Dragons in the garden

I went over to wander the city botanic gardens in my lunch break last week – I love the avenue of bamboo, tall and green and rattling and carved with pale graffiti – and found that they have eels in the ponds! Eels swaying through the waterweed and nosing up to the surface, a turtle sunning itself on a rock and stretching a hind leg lazily, and great big bearded dragons posed on rocks with their tails hanging down into the path, scaring – and being scared by – small children.

I went back to draw the eels yesterday but stopped in a gallery on the way and ended up listening to BBC comedy sketches with the owner instead.

At the bottom of the page are my nephews, in Sydney trying out my cousin’s two-wheel skateboard (without any resounding success), and on the right is the younger’s drawing of the sundial in the garden in Killara – it has a twisted pedestal of thin red bricks and the gnomon (yes, I had to look that up) is verdigrised. The blue areas are probably a fairly accurate depiction of the path I followed bounding around to point out where the shadows went over the bricks and the edge of the base and how they worked.

 

Illustration Friday: Infinite

This is a very small (about 1.5 x 1 inches) scratchboard picture based on the sketches I made driving back from Sydney with my sister on Monday. I decided then to do a road for this week’s Illustration Friday topic. She wanted me to put the view of Muswellbrook in as well. It’s been years since I’d been driven that way, but I remembered those towers (they were shaped like a plastic stool we had at the time) and the sign reassuring passers by that the clouds are only water vapour.

Here are the driving sketches (as ever, to see a larger version you can click on the picture to go to its Flickr page, then click on “All sizes” above the image):

My fast sketching ability was taxed, but it was a beautiful drive, though a long day. We met the removalists at my grandmother’s house in Sydney at 6am, were on the road by 6.25 and arrived at home in Brisbane at 9.30pm, very stiff from not being able to put our seats back because of boxes (of plates and dolls and cotton reels, photos and icecube trays and picnic sets) and (in my case) from driving down Cunningham’s Gap for the first time, at night, in the rain. There were some stops along the way, but right at the very end there were roadworks and we had to take a great long detour to get to our street.

The removalists arrived yesterday in the dust storm and I now have a house… very full of chairs (I am only babysitting some of them), but with real, grown-up furniture – a love seat and wooden recliners and a little green sofa and a sideboard and a serving trolley and a lovely dining table with big clawed feet and a bewildering assortment of occasional tables.

 

Sketching at the Brisbane Writers Festival

The Brisbane Writers Festival was on last week and this weekend. I was in Toowoomba on Saturday (the sketches above are of Aimee and Lisa trying to decide on fabric for a costume for Aimee – I sat on a chair in the store and drew and Aimee said that from the side I looked like Whistler’s mother) but on Sunday, after baking too many Snickerdoodles, I drove in to South Bank. The flower above at bottom right is – I think – a passion flower. Such strange, almost excessively fringed and tassled flowers.

I saw a panel on “Writing the City”, with Jeb Brugmann, Gary Bryson, Nick Earls and Miriam Cosic (top right). More a discussion of what they’ve written than the techniques & theory (but I’m used to a different sort of convention!), and the highlight for me was Nick Earls reading selections from his books describing parts Brisbane over the years. They also talked about the culture/’emotional fact’ of a city and how this is relevant both to urban renewal projects and to writing fiction (including fictionalised cities) – something that actually came up in a town planning seminar I was at yesterday morning. I like writing about cities, so I will be thinking about all this for a while.

On the right page at the bottom left is James A Levine (no website), who was signing when I sketched him. I had run into Tim while sitting on the edge of a garden bed drawing pigeons and he and I went over to show the sketch to its subject. We had a very pleasant conversation (and he signed the drawing).

 

A complaint

My sister, on the left here, will not even agree to be a subject for photoreference. When she suspects I am drawing her, she starts moving and shifting position. Sometimes she starts up when I am drawing something else altogether, and then I don’t enlighten her.

Otherwise, she is excellent company. She wakes up to the smell of biscuits (snickerdoodles today), and I come home to the smell of fresh-mown grass.

 

Sketchbooks circulating

I’ve finished uploading my last sketchbook! It isn’t all goblins, either. There’s a chair in there, and some Daleks as well (of varying degrees of authenticity). There are NaNoWriMers and people sitting under jacaranda trees and my ex-car (not dead, just pining for the… no, bad car pun!). The whole thing is here: Sketchbook 08/08 – 03/09.

In other (but no less drawn out) news, this is my contribution to Lynne’s moleskine for the 42nd moleskine exchange. Her theme was “superstitions” and this is a combination of “be careful what you wish for”, “don’t tell people what you wish or you won’t get it” and the fairytale of the 7 ravens. Brush and sepia ink and a touch of watercolour. Could have been better planned.

 

Oh, Western Wind

Cross-posted from the blog for the 42nd Moleskine Exchange. To see larger images, click on the picture to go to its Flickr page and then click on “all sizes” above the image.

Here is my contribution to Chensio’s moleskine (at last!). I ran with the idea of wind, because it certainly looked like a windy day on those first few pages. I swept the end of the circle of dancers up into the air, added a scattering of numbers blowing apart, a flowing scarf, autumn leaves, a flock of nannies (my favourite part :) and The Goose Girl (from the fairy tale), along with scraps of poems.

Here is a close-up of the nannies:

And here is a snippet from the all-in work on the back of the pages:

 

Sketchcrawler

It was the 20th Sketchcrawl on Saturday, and as I had been wanting to do one and the Brisbane group plans fell through, I took myself sketchcrawling around West End, starting at the markets (the best in Brisbane – and the best cupcakes: pretty and tasty). For going it alone, it is surprising how many people I talked to. Sketching can be a great way to meet people.

As usual, if you want to see more detail, click on the picture to go to its Flickr page, and then click on “all sizes” above the picture.

The left page is Latin dancing in Brisbane square on Friday night – I liked the idea of the semi-silhouette of the woman in the coat, and used that again in the sketchcrawl. On the right, the sketchcrawl begins with a lemon sorbet cupcake and behind the scenes at The Cupcake Parlour’s stall.

Here is a patient dog, and remarkably well-behaved given how close he was to cupcakes (the pink tablecloth on the right is the bottom of that stall) and two guitarrists, as well as a selection of headgear. At this point a lady shared my table and we chatted for a while about guitar and art and she invited me to her Bible study. I also had some lillipilli sorbet, but didn’t draw that.

I think this is Davies Park, West End. It might just be an overgrown piece of verge – it’s sort of hard to tell, but it does join up to the playing fields and one corner of the markets. In retrospect, I like how the tree turned out, but at the time I was disappointed not to be able to capture all the gnarls and folds and curves. The thumbnail below it is of shoes hanging from phone lines in front of a jacaranda – only they turned out to be slingback heels and not sneakers as is more often the case. Then I visited Reverse Garbage (love that shop with its bins of “shiny silver stuff”, “small felt moons”, “perspex shapes” and strange and wondrous industrial offcuts). I saw a man carrying groceries home on his skateboard, then walked down to the vicinity of the Three Monkeys cafe and caught some father christmas on the way, but I am out of practice at making memorable wishes.

At Gra Beeka cafe, I had some sticky sweet biscuits (but the buttery grabieh were my favourite) and ended up talking to some Canadians studying medicine at UQ, and sharing the brand of markers with one of them who decided to go buy a moleskine sketchbook. Then I had a late lunch at Three Monkeys with the girls from the house at Toowong (yes, I spent most of the day eating, that was partly the point), walked them to their shoe sale, drew young magpies who were pulling garage sale signs off a brick wall and wound up at The Music Kafe and listened to Sarah Haigh playing (triple-j unearthed - hehe, just found out she’s a lawyer too). I hadn’t heard her before, but really like her style and am looking forward to the new CD she said is coming out soon.

Here are the semi-silhouettes again, people leaning in the open window to listen. I quite like that picture. Then evidence of me drinking alone. Sarah Haigh very kindly signed my book and gave me a copy of her EP and didn’t point out that I had left a letter off her name. Also, there is a robot pencil sharpener I bought at Avid Reader.

 You can see other results of the sketchcrawl from around the world on the forums.

 

Ekka Sketches

The Ekka is the Queensland Exhibition – the state show, culmination of all the local shows. Cattle and horses and parades and pavilions, dagwood dogs, fairy floss, strawberries and cream, rides (I went the swinging chairs, which was fun but a bit lonely). My favourite parts are the cattle pavilion, which is always sweet-smelling and somnolent, and the dog trials, and the food.

As no-one wanted to come along with me (even though I had a spare pass), I took my sketchbook and managed to get a little drawing in. Maybe more next year. You can see larger versions of these by clicking on a picture to go to its Flickr page, and then clicking on “all sizes” above the picture.

I started sketching at the woodcut arena (right-hand page above). It was a windy day (the Ekka Winds come every August), so between the sawdust blowing in my eyes and the fact that in the speed chainsaw event the men split a log into seven posts in about a minute, I’m surprised I caught as much as I did.

Top left: There is always lots of free food in the Woolworths pavilion – exotic dips and spreads, olives, cordials, dessert wines, yoghurts and fudge – but most of it tastes so good I end up paying and taking it home. In the handcrafts pavilion (bottom left) there was a demonstration of cake decorating, with a mirror above the presenter so you could see what her hands were doing. The dog show (right) is a lot of fun. I would have liked to have spent more time there in a better seat – the dachshunds were hard to see.

The horses (bottom left) were far enough away that the horses were about the same size as the dachshunds, but it spared me having to capture too much detail. Middle left: there are always fabulous wigs from show bags (also, chocolate). Bottom right is a large and faintly iridiscent plush kangaroo that regarded me unblinkingly from over a seat in the train on the way home.

The gold ink and red bleed-through on the right-hand page are from using the last page of my sketchbook for tests when buying pens – which is an indication that I’ve finally finished scanning this sketchbook in. It’s all up at Flickr here: Sketchbook 05/08 – 08/08.

 

To the Volcano – Part 3

At the Whitegrass Airport on Tanna, F (small and organised and quiet) and her husband C (with a cheerful smile and hair in an impressive top-knot) and the driver whose name I never did quite catch collected me. F and C climbed in the back of the Hilux and we set off over unpaved roads towards the other side of the island.

We stopped at a co-op to buy three eggs. A few kilometres further we picked up more supplies and some extra people for the back. We passed an inlet where some goats were climbing, and a group of peace corps workers walking down the road and came to another smaller store with Bible verses painted over the door and a hurricane lantern hanging in the trees nearby to advertise a kava bar. A little girl wanted to join us but was only allowed to pass up bunches of bok choy and fresh peanuts with their stems tied together. Then the owner of our truck appeared and took over driving. He was friendly, but spent most of the drive on the phone, swearing at one of his drivers (a new mobile phone company had opened across Vanuatu the week before, and the coverage was better than in Australia). We went back to the co-op where some chickens ignored us, then back to the small store and bought potatoes and bok choy and added a few more people to the back. It must have been at this point that the little girl joined us after all.

We turned inland – past coconut palms and overgrown plantations, bougainvillea apparently coexisting peacefully with other plants, farming families walking down the road waving and smiling and swinging their bush knives, cows tethered on banks or blundering loose in the road and regarding us with that particular unimpressed expression native to all cows, past extravagantly-tailed roosters and neat compact pigs which waited intelligently for the truck to pass before crossing the road. We stopped at a little outdoor market under a spreading tree and the driver bought more fresh peanuts, still on the stalk and with a sweet vegetable crispness, which we ate as the truck laboured over rutted, slick hill road.

At last we came over the top of the island and saw the sea on the other side. The horizon seemed as high as we were and the mother-of-pearl ocean fell down to the shore far below us. Down there was an iron-grey plain of ash and the volcano – smaller than I imagined but more barren, a black cone smoking distantly and rumbling.

On the other side of the plain, which was cut by clear streams, we found an ash road between the trees and almost ran over a puppy. Someone recognised it, so it was picked up by one leg and added to the back of the truck. We drove to the driver’s bungalows, unloaded most of the people and supplies, then went back down the ash road and up a rutted side road to our bungalows. I put my bag in my bungalow and then W (driver) and P (guide) and I left in the dark and drove to the volcano.

The main ash roads had been smooth and firm, but the track to the volcano was very rough, well beyond corrugations, and by now it was very dark. We drove to the base and then P and I walked up, P a bit behind me, shining the torch on the path. It didn’t take long to reach the top and then we were on the edge of the volcano.

K and B had described the volcano to me, but it would have been hard to have been prepared. I had been mesmerised by Isabella Bird’s descriptions, but this was not a lake of fire. Instead, a great black sulphorous pit fell away below us, and from the darkness at irregular intervals fire flew upwards. The earth would gather itself with a great roar like the rushing of the sea and then glowing molten rocks would fly up into the air, from far below us high into the sky and fall, whistling and glowing orange against the night. There was more than one cone and they would explode alternately, sometimes a hiss of glitter, sometimes howling and shrieking. Many of the glowing rocks fell back into the earth, but some seemed to stop suddenly in mid-air, fallen on the sides of the cone which was otherwise invisible in the darkness. Huge rocks rough with glassy knobs lay around us, fruits of more violent explosions – some within the last few weeks.

It was hard to turn away – it felt disrespectful. Walking back down, the volcano rumbling and venting behind us, I looked across to another mountain, cold and dark, with the plume of the milky way sailing up from it like an explosion of ice.

(Part 1 here; Part 2 here; still to come: Part 4 “Things that didn’t kill me”)

 

Vanuatu: Sketchbook

My poor maltreated Moleskine. It is held together with duct tape now (on the inside, so I can’t pass it off as industrial punk) and has been soggy and dirty and flecked with volcanic ash and had a near miss in the Port in Port Vila.

But it survived and the picture pages are scanned and up as a set on Flickr: Vanuatu 2008 Moleskine.

This sketchbook has fewer receipts and brochures and tickets than the American one (although there are one or two pages of receipts and boarding passes I didn’t scan in), and is better scanned and – in the drawings at least – more colourful due to my acquisition of more markers. My handbag was (is) full of markers (and pencils, erasers, sharpeners, gel pens, blending pencils, etc).

But next time I will carry the book in a ziplock bag. Just in case.

—–

Now, so far I only have one question to answer about Vanuatu, and my answer is: no, to the best of my knowledge there are no longer cannibals in Vanuatu; that doesn’t stop the tourist trade trading on that piece of history; and from time to time startled linguists have been ’discovered’ by anthropologists searching for cannibal tribes.

Any other questions?