untitled #26 [royal botanic gardens, melbourne, victoria, australia, 2007]
So, I've known this was coming since December last year, but it took longer than expected.
Subsequently, it's landed at arguably the worst possible moment for me: my flatmate has given notice tonight that he's moving out at the end of next month.
wrecked [wonthaggi, victoria, australia, 2019]
So, yesterday was a bit tiring but mostly good.
After a day consumed by client work, I was about to settle in for an evening of photo editing. Before I did, I took a moment to catch up on social and clicked on an Instagram story from a friend.
To be honest, I rarely click on the stories of friends or accounts I follow. Not because I'm not interested in what they're sharing. But because they've often shared it to their feed as well. Or it's content they're sharing from others, which may or may not interest me.
Also, I generally have to be in the right mood for stories or reels, even IG video. And then there are the soundtracks people choose to accompany them, but that's a discussion for another time...
So, I was in for a bit of a shock when clicking on her stories yesterday evening.
Her bruised and swollen face looked back at me, and my first thought was that someone had beaten the hell out of her.
I held my thumb on the story to stop it from moving forward and took in the text and hashtags on the post to register what I was looking at. I let the next story play, and then I messaged.
She had been in a terrible car accident and, if not for people coming to her rescue, she could have died. I'm so thankful she didn't.
We met about 2005 via MySpace and became fast friends. We've shared so much in the intervening 16 years - especially in the first few years of our friendship (nudge, nudge, wink, wink) - despite spending so many of those years miles apart.
She's been a muse to me. One of the most easygoing models I've worked with.
She's given me access to inspiring natural and manmade environments in which to take self-portraits almost every time I've been able to visit her. Both in Australia and the UK.
She also managed to get my photography (and my cleavage) on the telly for the first time a few years back.
We don't chat enough these days, but when we do - as with many of my best friends - it's like picking up a conversation from two weeks ago instead of two years (or more) ago.
Despite having to undergo facial surgery to repair her broken jaw (hopefully today, Australian time), she hasn't lost her dark sense of humour.
I don't have any photos from my D700 from the last day we met up in Coolangatta on the final full day of my visit to Australia in late 2019. All those I took with my iPhone have already been shared.
That's why I decided to edit and share this photo from earlier in the road trip from Melbourne to Brisbane. I thought it might appeal to her dark sense of humour at this time.
So I'm relieved but still catching my breath a little with this news right now. And sending my love and the gentlest hugs across the time zones to her.
Day ninety-six of The 100 Day Project for 2021.
Yes, I'm aware that if that bee flaps its wings, the building will collapse.
But, after almost 100 days, I've confirmed something I suspected. But possibly wasn't quite as blatant before as it is in yesterday's sketch.
The first line I drew of this sketch was along the underside of the front of the honey shop's roof.
It's actually pretty accurately horizontal.
But then, do you know what I must have done, on auto-pilot, and not corrected for as I was drawing most of the horizontal lines of the shop's walls?
In other sketches, it would be less jarring, but in this one, it's glaring. I mean, the slant of the corrugated roof isn't terrible. Even the slanted-vertical corners of the shop aren't that bad.
What's throwing everything out is the (not) horizontal lines of the weatherboard.
So, I'm right-handed (I know. How boring...) And when I write almost anything, I don't have my writing material square to the desk. I'm going to guess you don't either.
I tilt my writing material probably about 45 degrees so that the top of the page leans quite heavily to the left.
Clearly, this is such an unconscious thing for me to do. And, given I'm using a hardback visual diary to draw in, which has certain constraints versus a flat piece of paper, I'm not really thinking about it. And obviously not correcting for it.
So then you think the honey shop in Wombat Creek has narrowly stood up to a tornado.
Except, in reality, you'd know that wasn't likely because Australia doesn't have tornadoes.
But a little under two months after we drove through here, one of the numerous vicious bushfires that razed rural Australia before, during and after our visit hit the surrounding areas. Thankfully the honey shop survived unscathed.
It definitely fared better in the bushfires than in my wonky drawing.
Maybe if you squint, you can pretend the horizontal lines are actually horizontal on the front of the building. And the correct angle for the perspective on the side of the building has been achieved.
Or maybe just get drunk, and it will all look perfectly aligned?
Despite the poor result, at 70 minutes, this came in as one of - if not the - lengthiest sketch sessions for this year's project. I'm not entirely sure it was time well spent.
The original sketch was drawn with a 4H pencil and then variously overdrawn and shaded with a 6B, 2B, B, HB and heavier weight 4H pencil.
lounging, littorally, in lorne
Day seventy-six of The 100 Day Project for 2021.
This possibly takes the cake for the worst sketch of the project so far.
If not, it's up there with the tuxedo cat (her name's Susie, by the way!), aeroplane and beetle and possibly some others.
Which is a pity as it seemed to start off so well. Oh well... I knew I could never match Ron Mueck's skill anyway.
I was lucky to be in Melbourne for the 2018 National Gallery of Victoria Triennial. I was able to see the brilliant work of Ron Mueck, Yayoi Kusama and many other artists in the flesh. And catch up with fellow photographer and longtime friend Chris Zissiadis.
The triennial took place this year, so I've missed that. But maybe I'll be back in Australia in time for the next one in 2024.
The original sketch was drawn with a 4H pencil, then overdrawn and shaded with an HB pencil.
Day thirty-seven of The 100 Day Project for 2021.
How many of you are old enough to remember when the credits of a film shot in widescreen (16:9) were broadcast on the old television aspect ratio (4:3)? When they'd resize the frame to allow the credits to mostly be visible on the screen?
I'm guessing there's a few of you.
So, let's imagine that's what I did with my sketch today.
Clearly, that chair isn't proportionately as wide as it is in the original image. But I was trying to keep the width of the image within the page's edges.
I actually worked from a square version of the source image. I shot the source photo as a 1:1 square image and shared it previously on Instagram in that format. But my iPhone 11 Pro Max saves the original image in the full-frame ratio. So when I realised my sketch was portrait format, I could at least have a matching format photograph to pair with it to share.
There's also a bit of curvature on the left-hand side of the sketch. This is due to the page in my art journal curving when laid open. I held the left side of the journal up as I photographed my sketch. But clearly not enough to compensate for it and make the page appear flat.
Today's sketch was drawn with a 4H pencil.
I decided, in advance, I was going to shadow out the motel room interiors. But I did overlook the door handles and keys hanging from them when I sketched. Oops!
I corrected the bolts on the upper verandah coverage, but I'd drawn them a bit too heavy. So you can still see where I originally placed them too low down.
The door numbers are clearly not to scale (with each other or the doors).
There are some other inaccuracies in there (don't count them!) And the bricks were not drawn for realism but with artistic license.
Today was a bit of a write-off again for almost everything, but I'm trying to get my sleeping patterns back on track this week.
Day thirty-six of The 100 Day Project for 2021.
Once again, I started my sketch after 23:30 yesterday. I finished a few minutes after midnight after a lazy, lazy day and a minuscule amount of work in the last stretch of the evening.
I picked this image I took at the Toora wind farm in November last year on my road trip from Melbourne to Brisbane with Simon because it seemed like something I could draw quickly. I was both right and wrong.
It's a passable sketch - I'm pretty sure you'd know what it was without the source image - but the top blade leans a little too hard to the left. And the right one is hanging too low and is a bit short compared to its counterpart on the left.
A satisfying attempt for me after what was a long week. I'll take it.
I'm hoping this week is a little gentler on me and on any of you struggling lately.
If you've not already had a listen, Nick Cave and Warren Ellis' latest collaboration, Carnage, has been on heavy rotation here since Friday. I realised yesterday I wasn't following Cave's solo Spotify profile, so it wasn't served up to me on the day of release. Though I was following Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, The Dirty Three, and, I think, Warren Ellis, so I'm still confused as to why it wasn't in my new release batch last week.
Oh, and Happy International Women's Day! I only found out today that many countries and some individual cities actually have a bank holiday to celebrate IWD!
In case you're missing it this year, some clever chappy archived Richard Herring's tweets from 2019. For those who don't know: Herring has done sterling work responding to the excessive number of tweets asking when International Men's Day is for the past eight years. You can send the archive link to twats as a "let me Google that for you" type of response if anyone you know needs to read it.
untitled #92 [melbourne general cemetery, parkville, victoria, australia, 2005]
Here's a lesson for all of you: don't go wandering around taking photos in a cemetery on a Saturday afternoon when you're still vague and vacant from your various indulgences of the night before. That's just what I did one afternoon in November 2005.
It didn't occur to me the security guard driving around Melbourne General Cemetery blipping his horn was alerting visitors to it being closing time. I thought he was just ensuring he didn't run over any old biddies who might not notice him coming. Amused at the potential irony of being run down in a cemetery, I continued on my wanderings, photographing angels.
My Nikon D50 battery had run out, and I'd used up the remaining shots on the black and white roll in my FM3A. So I headed back toward the Lygon Street gates via a friend's father's grave.
On reaching the gate, it came to my attention that it was locked. About that time, I also realised it was actually about 18:00. Daylight savings had only recently started, and my internal clock was out of whack from the previous night's antics. So I hadn't noticed how long I'd been there or how far along the day had progressed.
This was the point at which the proverbial penny dropped. I made my way to the main gates hoping they still had something as old-fashioned as a caretaker. Unfortunately, not after hours...
At this point, amusing as it was, it was also a little disarming. I nosed around the office entrance hoping to find a number to no avail. I then spied the phone number on the information board and rang that.
Strangely enough, it was the number for The Necropolis in Springvale. The recorded message told me all about reflection walls, informed me that my call was valuable and that an operator would be with me shortly. I found it equally strange that there would be a queue of calls for The Necropolis at this time of night. I also wondered if the times read out just after the number connected referred to their office hours, which I was currently calling outside of?
After a couple of minutes, I hung up and tried calling my friend Alie. She wasn't answering her mobile, so I called her home number. She had just gone out, so I explained the situation to her brother, Bill, who had answered my call. We both laughed heartily at my plight. I asked if he could find out the number for the Carlton Police Station and call them to let them know to come down and bail me out. He very kindly did so, and I sat down to wait.
After a little while of quietly laughing to myself and glancing about, I noticed a small sign just in the bottom corner of one of the office windows near the fence. On closer inspection, I saw the 'after-hours gate' number was on it. I quickly called the number. Thankfully, the security guard who had been driving around earlier answered. He seemed a bit annoyed but said he would come back to let me out.
He seemed less peeved when he found me there. He obviously recognised me as the girl who had been photographing an imposing statue earlier. We laughed at my foolishness, and he released me from the cemetery.
As I was walking back towards Lygon Street, Tracey from the police station called. She had been about to drive over with the key they keep in the station, but I informed her I was safe and sound and outside now, and we again laughed at it all.
What a day!
Despite the situation at the end, I'd had a pleasant afternoon just wandering and pausing at one point to relax and talk to Alie when she called me on my mobile.
There's a small church in one part of the cemetery that I circled at one point. Nearby, many varicoloured birds were flitting about. It was a pleasant area. I still don't know if I'm the marrying kind, and I'm definitely not the religious kind. But I remember thinking to myself, "Would it be inappropriate to celebrate the start of a new life with someone in a place devoted to death?"
Day twenty-three of The 100 Day Project for 2021.
Another late posting, though the sketch was completed on the day.
This time inspired by a photograph of mine of Melbourne General Cemetery, taken in November 2005.
I took it on the first day I took my very first DSLR - a Nikon D50 - out for a trial run before taking it to New Zealand with me on holidays.
It was the first and last time I got locked in a cemetery after closing time. I have a LiveJournal post about it but it contains a bunch of information about other extraneous stuff happening at the time, so maybe I'll edit it and share it here another time if you've not already heard the tale and would like to.
Meanwhile, getting on to today's sketch: I used an HB pencil for the base and then a 6B for shading and going over the outline. In retrospect, it was probably a little heavy-handed on the outline but I notice that my hand erases/fades some of the lines as I draw. I should probably use a tissue or a small square of paper to lay on the page under my hand to avoid that (I think I recall friends in art class doing that).
Her upper body is a little foreshortened. I started drawing her plinth about 4cm from the bottom of an A4 page. About halfway up her wings, I was worried I would run out of space for the full height of her. I had about 2cm to spare at the top of the page at the end, so if I'd started lower it would have been fine, but alas, I did not.
I also drew the shadowed section of the front of the statue on the left too wide so it's out of proportion with the rest of the drawing.
Drawing the plinth, I thought I'd gone too wide on the right panel but I've definitely thinned it. And the left side is possibly a little wider than it should be. The width of the lower section of the angel seems proportionate though, so there's that...
I realised, as I was doing my quick edit for the web, that I was wearing my glasses while drawing. I'm not sure if that had a positive or negative effect.
I generally dislike editing photos while wearing my glasses because they make everything on my screen look smaller; not right. (Though they do wonders for my figure when looking in the mirror...) If I'm going to be editing photos I always put my contact lenses in.
For those who don't know, I have a prescription of about -3.5 in each eye. I'm myopic (short-sighted) to the point that, without special (more expensive) thinned lenses, my glasses would look like the free ones on the NHS Jarvis Cocker used to sing about. Okay, maybe not that thick. This is a good illustration if you look at the -4 prescription
My prescription got as bad as -3.75 for a while but apparently, people become more long-sighted as they get older so my sight's improving over time (yay!) The last optometrist I saw did manage my expectations though. She laughingly told me that with short-sightedness as pronounced as mine it will never get back to 20/20 through ageing. Apparently, if I have to have cataract surgery later in life (which she assured me almost everyone has to) I may have 20/20 vision then. Something to look forward to in my old age, eh?!
Sorry, another tangent!
So today was another example where it looked better once I photographed it and 'stepped away from it'. Still lots of flaws but I'm learning.
And it was relaxing to draw while I listened to my music collection on random varying from The Cure, Diamanda Galas, Ash, NoFX, Aerosmith, Julia Holter, Jefferson Airplane, U2, Barry White to Madness.
A positive end to a more positive day than the previous two. Even washing a horrendously large pile of dishes is less tedious when listening to old episodes of The Infinite Monkey Cage.
Hopefully tomorrow my sketch will appear online on the day of creation. But I make no promises. I'm just taking things one day at a time at the moment. I hope you understand x
And I'll leave you with a song that popped up randomly on shuffle in the last 48 hours that felt appropriate to my current project. Evident Utensil by Chairlift. Enjoy!
double-crossed [yan yean cemetery, yan yean, victoria, australia]
faded love
Happy Valentine's Day, lovers xx
untitled #233 [nowa nowa, victoria, australia, 2019]
untitled #234 [nowa nowa, victoria, australia, 2019]
untitled #235 [nowa nowa, victoria, australia, 2019]
untitled #231 [long jetty, port welshpool, south gippsland, victoria, 2019]
I took this on the second day of our road trip from Melbourne to Brisbane before we went on an unscheduled detour along disused logging tracks in the Tarra Valley.
Unfortunately, being on crutches meant I couldn't go for a wander along the jetty, which is the third-longest wooden jetty still standing in Australia.
The clouds were pretty impressive, though!
shedding light upon the matter
lockdown: day 1,984
Day ninety-three of The 100 Day Project.
Has anyone put forward a law similar to Godwin’s Law that describes the likelihood of a discussion on the internet about coronavirus guidance/regulations/restrictions leading to comparisons to George Orwell’s 1984 or Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World yet?
I’m seriously tired of people perceiving protecting themselves and others from needless death in the current situation as comparable to situations in these (admittedly brilliant) novels.
All I see when I see those posts is entitlement, selfishness and people unable to understand the sacrifice of even basic pleasures for the safety of themselves and others.
Illustrations:
Couple on couch by Paul Gavarni from Œuvres choisies de Gavarni, volume one
dis joint, ed!
not out of the woods yet
Day eighty of The 100 Day Project.
Illustrations:
Men and vat by Antonio Masutti from I misteri di Roma contemporanea, volume one
campfire songs
cuckold
Day sixty-one of The 100 Day Project.
Illustrations:
Trio by Achille Devéria from L'Artiste (volume of plates - 1845)
head first
Day five of The 100 Day Project.
Illustrations:
Diving head first by an unknown artist from Nouveau dictionnaire encyclopédique universel illustré
The fairies flew away by Charles Henry Bennett from The chicken market and other fairy tales