Word to the Wise: Banged Grains

Don’t over-microwave a wheat-pack.

 

Vanuatu: Work/Party

Bonus: If you get all the way to the end, there’s a picture.

When I sent text messages from Vanuatu or on returning showed people my sketches, I was asked, more than once and with a particular tone of voice, “So, did you get much work done?” The less arduous aspects were, I admit, overrepresented, but that is for the very good reason that it was very difficult to send humourous text messages or draw little pictures while I was working. So, to forestall that response, and because it was a work party (any excuse), I am going to tell you about the work first, before I get to the colourful stuff.

 

Home

I’m back! Not back in circulation, exactly, as I am nursing a throat infection, oddly cramped fingers, a distinct lack of bat-consumption, an aversion to going to the office and a strange inclination to cook, but I am back in the country.

The new header is Hideaway Island off Efate Island in Vanuatu, and is proof that there is a sketchbook which will follow soon, together with more details.

 

Vanuatu

I’m leaving for Vanuatu on Friday. Yes, it is now Sunday and I did have vague intentions of mentioning the trip before now, but that is the problem with vague intentions.

I thought I’d better mention the planned absence in case anyone was bothered by three weeks of radio silence.

On Friday evening I fly out to Port Vila to make myself useful with Wycliffe Associates for three weeks, repairing verandas at the translation headquarters, among other things. I was told I need to be willing to swing a hammer, and I confirmed I was willing but couldn’t guarantee I would hit what I was aiming at.

Whenever I say this, people joke about me hitting my thumbs, and I realise that maybe I am the only person who holds the nail in place with pliers. It’s a brilliant technique and I don’t intend to change because of peer pressure.

I still have to buy more full, below the knee skirts (and I intend to feel very Isabella-Bird, working and exploring in skirts). I confess it took me a moment to remember not to be bothered by the thought of wearing skirts and sneakers together. I am also diverting unnecessary brainpower to the question of what size sketchbook to take: pocket or large?

The following is from the Tourism Vanuatu website and I have pretty much learned it off by heart:

There are no public transport systems in Vanuatu. Privately owned mini buses are common and run unspecified routes through the municipal areas. You need only board one heading in approximately the right direction and tell the driver where you wish to stop and you will get there, albeit by a circuitous route! Taxis are also plentiful and relatively inexpensive. To get to other parts of Efate, utilities are licensed to carry passengers and can be found at the Markets.

 

Wind in My Hair, stars in my eyes… rain in my shoes

I’d forgotten the sky could hold this much water. I can’t use scratchboard because the ink is damp, I can only do enough laundry at a time to fill my little airing rack, my shoes and stockings have been soggy all day and the windows are buckling on the eighth floor. And it isn’t even warmer, which is the effect cloud cover is supposed to have, because if I go outside to appreciate it I will be drenched and windswept within minutes.

Also (and this may not be related to the weather) I am having difficulty with this week’s Illustration Friday topic, “Baby”, because everytime I brain storm I end up with something saccharine (not doing), horrible (fun, but not sure I should be doing), or something captionable with “Nobody puts Baby in a corner”.

While I dither about whether or not to go with murderous matryoshka dolls, here is last night’s work: the June header for this blog. It was a fast job, and I am still learning my way around Inkscape, but I like it (sans calligraphy), especially the background which is something I did up a few weeks ago when I was running with spangles and circus themes (the spangles came off the costume of an ill-fated human cannonball). The face is based on a picture of me (Self as Starlet on Flickr).

I look a little like I should be sitting in an old-fashioned motor car. Or possibly just sitting in the road looking wistfully after one, like Toad of Toad Hall.

 

To the person who let go of a dark blue umbrella…

…at or before 12.30pm today, it flew over the Heathley building at about 12.33pm and, after some indecision in front of the cathedral, touched down in Market street at approximately 12.35pm.

There are roadworks and barriers there, and it did not cause a traffic accident.

—End Public Service Announcement—

 

Self as a Teenager

Then:

(Larger jpg here).

Twelve years on: A lot less eyebrow. A little more dignity, a lot less caring about whether or not I’m embarrassed. More comfortable with how I weigh which is, incidentally, now only a little bit less than then. No cringing around the place in case I do something idiotic or clumsy (neither out of the realm of daily possibility). No braces. I run for pleasure, if not very far. I have no comfy uniform to hide in. I have heard of music after 1970 and used the internet more than twice. I know where they keep the computers. I don’t write poetry as much (whether inspired by JRRT or Banjo Patterson). I’m not in a choir any more. No time wasted in classrooms anymore! If anyone asks you what the biggest difference between distance education and boarding school is, that’s it: classrooms are so inefficient!

Started somewhere near Dave Valeza’s blog. I may try again, with more picture and fewer words.

 

Illustration Friday: Wide

Instead of showing you the rather nasty slice I took out of my hand on the desk at work, here is this week’s Illustration Friday entry:

It is a wide angled view of people on the hill at Musgrave Park for Paniyiri yesterday. (I ate far too much but that was the general idea and happily I dropped half of my violently-blue-iced ouzo cupcake because it would probably have done me in. Also, I almost walked into Effi). A wide angled view is a novelty for me, since I usually put many little pictures on each page of my sketchbooks. The style changed both for the sake of experiment and because I drew the left page and then decided to continue on to the right.

This is a bit further removed from the theme than usual, because the piece I was planning (of Anne Shirley and her puffed sleeves) was also my first scratchboard picture and while parts of it turned out very well, others didn’t:

I’ve edited it by neatening the white background. Next time I try scratchboard I will:
(a) work larger (this is slightly larger than the original);
(b) plan more;
(c) not give her a moustache;
(d) not put in such large areas of white (or else use white scratchboard);
(e) wear a dust mask; and
(f) not work in my bedroom.

 

Short Update

• Tickets to Vanuatu for three weeks. No guarantee will hit what aim for with hammer.
• Sepia sky.
• A moralistic and mouldering old book with beautiful cover.
• An unkept bathroom.
• Thespian judiciary.
• Sick headache probably my own fault.
• Back to blogs for pleasure not duty.
• Coconut rice.
• Cheap offcut of scraperboard.
• Tea universal panacea. Am aware of tautology but sounds better that way.
• Rain in the kitchen.
• Realised I have April reviews to do.
• Debate on correct disposition of commas.
• Early night.

 

Illustration Friday: Seed

Parents lie to their children. Fathers are particularly guilty of this. My father visited the people who leased our property while we were in the city for a few years and was asked to convince their daughter (who did School of Distance Education) that paper was made from trees. My father discovered that her father had, before this, convinced her that 100s&1000s (a type of confectionary sprinkles) are Smarty seeds (Smarties are sort of like M&Ms, but larger and flatter). They dug up a patch of earth in the garden, raked and fertilised and planted the 100s&1000s and watered them, and one night the father crept out and put down Smarties on the ground. It was some time before his daughter discovered the truth of the matter, and she wouldn’t believe him again.

Smarties, after all, look much more like 100s&1000s than paper looks like trees.

A sketch in coloured pencils and a felt calligraphy pen on the back of a business card (I bought a packet of blanks on sale).