three months old today

My little grandson is three months old today. It has been a very busy three months.

How quickly they grow and become aware of the world around them. This little guy has perfected a particular type of cooing when he wants me to sing to him and I am so grateful to have had such a close association with him that I am able to tell that is what he is communicating. He enjoys when I sing and i enjoy singing to him. I found a book of 1001 popular tunes in an op shop just recently, the newest tune is from 1967 and the oldest was copyrighted in 1887 and interestingly I know a large proportion of the songs in the book. My grandson is beginning to learn them too. He doesn't like songs in a minor key and he is not keen on slow pieces. He bounces about and smiles, waving his arms and cooing loudly if I sing upbeat bouncy tunes in a major key. Already he is developing his own tastes. These early developmental stages are so incredibly important in setting the foundation for our children and their future. I was especially happy at an announcement by the government that in establishing a national curriculum, music will takes its place again as a foundation subject at the early stages of schooling. Music is such an intrinsic part of our world culture that it seemed almost insane that previous governments and school systems would devalue it and even remove it from the curriculum. Music stimulates the brain as no other activity can. I am doing my little bit and singing to my grandson.

So Inktober continues and here I have days 9 - 14 for your viewing pleasure. One of the difficulties with being away from home is that i can only take a limited amount of my art gear and I am reduced to uploading my art via my mobile phone, which is not idea for many reasons not least of which is my strained eyesight however I am pleased that I have a short amount of time each day to dedicate to producing some art.

 Day 10 theme is Cycle so I drew the water cycle; that old standby of science teachers everywhere. I think I will enjoy doing a colour version of this for grand baby's wall at some time.

 Day 11 Lock, many of the participants drew some magnificent locks including water locks. I used fine tip markers for my lock and key. Unfortunately this picture does not do it justice and I will have to scan it properly.

Day 12 is Fresh. and I decided fresh breath fitted the theme. Once again using fine tip markers. Day 13 was Dragon and I do like my dragon on a turret.

 

Today I am drawing some fern leaves for the day 14 theme, Fern. I am not finished yet and I have some other art to complete for a deadline so I will get that done shortly. 

Portland has been interesting. I found a set of stairs going up a cliff and decided I needed to jog up them. I made it to the first landing after about 25 steps, wheezing and gasping and clinging to the rail. A gentleman passed me at a slow and steady pace and wished me a good morning. I managed to gasp out a response and said I hoped I made it to the next landing and off I went. Eventually I made it to the top of the cliff with the gentleman passing me at his slow and steady pace going up and down. My thighs screamed protest at me as I began my descent. My lungs almost went on strike and as for my pour pounding heart well it put the percussion section of the greatest orchestra to shame. The gentleman suggested slow and steady and build up to jogging. I crawled across the sand of Nun's beach, narrowly avoiding nesting plovers in the small grassy islands and gasping dragged myself into my car vowing never to exercise again. 

 How do plovers survive? They lay their eggs on exposed pieces of ground in the middle of parks, beaches, playgrounds, highway median strips and schools then think some squarking, fake injuries and occasional swooping with deadly intent is going to help them raise a brood of chicks? Crazy birds but they are around so something works for them.

This morning I backed the car out of the drive at 6am, began to drive toward the east and flipped down my visor. This landed in my lap, or its twin did. I hit the brake only it was the accelerator and did some fancy break dancing and hit a note somewhere at c above c above middle c almost shattering the windscreen, found the brake, leaped out of the car doing yet more fancy dance moves and brushed the poor creature onto the bitumen and watched it go into the spider equivalent of the foetal position. I apologised to the spider for the agony its innocent leap landed it in, climbed back into the car and drove on. Irrationally I could not then flip the visor back down, knowing the spider was gone I could not bring myself to flip it again. Totally irrational behaviour but I simply could not do it. 

Interestingly my blood pressure was very high around the time I made it to my doctor appointment. Hmmm I wonder what caused that?

So more art. This week the theme for the 52 week challenge is Black and White and here are my contributions.

This one is titled 'friends' and is inspired by a photograph of two models. I will add the link to the original when I locate it again.

 This is a Gown and is done on bleed proof paper with liquid ink and brush as well as finger smudging. Then I used fine liners and a white ink pen. I didn't like the paper.

 Masque. A mixture of graphite, ink, fine liner, markers and pencil on bleed proof paper again.

 This is the cover of my black sketch pad. Occasionally I like to explore white on black and I was using my white ink pen on the plastic cover of the pad. It was an odd sensation drawing on plastic. This is titled Moonlight.

The happy and sad theatre masks are done in fine liner on cartridge paper.

This week my friend Melissa is having a launch of her book 'Swallow me now' at the Oakleigh library in Melbourne. I would love to be there to support her but I may still be in Portland and not sure if I can do the 7 hour round trip in a day. The book contains a number of pieces of art by me. The girl on the cover, 'Sam', is my creation based on the character in the story.
When: Saturday 25 October, 2014. 1 – 2pm
Where: Oakleigh Library, 148 Drummond Street, Oakeigh, VIC, 3166
Children and adults are very welcome to attend!
 http://melissagijsbers.com/swallow-me-now-invitation-to-a-book-launch/

 So a busy week as usual and of course I managed to come up with an idea for 12 x 12 October picture book. Now I just have to develop it and write it up and do a few drafts and then see if I can send it out into the world. So far this year I have managed about 45 ideas with some research, some rhyme, some prose and some complete drafts. Some of the stories are in their tenth draft, some have gone out to critique groups, some are gathering dust motes and some are just waiting for the right moment to jump out at me.

I am going to do PiBoIdMo again this year and see if I can come up with 30 more ideas in November along with SkaDaMo(30 sketches) NaNoWriMo (a novel in 50,000 words in a month) and of course RWA 50/30 except this year I will make NaNoWriMo and RWA be the same 50k.

I am going to finish off with some pictures of the curators cottage in the Portland botanic garden.

 This is the entry gate to the gardens.

 The cottage itself is a little museum filled with interesting items donated by locals and cared for by the historical society of Portland (Sorry Gwen and Margaret if I got that wrong) and of course open to the public for a nominal donation to help with upkeep. It is personned by wonderful volunteers who share their wealth of knowledge about the items on display, the cottage and its occupants. Their enthusiasm for preserving this little piece of history is commendable. Thanks to Gwen and Margaret for giving your time. The offset chimneys are noteworthy.

According to the tales, William Allitt and Henry Hedges had no children but Joseph Couch did and according to local legend it is said when he asked where his children were to sleep the local council replied "We are not in the business of housing children". They did however pay to have the cottage extended from one down stairs room to two. Three rooms in all, two downstairs and one upstairs, a narrow flight considered dangerous to the public in today's litigious standards, plus an out house, a camp oven and a woodshed. It makes me appreciate my modern abode. What a garden for the children to play in though, with two croquet lawns and  all the trees they could climb.

On that note my lovlies I shall finish up and drive back to Portland. Farewell and have a wonderful week.

Writing in the storm

It is 10.59pm and my eyelids are twitching from lack of sleep and stress. I haven't written much fiction for a while, well grown up fiction that is. I have several novel outlines waiting for time and attention but life is rather hectic at the moment so I am not in the right mind space and I am in constant demand which reduces my creative time. To really produce a good scene I need to immerse myself in the story and not be constantly interrupted.

 I currently have three adult sons, a daughter in law, a teen daughter and a 10 week old baby plus a dog sharing my miniscule house while they all have challenges in their life to work through. I love my kids and would do just about anything for them but there comes a time when I want to let go the selfless mother role and embrace the inner rebellious teenager who hasn't yet had her turn at life. My first born isn't talking to me at the moment and it all seems so overwhelming. Then I read the news and think at least my kids are all alive and somewhere I can find them. I try to focus on the things to be grateful for so I have a healthier perspective about my own troubles. I have wonderful friends who support me as much as I will let them and I am in reasonably good health all things considered. I have food and clean water and a warm bed to sleep in. I have social media to make friends around the world and my car works. I am living in a good town with easily accessible services and good health workers.
And I get to create art and tell stories and sing to my grandson. I can weather the storm when I 'count my blessings' and focus on the abundance of good things in my life.

I read an article by Neil Gaiman today. It was about Terry Pratchett. Neil described Terry as an angry man and while I was reading it and the message that Terry uses that anger to fuel his stories I realised I too am a bundle of anger and maybe I could use that anger to fuel my own stories. So I wrote one. It is less than 600 words and is the first flash fiction I have written in several months. I read it to my favourite beta-ear(the first person I read it to over the phone) and she said it has powerful imagery. It was a strange sensation to be writing with such anger in me. Acknowledging the anger helped me connect to it. I think I need to really tap into my emotional state when I am writing. I am thinking some of my more recent stuff is quite bland and probably reflects a lack of passion.

I weeded my front lawn today. I dug out the thistles and broad leaf weeds with an old table spoon. I had to do something with my hands and get out of the house. I was incredibly excited to see that a dozen or more seedlings have sprouted from the seeds of the trees that were cut down recently. I carefully dug them up and put them in a seed tray before the mower kills them. I will plant them in the back yard once they are established beyond two leaves and nurture a whole new forest.  The silver lining shows itself and I am grinning about the resilience of nature in the face of human onslaught.

Have I told you guys I have been a foster parent for 25 years. No quater-century commemorative medal for me just a lot of experiences and memories and some extra permanent members of the family. I fostered more than 55 kids in that time. Some for short terms lie weekends or two weeks at a time, some for much longer and one for the whole 25 years. Fostering here in Australia is not a paid gig. It is a volunteer position and if the fostering is done through a legitimate agency then the foster parents can be compensated for some expenditure. It is not something anyone should do lightly. Many of the children in care are already damaged before they land on the doorstep in wet pyjamas and need a long term plan to support them. The foster parents need constant and ongoing training and support and it is a 24 hour seven day a week possibly lifetime commitment. There are all sorts of reasons why kids need out of home care and every one of the kids who came to my care had different stories. I don't like a lot of the things that happen in the system that actually compound the damage to the kids and I don't like that good relationships are difficult to build but there has to be some kind of system to help kids who need it. I have discouraged people from fostering because they were going into it with an attitude they would get to look after some poster child for their local church group and were not mentally equipped for the challenge. I don't think I was either but I have proactively sought training and education that would help me help the kids. I hope that the experience of living with me for however long or short a time made a positive difference to the kids. It breaks my hear that I failed some kids and hope they found better experiences further along their life paths. I fell in love with some and often wonder where they are.

Life is an adventure.

I am so excited. One of the members of a group (musical) that I am supporting (with the pittance I can share) actually took the time to acknowledge my tweet to them. I am very honoured. (ps guys when I make it big with my writing I will up my patronage from ten cents to 25 cents okay).

Inktober is not far away and I did some preliminary pics to rediscover the feel for ink. I popped them on my pinterest board for Inktober. http://www.pinterest.com/ceciliaaclark/  and on this page of course.  

Well on that note I suspect I need to get some sleep since it is now almost midnight. I hope your life is not too stormy for you to weather. Focus on the positives to help you navigate the negatives. Hugs and love.

Twenty-second

52 week challenge theme for week 38 is, you guessed it, Giraffe. Several times throughout the year other people have produced art works using coffee. The colouring of a Giraffe lends itself to coffee tones. I started off staining the canvas with a weak instant coffee mix then using various thicknesses of coffee and a few drops of water colour paint I produced this little guy. I am so pleased with the final product.

In the Botanic gardens and apparently several other gardens and parks around the state there is a giraffe swing. It did have all four swings attached not so long ago but as our nanny state filled with cotton wool helicopter parenting styles increases, all things that challenge a child are removed, anything that might be fun for someone over 18 months old is gone so now only the infant seats are still swinging. I am surprised some paranoid person hasn't complained that it is not a native animal and should not therefore be in our park or some other idiocy to have it removed.Can you tell I am miffed that there are no more swings for big kids like me?



Off my soapbox... I went to Portland on the weekend which is why my blog post is late. Portland Victoria Australia that is. It was a beautiful spring weekend and I decided to become a tourist for the day on Sunday. Portland has a little tram http://portlandcabletrams.com.au/  and I purchased a little magnetic Tram driver to help support this delightful little tramway. It is kept running by a dedicated troupe of twelve and I thoroughly enjoyed being on it.

I started off at the Botanic gardens which have an awesome number of dalias and roses but none in flower so I have to go back. Then down to the depot where Pete sold me my ticket and I purchased a little tram driver magnet.

The noise of the engine was easy to ignore as the conductor spoke about the history of Portland and the various places of interest the tram line circumnavigate.

 I was also totally delighted to be able to sit on the open sided trolley and feel the cool sea breeze on my face.

I made sure my little tram driver hung on around the corners as we headed across to the War Memorial in the old water tower. This was a fascinating place to spend and hour in while I waited for the tram to return. The old water tower was converted into a multistory space to house much local memorabilia about how the world wars affected local people.

I traveled back to the Botanic garden, waving back to all the children big and small picnicking in the park. I wriggled my bare feet into the carpet soft grass of the croquet lawn then drove out to the light house at Point Nelson. 

My tram driver photo bombed the light house picture.  It is certainly a picturesque drive and a pleasant little town.

I am also a little bit sunburnt. Not a sensible thing for me.

So more art coming up I am doing INKTOBER  the brain child of Jake Parker
 http://mrjakeparker.com/inktober  I quote directly from his blog and the facebook group....

31 Days 31 Drawings

Every October, artists all over the world take on the InkTober drawing challenge by doing one ink drawing a day the entire month. I(Jake Parker) created InkTober in 2009 as a challenge to improve my inking skills and develop positive drawing habits. It has since grown into a worldwide endeavor with thousands of artists taking on the challenge every year.

Anyone can do InkTober, just pick up a pen and start drawing.

InkTober rules:

1) Make a drawing in ink (you can do a pencil under-drawing if you want).

2) Post it on your blog (or tumblr, instagram, twitter, facebook, flickr, Pinterest or just pin it on your wall.)

3) Hashtag it with #inktober

4) Repeat

Note: you can do it daily, or go the half-marathon route and post every other day, or just do the 5K and post once a week. What ever you decide, just be consistent with it. INKtober is about growing and improving and forming positive habits, so the more you’re consistent the better.

That's it! Now go make something beautiful.

so I am going to make ink art as well as the 52 week challenge weekly theme 

The week has been full and awesome. I went out to the Warrnambool Books 30th anniversary. It was a trivia night and a fundraiser for The Leila Rose foundation. There were nine teams and my team won the trivia and two of the three awesome  raffle prizes. We had three very interesting authors talk about their books. 

Regina Lane, author of Saving St Brigid's
Jock Serong, author of Quota
Clint Greagen, author of Reservoir Dad

Held at The Last Coach on the corner of Timor and Kepler street in Warrnambool, it was a delightful night and I enjoyed it immensely. 

I have some commissioned art to make and a competition to enter so I plan to do a lot of art before the end of the week. I have polished up my 12 x 12 picture book draft for September and intend to send it off to RYS on the 1st of October and double check the criteria this time so it wont bounce back at me. Lots of work to do and a trip to the city in the middle. A couple of critiques to complete and life rolls on. Hope your week ahead is awesome. Love and hugs. 

 

Sunshine and early mornings

I woke up early. I have no idea why. The sun shone through the window and I simply could not lay-a-bed one moment extra so I decided to take myself to a cafe and have eggs benedict for breakfast. A BIG mistake. It was way too early in the morning to be eating such a huge serve of ham and strong flavoured spinnach with an overly generous lake of hollandaise sauce and I ordered a hot chocolate instead of a sensible cup of tea. The hot chocolate was less than awesome for the price and to top the whole oversized breakfast off, a family with an incredibly loud preschooler chose the table next to me in an otherwise empty seating area. My instinct had been to eat in the lovely back courtyard and I did not listen to myself. I gulped down my food to remove myself from the excessive noise and almost fell over when I realised they charged me the price of two loaves of bread for the extra slice of toast. I think I will stick to a cup of tea and the newspaper in future.

The sunshine is glorious though and it is shining brightly through the window beside me. Only the Baby's Mumma is awake and she has retreated to their bedroom so I still have a quiet house to myself for a short while. I can tolerate only so much noise before my second cup of tea in the morning. I know I know I am addicted to peace and quiet. Chuckle. I bet you thought I was going to write, tea. Yes that too.

This morning I am listening to  Meghan Trainor - All About That Bass https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7PCkvCPvDXk and Home Free doing their cover of Meghan's song https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BuyGVhQFLbs  and I love both versions. I liked the overlaying message that 'every inch of you is perfect from the bottom to the top' and I like the bouncy ear tugging toe tapping tune. I only found both musical groups in the past few weeks thanks to FB shares and I am so enamoured I am contemplating becoming a patron through Patreon. I am trying to avoid reading the angry feminist deconstruction of the song and simply enjoy the piece for its entertainment value. I think I am feminist until I read the anger in some of the attack mode feminist manifestos then I lean more toward humanist non gender specific.
I suspect it is the burst of sunshine making me feel so excited about the possibilities in our world. I avoid news coverage that sensationalises or minimises the problems in our world but I am bombarded with information through all my social media sites and I prefer to focus on positives such as inventions and movements that try to make a positive difference in the environment or for all people. 

the 52 week illustration challenge this week is themed House and I started researching temporary housing options for the homeless and found some incredible people trying to make life easier for the uncounted homeless people around the world.  The Tiny House blog by Christina Nellemann features many great articles on tiny homes and people making shelters http://tinyhouseblog.com/humanitarian/gregorys-homeless-homes-project/  After looking at the amazing little houses I thought I would draw some for the challenge.

this tiny house is a Japanese solution to homeless accomodation. Typically Japanese in its functional compactness. I have yet to do my own art this week but I have several planned pieces.

I want to celebrate the things being done to help the homeless but I also want to celebrate an epiphany I had recently about why I like certain household objects such as a wing back chair and teapots and other houses that bring joy to my life.
Mr Tumnus' house in the original illustrations is filled with items I love. The Narnia books had a profound impact on my development. Being a very early reader, in fact I have no memory of not being able to read and could read fluently by the time I made it to school at the age of 4 years and two weeks old. Enid Blyton and CS Lewis were my substitute caregivers as a child and I had to skip the university classes where they were deconstructed because it felt like having my parents attacked and I couldn't do that.  Anyway back to art. I attended our second drawing club at The Artery. This month we had life drawing with a model named Chris. He has the most amazing muscle definition on such a skinny. I managed to get proportions right on the fast sketches but given too much time I was able to make great detail but had my proportions all wrong and then I became enamoured with his feet which have the most exquisite arches and I bemoaned how much money I have spent on orthotic inserts for the shoes of my flatfooted children. So art art art, life drawing classes usually involve a model sitting naked in the centre of a ring of easels and artists in varying levels of discomfort as they grapple with the nakedness of the model and the model grappling with the varying bursts of difficulty standing naked in front of strangers. I modeled once or twice but only head and shoulders. I was too self conscious to be naked in front of strangers but could sit absolutely still for long periods of time. It was an interesting experience.

 Oh I submitted a story to Rate your Story RYS and guess what? I forgot to double check myself and sent it without the correct subject line and it was bounced right back at me. I am not going to make it far in the writing world if I don't read and follow the instructions. I am such a dill.

I am going to create art in this beautiful day so I am off to do people stuff and drawing.  Oh I have another commission to make art too. Loving it. I set myself a 90 day challenge to change my life and the work is beginning to trickle in at 1/3 of the way. Have a beautiful day loves.

self doubt and Sunday's

One of the most debilitating things for any creative person is self doubt. There are any number of memes depicting the cyclic nature of perceived worth for any work, be it writing, music, or art in any form. I am no different from hundreds of thousands of other creatives who doubt themselves and their ability to create something worthwhile.

If I tally up the things I have done over the past year and a half I know I have produced an astounding number of words strung together as stories and an incredible amount of art. When I am listening rationally to the comments from others I can hear them say how much they like my work or how much they like my art but still I am more convinced by the negatives than the positives. I focus on my growing pile of rejections and my growing pile of failures in competitions. Rational me says that I need to research the judges and see what they like and not submit a story and hope it will win on its merits not the subjective likes of a judge. The rational me doesn't get a fair hearing.

I finally officially sent in an "I'm not coming back" letter to my former employer and they advertised my job within hours. I am relieved and scared at the same time. I need to make my writing and art an income generating activity but no one pays for anthology pieces, at least no one who will take my stories which brings me full circle into the belief that my work is only good enough for small press and vanity publishers who have no money to pay anyone (Or say they haven't). All the big publishers I have subbed to have either rejected me or not even known I subbed.

I sent one story to 12 people who offered to beta read for me and only two responded. Even my beta readers are rejecting me. So I am spiraling back to maybe I should quit this gig and go get a job cleaning toilets with my stories.

I ran out of money ages ago and I don't have a 'real job' to go back to. 

So before I sink into some quagmire of depressing thoughts I will share a bit of art for this week's 52 week challenge. Theme: Paris.
 I have never been, only seen, Paris through the lens. 
One day I'll go and see the show that poets scribe and then I'll know.

The first image was painted with water colours but I was not particularly happy with the soft pastel hues so I re-coloured with pencil next day. The image was in part inspired by the poster below and various images of the bridges over the Seine. I do love the lamp posts and hope some day to see them for myself. I am planning on one more image for the week of Coco Chanel.

My new garden plants are all sprouting leaves and the bulbs are up and flowering. I have never been an enthusiastic gardener and I am quite pleased when things actually grow well. My mother was an enthusiastic gardener, so enthusiastic she knew the common and scientific names of everything in her garden plus all the medical, cosmetic and edible properties of each and every leaf, stem, bulb and flower. Her talents were wasted, she should have been running the horticulture classes at a university somewhere. She loved plants so much that my sister wrote a song about it. The lyrics went something like this...  Plants, plates and other people always get your love, if I were to grow a leaf maybe you would see me... she will correct me, my sister, for having her lyrics wrong but it was four decades ago. I tell people I know nothing about plants but the truth is I do, I absorbed information about plants because that was all my mother was ever interested in. I don't willingly garden and until very recent times would only put edible plants in a garden and dismissed plants for their aesthetic appeal as purely fanciful and a waste of dirt and water. My mother did not grow food. She had eight children but did not grow food?

Goodness this post is maudlin I shall try and lift my dopamine and serotonin levels somewhat. The sun is shining, that should help or at least fill me with some vitamin D.

 My daughter is off to her second master class for acting today. She seems both terrified and enthusiastic and I am hoping it will strengthen her skills and give her a network of contacts.
 she is doing the 5 WEEK INTENSIVE MASTERCLASS WITH ANDY McPHEE through big&small acting studio

PO BOX 5244South Melbourne, VIC,3205

Andy McPhee  actor.  http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0574173/

She is discovering that even adults do homework but the only people who check it is themselves. She has to read an actors autobiography each week, watch and review films, write poetry and monologues,  learn scripts, listen to music and analyse it and then in class she has to act and dance and change her accent and modify the scene to fit a different genre and so much more. It is intense and she was not prepared for the expectations of an adult class after fluffing around in high school but she will adapt. This is the career path she has always shown an interest in so I am hoping by supporting her to do this she can take flight.

I have paid for two courses to improve my own skills and I need to begin studying. I sent away for a book on self publishing which should be awesome. I am excited for friends and network acquaintances who have recently published their first books and signed their first contracts or signed new contracts. It is wonderful to see the successes of people I value. It gives me some hope to push past my own self depreciation.

Perseverance is the key. Most of the well known writers in giving tips say the same thing. BIC (bottom in chair), write every day and just keep going. So I shall just keep going. I have some more art to complete today and that always cheers me up.

Have a wonderful day dear readers.

ps I love you sister of mine.
pps. sorry I stood you up for the cuppa Shirley
ppps. did you know you could have a post post post script
pppps. the word Happy is used three times more often in English than sad

Sunday musing

It has been a formidable week and an amazing one and tiring and thought provoking. I managed to write a picture book draft and have revised it several times. I uploaded the first 250 words to the forum on 12 x 12 and had some excellent suggestions and feedback for improving the piece. I sent it off to two ladies to critique but have yet to hear back from them. I am hoping to send it off to RYS (rate your story) on the 1st of September and see what they think before finding a place to submit to.
This story is about a boy who is terrified of taking a bath.  It was fun to develop and I plan to story board it next week to see how it flows.

I was incredibly excited to see that Melissa Gjibers has started her Pozible campaign
http://www.pozible.com/project/184562

Melissa
has written a middle grade book about a young girl, Sam, who has returned to Australia after being in Nepal with her parents for several years. Sam finds life hard with the cultural differences between the two countries and becomes the victim of bullying and teasing. She resorts to some unconvincing tactics that make her wish the ground would open up and swallow her when the other children react unfavourably. With the support of her parents and teacher she finds a way to solve her problems.

A lovely story with a terrific solution. What makes me even more excited though is that I created the art for this book. I found this to be an interesting journey in my creative career. I learned a great deal about what information I do and don't want  in terms of creating a concept drawing that meets the requirements of the writer. This book is self published so the communication has been direct between myself and Melissa.
The art in the original concept drawings is a far cry from the final pieces and I have enjoyed that metamorphosis.

Art theme for this week in the 52 week challenge is Butterfly. I played with my prismacolour pencils for this and tried a chibi style for one of the butterflies.

 my butterfly ballerina

Chibi (ちび or チビ) is a Japanese slang word meaning "short person" or "small child". The word has gained currency among fans of manga and anime.

This stylised butterfly is inspired by a tattoo. I like the artistry in some tattoos. I tried using a solvent with my prisma colours but I haven't quite embraced the skill. There are some terrific instructional videos on youtube I am going to study.

I was supposed to be at an adobe illustrator for beginners course today but I had to postpone it. I have a credit for when the course runs again and I am really looking forward to learning how to use my software.

Last weeks theme for the 52 week challenge was Toys and I missed it but did a catch up today.

I purchased a 'uniball signo broad nib white pigment' ink pen and this was my first time using it.  The image is of my set of plastic keys and a rattle with water and floating items in the handle. I have had them for 30+ and 25+ years and they are still as bright as the day they came into the first child's possession.





This week I have extra visitors staying with me. My grandson Kaylem Michael is one month old and he likes my singing. The young man has good taste. Here he is telling me off for taking too many photos.

We are taking bets on what colour his eyes will be. They are baby slate grey at the moment. His Mum has deep chocolate brown eyes and his Dad has light hazel eyes. Half his grandparents had blue eyes and half have brown so it could go any direction.

I entered one of my novels in a competition. I think I wrote a better synopsis this time. I have trouble with synopsis and pitches but each time I do one I believe I am improving.
The competition is with http://www.authorsfirst.com/  and has a pleasant prize of $5000, an ipad mini and a publishing contract.

One of the big things I have had to deal with these last few weeks has been the saga of the car.
It overheated and has been rattling a lot and sounding like a V8. So I had the heater tap replaced and a service $230 then I had a wheel alignment $60, then two new tyres $230 and then the exhaust repairs $100, a timing belt $300 and then a new radiator $300 and then - gulp - the mechanic rings to say the car is still overheating and he doesn't know why. :( My car is still in the mechanics workshop and I am wondering if I will need to sell the furniture on ebay to get it back.(kidding) What is that old homily? A stitch in time saves nine or for want of a shoe the horse was lost. I really think I should have kept up regular maintenance instead of putting it off all the time. Well hopefully after this great saga I will get a few trouble free years out of it.
I didn't even know a heater tap existed. Apparently it looks like this..
and is part of the heating and cooling system of the car. So when my car was overheating I would turn the heater on full and pull heat off the engine. It worked for a little while and finally gave up the ghost.

 Aunty and Nephew becoming aquainted.


I thought I should do the grandmotherly obsessive thing and put another photo up.










Tomorrow I have to complete art for two people and have it sent and start two courses I have paid for but finally Shirley your art awaits. I have it in a frame for you.

What do we leave out?

This is the colour of my daughter's hair. I have to share. I simply love it.

It was an accidental colour but it suits her so much. The only other person I have ever known to pull of this particular shade is the character Lilu (Scarlett Johansson) in the fifth element,

 My daughter can wear just about any colour. She has that pale pale vampire skin, the kind that used to be referred to as alabaster (like the statues).

She has been colouring her hair since grade five in primary school(equivalent of grade four elementary-USA) when she landed a role in a play called The Seal Wife. She had the softest blondest hair imaginable before that and then changed to a brassy red to fit the role. All the females characters were Celtic and red headed in the play.
http://www.abc.net.au/local/stories/2008/03/26/2200016.htm 

Next year she went black to be a pirate. That was henna and it never seemed to come out of her hair.

Since then her hair has been every colour under the rainbow. For plays and cosplay. Sometimes dye and sometimes wigs. Often for charity.
Two years in a row the school she attend refused to allow her to have her photograph taken because her hair was coloured, regardless of the fact that she was raising money by colouring her hair for a cause. The message the school was sending was very clear. Uniformity is more important than good citizenship.
I think My daughter has light brown/dark blonde hair as her natural colour but it never stays undyed long enough to be sure.

Generally when I discuss my family on my blog it is in very broad and vague terms because I have limited control over who does and doesn't read my blog and I wish to preserve their privacy. I leave out details. I generally leave out many of the small daily challenges of my life such as estrangement from sons, dying parents, illness, babies, being a grandparent along with all the usual mundane things like my dishwasher making the most abominable noises or the foibles of my washing machine or the huge amount of money my car repairs are costing my budget. Everyone has little quirks and  challenges in their daily lives and it would become very boring and dull to be reading about them unless written by a very good story teller. Hmm there is an idea in that...

A tin foil hat is a hat made from one or more sheets of aluminium foil, or a piece of conventional headgear lined with foil, worn in the belief it shields the brain from threats such as electromagnetic fields, mind control, and mind reading. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tin_foil_hat

I will share this though. Some time ago my landlord reacted to my tin foil hat neighbour who was worried about twigs falling on his two four wheel drives, two station wagons, two boats, trailers and various other wheeled assets in his front yard. He was concerned the once a year visits from the fruit bats would ruin his paint by dropping half eaten fruit and what if the 30 year old tree suddenly fell on his house.

 These are the old trees.

So the neighbour squealed and whined and the knee jerk reaction of the landlord was to remove not only the tree beside the neighbours fence but the one on the other side of the front lawn, no where near the tinfoil hat neighbour or his precious assets. I  offered to make my neighbour a tin foil hat to protect him from alien invasion and falling elephants which were more likely than the trees falling.I had begged and pleaded and even became angry that they would destroy two perfectly healthy trees filled with nests, birds, insects and life. Trees that provided shade and cleaned the air around us. Trees that cooled the temperature and protected the house from the fierce winds we experience. No they were cut down and turned into wood chips. So I planted new trees and shrubs. Sixteen of them.  Here they are.

 The pots lined up on the front lawns. selecting placement is an important step.

 They are all native species which will be wonderful for encouraging insects and birds.

 They look like mere twigs now but I can imagine the magnificence of these plants in a few years time in full bloom. The scarlet and gold of their flowers will be such a delight.

 I could not get this one to stand in place until it was planted.

Look at those lovely red leaves. This little beauty will be tall and shady and fill the space where a canopy should be.

 A native grass with an added self seeded prickly acacia hiding in the fronds.

 Look at this sweet little flower peeping out of my garden. I have some very learned friends who could spout off the technical and common names of all these plants but I don't care so much about the paper work I just care that they grow.

 another little stick almost camouflaged by the twigs around it.

 Just wait until this little stick is forty meters high.

 and this lovely frond with the golden flower fills me with delight

each mound of dirt is a future patch of shade and colour.   I am so happy they are all in and well watered with plenty of mulch from what was left of the previous trees. They don't look like much now but in a few years time it will be lovely to sit on the grass for a picnic in the cool shade.









My little act of rebellion. One score for mother nature!



So what of my writing and art? I am writing every day. I am on the eighth draft of a picture book and have had some very good feedback from my critique group and the 'first 250 words' forum in the 12 x 12 group. The story has become much better since the original idea and changed a lot.

This weeks theme for the 52 week challenge is TOY. I am yet to produce a piece for the theme.

I am booked in for a class in using Illustrator. I am looking forward to that and seeing what I can achieve in the digital art world. There is a big difference between cutting and pasting someone else's work and coming up with original concepts and art and I want to be able to make original work.
I recieved my membership card for the F project and I am keen to explore what my options are for studio space at the Artery. So many good things coming up for me I can hardly turn around without another opportunity.
I spent a great afternoon talking writing and story ideas with a friend of a friend which was such a buzz and I have been reading and reviewing other writers work. I like encouraging other writers and artists.

So some things I leave out and others I share, I think we all do that to varying degrees and depending on who we are sharing with.


I like your new fence palings Shirley and your green fairy is part way done. :)


On that note it is time for me to find a good book and curl up to read. Hugs and warm fuzzies.