamy Vista and blue ink	023 Sammy Hard to tell what’s what in this position 8 minutes, Staedtler Lumograph 2B pencil	024 Bella 9.05 minutes Grey Staedtler Triplus Fineliner running out of ink