A Trip to Sydney

This blog post is brought to you by my brand new dip pen.  Straight from Sydney, New South Wales.  The pen that is.  The post is from a bit farther north.

When I was a kid I made and used feather pens, but I had never used a dip pen and it's quite a surprisingly pleasant experience.  You see, before using it, I thought it was going to be frustrating because it would constantly run out of ink.  But it actually holds quite a bit in the nib!  The biggest issues are making sure I don't have a big blob of ink right after dipping it and keeping the ink from smudging because it's gone on thicker and heavier than I'm used to and either doesn't dry as fast or doesn't stay fastened to the paper as well because it's going on too thick.  I guess that's why people used to have blotters, huh?

Check out my dip pen in action:

I love seeing the patchwork of land below when you are taking off and landing.  The book is for once I'm buried in clouds...or when I'm stuck in an isle seat.  The Firebird was a very pleasant read, by the way.  It's a ESP/psychic historical novel.  I'm not usually into historical novels (in fact, I think you can safely say I hate them), but I enjoyed the back and forth between the historical plot (which I actually did read) and the present-day plot (which I also read, of course).  Part of the present-day plot is set in the world of art galleries and the international art trade as well, so it reminded me of another recent travel-read:  The Art Thief. 

I've been to Sydney a couple times now and I have always enjoyed it.  It's a bustling place with lots to see and do.

But all the things I love about Sydney:  the sights, the sounds, the imagination, the people, the ideas it sparks in my head...all of those things are also the things that can make Sydney a bit overwhelming.

Perhaps because I've now been there several times and wasn't feeling pressured to "make the most of my time," this was a trip with a wonderful balance to it.  Lots of new sights, lots of experiences...but lots of downtime as well.  Time to collect new ideas while still being able to work on my projects.  Time to stow all the things I was seeing, smelling, tasting, and hearing into my mental file-cabinet.

Oh, and if you are ever at Darling Harbour, do stop to watch the jelly fish.  If it's sunny, wear your sunnies (your sunglasses) because they'll help cut through the surface glare.  You'll see fish too.

I would like to interrupt to add that the Art Gallery of New South Wales got multiple visits and that I finally went to the Maritime Museum.  I didn't spent nearly enough time there, but I did go through one of the submarines (did you know I wanted to be a submariner at one point in my childhood?) and they had an exhibit of Antarctic photography that was incredible.  Oh, and I might have spotted the Tardis and a Dalek elsewhere in Sydney!  :-)  It was of a close-encounter, but I wasn't exterminated so life is still good.  (For those of you who aren't fans of the Dr. Who TV show, they had a mini-Dr. Who exhibition at the ABC building and the Tardis is the space-and-time traveling blue police box from the series and the Dalek are powerful bad guys that go around saying "Exterminate" in robotic voices while trying to remove entire civilizations from existence.)

That's it for the dip pen experiment photos.  I'll finish the trip off with a couple random bits from my camera, sketchbook, and studio wall.

Did I say "a LOT of food" in that last sketchbook page?  I think that's an understatement.  Chinatown has a billion restaurants.  Okay.  That might be a bit of an exaggeration.  Thousands.  Thousands has to be about right.  On Friday nights there is a street festival full of food stalls on Dixon Street.  That makes the total about 1020 places to eat.

There are several food courts tucked away in Chinatown.  This food court had an excellent Japanese restaurant (take my word for it) and an excellent Indonesian restaurant (but don't take my word for that one...can you say "super-duper spicy"?!)

If you ever eat here, get the takoyaki (round balls of a pancakey-dough with octopus in the middle) and the crispy ebi (prawns).  Yummy!

This Sydney foodie picture is up on my art studio wall.  It's in a "pause" while I see how I feel about it.  I suppose I could call it done at this point, but the original plan was to make it twice this size, with six more food images at the bottom.  Starting in the top left corner:  lotus (which I'd eaten before but not for a long time), the sheets of beef mentioned in the sketchbook page above--I didn't have a photo of the actual food (but who needs a photo when you have pastels?), and, finally, a man tossing the dough to make roti (Malaysian bread...think a mix of naan bread and puff pastry).

In the bottom row, there's a press for making sugar cane juice, ice cream bars getting dipped in pans of chocolate (we didn't try because the line literally went to the other side of the shopping mall), and a close up of a Chinese green veggie (name forgotten).

That brings us to the end of the adventure: the Sydney airport. 

 

Quick Sketches

I thought it might be fun to share some images from my current sketchbook.  After all, when I've got a couple minutes to share, what do I do?  A quick sketch...or twenty of them. 

An interesting thing to note is that pretty much all of these figures were drawn not by looking at the actual figures, but by watching their reflections on a shiny glass wall.  My favorite from this spread? 

I like how the two figures complete each other. 

If people sitting around isn't enough challenge, you can always find some people who are bowling and try to draw them.  Anyone up for some bowling?  I need more art practice! 

Capturing the actual moment of the ball leaving their fingertips is a true challenge for me...but the reactions are more fun anyway! 

Something tells me that wasn't a strike.  In fact, I don't think he knows what it was.

I suspect that wasn't a strike either. 

Oh, well.  Bowling's not about the score anyway.  It's about all the chit-chat and time with family and friends while you are waiting your turn. 

If you don't have any people around, pukekos are acceptable substitutes.  In fact, when they are in a hurry, they can move a lot faster than people bowling.

But if you tire of pukekos, you can always find people online.  Pose Maniacs has this handy animated feature that gives you a still image of a posing figure and thirty seconds to draw it before the figure vanishes.  I suspect it's mostly for artists working with computer games because some of the poses are ones you would never see in real-life unless you were watching a contortionist and the animated models are more in the style of comic book figures like Cat Woman and The Hulk than in the style of "human being next door."   Even with that warning, it's still excellent practice and a website I pop onto every now and then.

This page looks a bit chaotic because I was conserving paper.  There are three different layers of figures on there...a bit like one of those paintings where you strip off the top layer of paint to discover a completely different picture hidden away.  Blue figures, red figures, and sick yellow-green figures.  Usually I just use scrap paper instead of my sketchbook...especially still-clean bits of butcher block paper from the grocery store.

Back to show and tell.  Pose Maniacs is fun...but real people are more fun.  Cross-walks are a nice challenge.  People tend to stand there just long enough for you to sketch them...but not long enough for you to relax and take your time.  

Of course that doesn't mean they stay still while they wait for the little red figure to change to a green walking one.  

If you find a sidewalk in constant motion, you can keep yourself entertained for hours.

 

Watching people watch for their friends is fun.

Watching people decide where to eat is fun.

But the drawing people is even more fun.  I'll leave you with my favorite sidewalk sketch from this past week:  an old-fashioned-looking man in a dapper suit looking in a bakery window.  He stood looking at the Chinese moon cakes for the longest time.

I never did see if he went in to buy some. 

LINKS:
http://www.posemaniacs.com/thirtysecond

On my bookshelf: Marcellus Hall

This week, on my bookshelf, I've had a couple books by Marcellus Hall.  Who's he?  He's an children's book illustrator, an illustrator for periodicals like The New York Times, and a guy who writes colorful letters to his nieces and nephews a whole lot like the ones I write to my grandparents (which is either proof that I'm not weird or proof I have company in my weirdness--not sure which)! 

I stumbled across his work a couple weeks ago, spent quite a bit of time perusing his blog (links below, don't worry), and followed that up by seeking out three of his books.  Even on a different continent they were easy to find.  Everyone Sleeps was my favorite.  I liked the illustrations, I liked the story, I liked the characterization in the drawings of the pug.

One thing I enjoy whenever I have exposure to a variety of works by the same artist is asking myself, "What are the things that characterize their style?"  In other words, what is it about the artwork that lets you look at it and say, "That's Picasso's?  That's Degas'?  That's Marcellus Hall's?"  In the case of that last name, a frequently-used color is visible in the covers of those books.  He stretches figures and objects toward you...for example, if someone is walking toward you, the closest leg might get elongated.  Cars seem to "lean" as well. 

For a fun project, I attempted a couple of Marcellus Hall-style pictures. Here's one:

If you are look at it and looking at the front cover of those books and scratching your head, I understand completely.  It's hard to shed your own style in favor of someone else's.  In fact, I think the only place I really succeeded was with the prolific yellow wash and that start and with these trees:

I had fun though.  Doing the brushwork outline was my favorite part.  I love the variation created by the changes in pressure on the brush and by the variations in how much ink I had in the bristles.

One of the things that made it less Marcellus Hall-style and more Rebecca Trembula-style was the sheer amount of stuff in the picture.  Marcellus Hall really simplifies his images.  For me...well, you might say the end painting IS simplified.  I even left out all the cows!

There you see it.  The entire project from start to finish.  I started with the idea of doing a wide-angle farmyard scene.  But I wanted to include the cottonwood that used to be in the front field when I was growing up...the solitary tree with the gorgeous blue-silver sheen that survived multiple lightning strikes before one finally zapped the life from it.  I wanted a tractor a bit like the tractor in The Cow Loves Cookies, but it had to be a John Deere.  What can I say?  I'm from a John Deere family.  A bus too, because I wanted to play with making vehicles "lean."  If I was going to have a bus, I needed my horse, Dan, because he would often wait at the end of the driveway for me to get off the bus in the afternoon.  If I was going to have my horse, I needed to include the barn which stood for years just like the tree--until it too met a lightning bolt it couldn't withstand.  Can you see how the list grew? 

LINKS:

• 3 Weeks with a Cat (From Marcellus Hall's blog - a series of cartoons about cat-sitting)
• Steps for an illustration (also from his blog - the link to this was my introduction to his artwork)

A Carpet of Purple Kangaroos

A Carpet of Purple Kangaroos

There's a magical place not far from me.  Like most people with magical places nearby, it tends to be neglected from my schedule for long stretches of time.  When I do go, I always find something amazing.  Flocks of tiny little green frogs clinging to wetland grasses.  Dragonflies perched on thin twigs.  This time it was wild-flower laden fields turned purple with tiny, fuzzy flower heads.  In the midst of the purpleness, there were kangaroos so prolific that their little ears sticking out of the mass of purple looked like little brown leaves twitching in the breeze. 

What is that beautiful purple flower, you might ask?  I'm not 100% sure about what type of flower it is, other than the fact it is classified as "unwanted weed"!

"You would think I would be used to seeing kangaroos," an acquaintance remarked recently, as we discussed the kangaroos that frequented their yard and neighborhood round-about on a dawn and dusk basis, "but every time I see them I still get excited!"  I feel the same way.  In Australia, it's always exciting for me to spot a kangaroo...or a cockatoo, a kookaburra, or even one of those notoriously unwanted rabbits that hang out at the end of my own street.  In the U.S., it's like spotting a deer or a turkey. 

I'll start you off easy. How many kangaroos can you spot?

Ready for the challenge round?  When resting, the 'roos blend in superbly well!

 

 

The first time I saw them amidst the purple flowers I knew it was going to be painted...even though that visit was in the rain and camera-less.  

I did some planning in my sketchbook.  

First just a messy layout and color-scheme plan.

Then a more detailed version (accompanied by notes to myself).

I'd just finished a painting with an insect and flower blossoms in a fairly realistic style, so I was ready to do something different.  I wanted the painting to have a child-like feel to it, to go with the child-like excitement that comes with seeing massive fields of purple full of kangaroos (given how many I could see and count, I wouldn't be surprised if the total number of kangaroos present was between eighty and one hundred...we are talking about a BIG open space and a LOT of marsupials).  So I channeled my inner cartoonist and my inner Heather Brown (a surf-art artist from Hawaii--see the link at the bottom).  

Base-layer, pencil sketch, and sky started!  This painting is progressing!

I chose yellow as a base-layer for a couple reasons.  One, yellow plus blue equals green and there's a lot of green hiding around those purple flowers and in the trees in the background.  Two, there are a lot of yellow flowers in the field.  I know, I was tempted to ignore them in the face of all that delicious purpleness, but that yellow adds a lot of life to the end painting.  After the base-layer was dry, I penciled in my over-all image.  

I really liked the picture at this point.  Something about all that yellow and yellow-green together.

Have you ever painted one of those "do it yourself stain-glass light-catchers"?  The kind you hang in your window that is shaped like a butterfly or a lighthouse with a sunrise beside it?  That's what painting this felt like.  That, and perhaps quilting, because all the objects in the scene were so simplified that I could have cut them out of fabric and pieced them together. 

Yes, I do have a studio space...but the table is just so much nicer to work at...especially during the day with all the morning and afternoon light from the window. 

Almost done.  The painting had a nice softness to it at this point...but I kept going. 

Outlining everything was a slow and tedious job that required a steady hand, a couple breaks, and making sure I had just the right about of paint on my brush.  The painting lost its softness...but the black outlines solidified the stained glass feeling and created great contrast between all the different objects.  

And there she is!  All done and ready to hang on my studio wall.

It's a painting that makes me smile to see it, because my photos might capture the details of the place better, but my painting captures the emotion of the moment more accurately. 

LINKS:

• Heather Brown's website (Click through one or more of the galleries on it...you'll want to take a tropical vacation straight away!)
• I'm not necessarily good about being able to identify my local plants.  In this case there are a couple of lookalikes (all of which are considered invasive weeds) but my best guess identification is that of blue billy goat weed.  The Lucid Central website had the best variety of useful-for-identification photos on their fact-sheets, including a photo showing two of the lookalikes side-by-side. 

Not Your Ordinary Letter

Disclaimers:  Don't read this and think I'm 100% caught up on all my correspondence.  I'm not.  But over the last two years there's been a definite improvement in the number of letters written.  There are more birthday cards, more Christmas cards, more travel postcards, more thank you notes...more personal correspondence in general.  Also, don't think that as soon as a letter is written, I trot down to the mailbox to mail it off.  Sometimes I do...but right now I'm preparing a bulk mailing so it will be a bit until the recipients of the letters pictured in this post actually receive them.  So, there's still room for improvement...but there's already been a lot of improvement for me to be proud of!

When I write letters to my friends and family, I have certain guidelines I strictly follow.

RULE #1:  Any letter is better than no letter.

This is the most important rule of all, because it's the one that keeps writing letters from being stressful or from being BIG projects.  What happens when it's stressful or a big project?  I avoid thinking about it, I avoid doing anything about it.  It goes at the end of the to do list and gets shuffled along until it gets lost or becomes so awkward that it gets crossed out completely.  I mean, who wants to write this letter:

Dear Beloved Friend, Do you remember that gift you gave me three years ago?  For three years I've been using it with a sense of guilt because I know I never thanked you appropriately for it... 

Or this one:

Dear Beloved Family Member, I just was writing because I've probably spent more time thinking about your birthday this year than you did.  I mean, I thought about it beforehand...and even bought a card about a week afterwards.  But I never signed it.  I definitely never mailed it.  And now six months have gone by and I've still got this card for you sitting on my desk and every time I stumble across it....

Rule #1 takes all of the excuses away.  I think, "It's going to be spelled wrong!"  and then I repeat to myself, "Any letter is better than no letter."  I think, "They won't be able to read my handwriting!"  and then I repeat to myself, "Any letter is better than no letter." I think, "A letter should be hand-written," and then I repeat, "Any letter is better than no letter."  I highly recommend trying this phrase out because it's really very liberating.

When I was a kid up until high school, letter writing was a bit of an ordeal.  I had to brainstorm my topics, write a rough draft, fix mistakes, re-word things, and then rewrite it.  Add that many steps together and it's a small wonder I frequently stopped at Procrastination Station. Now, if I need to write a letter, I write it.  I may still jot a little outline off to the side, but there's no rough draft, no re-write.  Mistakes are fixed by scratching them out with my pen (not that I'm against White-Out, I just can't be bothered to go hunt it down and wait for it to dry afterwards).   Because of Rule #1, whenever an obstacle to writing or mailing a letter crops up, I know the clear and obvious response is to either ignore the obstacle (funny how many obstacles are just in our heads) or solve it. 

 

You might say that Rule #1 (Any letter is better than no letter) was gradually arrived at.  You see, there are lots of moments for the idea of a letter to stall out.  It might stall out before words go onto the paper.  It might stall out after you finish the phrase "Dear..." It might even stall out with the letter written, in the envelope, waiting to be mailed.  It might wait to be mailed for several years, in fact.  Or, it might only wait a day or two.

In a day or two, a lot can change.  People can move, leaving you without their new address.  Big, life-changing, earth-shattering events can happen.  People can die.

Don't accuse me of being melodramatic.  It's happened.  Especially that last one.  Leaving me standing in my kitchen with the addressed, stamped envelope in my hands and nobody to mail it to.

So write your letters now.  Imperfect, misspelled, typed.  Two sentences on a blank greeting card.  Crooked lines full of "boring" news like what you cooked for dinner the night before.  Words on a page.  Drawings on a page.  Photographs with a few sentences on the back. 

Any letter is better than no letter...and a colorful letter is best of all.  (But only if you have time...and colored pencils!)

Want to see some more snippets of this week's letters?

 A Christmas dinner with friends...in July!

Just one of this week's activities...

My mom started me off writing letters, something I'll always appreciate.  She likes to put jokes in her letters.  I don't usually do the same, but I decided my northern-hemisphere grandmother needed a random wintery-joke.

Am I lucky or what?  A dolphin stuck its tongue out at me this week!

In case you didn't know, I'm an ant.  I mean aunt.  Or maybe I meant what I said the first time?