My first proper flower painting

Well this is my first "proper" flower painting. I didnt think that I wanted to paint flowers, after all every one (female) around here paints flowers (we have quite a big but elderly painting community here). I found I really enjoyed this very free and relaxing way of painting.
I did four paintings in all, all watercolour, all various stages of good and bad but it was a fun two days. I am having trouble getting up the nerve to put in the darks in the right place and the vases of flowers we had to paint were not easy and some were done without blocking in first, the one I like best I did last but that will be for another day.
My friend Wendy did some wonderful stuff, she hasnt used watercolour much before but is a brilliant decorative artist and has been painting for most of her life, unlike me. This is only my 3rd watercolour class.
The weather has been freezing cold, again, and I have had to get up and be out so early in the mornings so tomorrow I think I will be having a bit of a slow day.
I came home feeling very pleased with myself, now to keep up with the practice.

Colourful flower painting workshop

Whew I am home from a hard day painting! I am taking a class called Bold and colourful flowers in watercolour and we are getting bold and colourful and becoming free-er with it. I did this as one of the warm up exercises, it is an autumn flowering gladioli, all yellows and oranges. I havent finished our next exercise a vase of flowers, not terribly happy with it but hope to be able to resurect it tomorrow. It has been great fun, using bold and flowing strokes. I am learning, but slowly.
I was up so early this morning and it was wet, to feed the ponies and iron Johns pants he wanted to wear today to a meeting in town. Cold and I was cold all day so I am sitting here typing and drinking a cup of tea with the fire which was nearly out roaring trying to warm up before I go to walk the dogs and feed them.
I will put up some of the stuff I did at coffin bay and some of the drawings I did too through the week and hopefullys some of the fabric book I am doing, not enough hours in the day or days in the week at the moment.

Photo and painting at Coffin Bay

My painting was done from the same spot as the photo, you really cant see the sand hills in the photo but they are there, the light kept changing, any way I only managed one morning and three watercolours while we were at Coffin Bay, (which is about a 9 hour drive but only 35 minutes by plane on the Eyre Peninsular in South Australia - we flew, very civilized) it turned into a very social occasion for us girls while the fellows were out fishing. We ate well too, fresh oysters, fresh fish including whiting, they bagged out most of the time and when I wasnt out wining and dining I walked a lot and sewed and knitted a lot.
I will fill in a bit more tomorrow but as usual have come home tired, with washing done and house to clean, ponies and dogs to feed and tomorrow I go to a 2 day painting class!!

Aboriginal rock paintings, watercolour of cliffs

These rock paintings were quite incredible, they call the hands stensils but there is also an axe there as well. I dont know if any one knows how old they are, I did enhance them in photo shop as the ochre has faded quite a lot. There were three places where these paintings were in the Carnarvon Gorge National Park that you could get to see, some had carvings as well, all in overhangs facing the morning sun and not far from the creek.
The watercolour of the cliffs was fun to do, probably dont look like cliffs but to me that is what they looked like from a distance.
Bother the images dont seem to come in the order I put them up. Any way this young kookaburra (laughing jackass) was very tame and when I sat on the verandah of our tented cabin to paint he came to watch and was only a few feet away. We also had a kangaroo who ate very noisily all night right next to our heads, or that is the way it sounded and he was still there the next morning having kept us awake half the night. Some where I have his photo too.
I am on the last stages of packing to go tomorrow, I will try to get one more bit on Queensland up on my blog before we go, organised for the cat, the dogs to be fed and the ponies, have packed more stuff to do than to wear I think, also two loaves of bread!! A request came that if the breadmaker wasnt coming could I at least make some bread to take with me.
We have also been out and bought John two new fishing rods as his were too long to take on the aircraft, packing them has been an interesting exercise too! ( I think this was a good excuse for new rods).

Waterholes, sketch and photo

The sketch is not of the waterhole that is in the photo, I think I took the photo while crossing the Carnarvon Creek for the I dont know how many times, 20 odd up and again back again, the one I sketched is supposed to have platypus in it but when I went the first time inlate morning and painted I saw nothing, in the evening I saw some bubbles that could have been one, and got eaten alive by midges (they loveme). I had trouble defining the cliff and hill behind the pool, there were odd palms and trees and shrubs growing out of the rock which then merged into brown hillside. The odd many armed shrub is a macrozamia (not sure of my spelling) which were around when the dinosurs were. These were tiny paintings as I didnt have much decent watercolour paper with me. Any way as I only did about three actually painted sketches I had to fit this one in somewhere.
My daughter is home and feeling better, so a decision has been made and we fly over to Pt Lincoln on Monday afternoon and will come home Saturday night, so John will get 5 days of fishing in so long as the weather holds, looks ok at the moment.
I have organised with a neighbour to drive the toyota tray top and my eldest granddaughter can put out the feeds with her. Now to organise Oscar back into the cattery and do more washing and sort out fishing type clothes.
So probably two more blog entries and I will be off again.

Bottle trees at Roma, photo and sketch

I just love these bottle trees, they are so improbable. When I went to find a photo to go with the sketch I realised that I had not taken the ones I had sketched but one way down the street in Roma. One of the problems of a/ going with an over active friend (who is a dear but doesnt understand about taking time out to draw) and b/ remembering what you should take ( discovering when you come home that half the stuff you thought you had taken isnt on the camera!).
Roma, where Jen lives is a lovely town, we did the tourist stuff and went to the big Rig, which is an oil rig, but they found gas and not a lot of oil, I am probably wrong on this but maybe Jen will explain if I am wrong, it was a while ago now.
We also went to the cemetery, I love old graves and I took lots of photo's which I hope to decipher a bit later I think the oldest dates back to 1875. We did find the grave of the grand parents of the other friend who was with us.
More on the big trip later.

Carnarvon Gorge sketching

Well we are home from Queensland. So much to say and I am so tired I cant do it. I did these two at Carnarvon Gorge in Central Queensland, a wonderful area of rocks and running water, aboriginal cave paintings, palms and other trees. I did not do them justice but had fun, but not a lot of time. I took so many photos because we seemed to be on the go the whole time. walked 25 km the first day and I stayed put the next, I know my limitations, the others walked up a high bluff the next morning, not for me.
I will post more sketches but all in all we arrived on the Gold Coast, Queensland on Tuesday afternoon, left for Roma early Thursday morning, and then on to Carnarvon for 3 nights, Emeralds and the gem fields, Longreach and the Stockmans Hall of Fame, Charleville and saw the stars and planets through a 12 inch telescope, Toowoomba and back to the Coast for a few days.
A great two weeks, will elaborate more in the next few days, I hope.

Welsh Show successes

I havent had time to sketch, or do much at all but we did have great success at the Welsh Foal Show yesterday. The little dun filly, my Section B called Rivington Windchime was sashed Champion of the Show, having already been Champion Section B and my little grey Section A filly Rivington Rowena was Champion Welsh A. We also won reserve Champion with the D Cob filly Rivington Bliss, beaten by my daughter Tabby's D colt, Pen-nant Jonny Be Good.
Thank goodness the judge and her husband decided to start heading home to NSW as she had finished in good time. So I didnt have to see to them last night or this morning. I am madly packing to go tomorrow, as well as going in the old Toyota to get feed, someone came and paid for and took delivery of the colt (to be gelded) foal Rivington Dynasty. I have some money!!
I still have so much to do, get Tuppy the pug over to Tabby, take Celina her Birthday present and I have a cake for her. She and Evie will be 9 today, Evie lives in Melbourne so we will have to ring tonight to wish her Happy Birthday, her present has been sent.
I have just discovered two more Birthdays next week, well I have done Isabelle's, she will be 14 and my daughter in law Marguerite will have to wait until we go over in June for hers.
Not sure why we thought going away in May was a good thing.
Well I had better go and pack some more and iron some more too, as well as sort out what paints etc will go and anything else, maybe knitting this time.