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.

Strangely productive Saturday

I woke up made a mango protein smoothie hung my washing on the line and fell asleep again. I dreamed I was in a house I had rented or bought sight unseen. it was multistory and old, solid brick but I cam in at the lower level and the first three rooms were dreadful, very old. The first room I entered had a couple of pipes sticking out of the wall which was sticky yellow paint over brick and an uneven concrete floor. There was a a door at the far side which had a step down into a room with a toilet with a wooden seat and an old raised cistern with a chain. I went into the next room that was also bare except for an old stove shoved into a painted over chimney niche. I was beginning to think desperate thoughts of 'what have I done?' when I opened the door of the third room nearest the back door. The floor was made of what was left of wooden floorboards barely held together with a sticky lacework that might have been spider webbing. I put one foot on the floor and it sagged and I began to doubt we could live in such a dreadfully neglected place with a floor that would collapse if anyone so much as stepped on it. I went upstairs and found an enormous room that had multiple doors across the far wall. The windows if there were any were covered so the light was dim. I grabbed the first door handle and found that I had swung out a shoulder height wooden wall that had a row of coat hooks across the back. I put it back then slid open the next door that turned out to be a dumb waiter. Light shone down in a circle in the centre and the whole was filled with lint and dust and of course spider webs. All the doors on that wall proved to be dark and decrepit. Then I head my son call and I turned around to find corridors/hallways made of glass and rows of white cupboards that had things left behind by the previous tenants. I thought maybe a church group had had the place before me because the things were all kinds of art and craft with theology themes. My youngest son called out that he had found a kitchen and I began to feel more hopeful and optimistic. It was a weird dream and very very realisitic.

Okay so I took some photos of the last three days themes which I neglected to upload yesterday.
Today, day 7 is Pattern

one of my sons is attempting to coach me into solving a cube. I have only once in my life been able to do so with the slow and deliberate use of the instruction manual. My son finds me a very frustrating student. The stripy cup is a good pattern simply because it adorns a cup filled with tea. There are other patterns in this picture, a pattern of pop culture items, timber grain, wood panels on the little beach house, a pattern of knots in the ropes, even a pattern in the order of doctors. If I had expanded the scope I would have the pattern of a dr who scarf further along the shelf.

This was my ELEVEN picture a little past eleven o'clock is my steam punk watch hanging on my bedside chandelier.

these are my adventure pictures, one is the ocean from a travelling car near Phillip Island on my 1500 trek around Victoria to go to a writers weekend and the other is my time turner, well it helps me work out the time differences between here and the rest of the world so I can coordinate my conversations. International interactions are always an adventure even from the comfort of my very own desk chair.











Today I wrote a 3000 word short story for an anthology of ghostly tales for younger readers. I had already submitted one but some of my story was too much like another so I withdrew it. I am quite pleased with this one. I also wrote another 1500 words on my WIP and have had an altercation that ended in bloodshed between some major characters leaving my MC vulnerable and alone. All a bit worrisome. I am off to do some more as I did promise to complete it this weekend.

Oh I did some more art. I used a set of cheap oil pastels and they are horrid. They don't blend or go on smoothly and they were very frustrating to manipulate so the end result was quite BLAH however I am going to inflict my horrid piece on you so you know never to use cruddy cheap oil pastels.

On the theme of Feast of course and this time my interpretation of feast was books, music, art, stars, trees, maps and learning. Brain feast.

That is it for me for tonight I am going to write some more and then have a visual feast of dwarves and a hobbit and a deliciously scaly dragon.