I’d planned to sketch this necklace anyway. While I was setting up, I heard them say on the radio that it was Star Wars Day. It’s a sort of star on the necklace – well, I’ve never considered it a flower – so I thought it was even more appropriate. I received it a few years ago from my friend Viv in England and I do love it. Every time I wear it someone comments on how nice it is.
I am still trying to do this ‘materiality’ thing. This was a new approach, that I think has worked really well and I will use again. I quickly roughed the necklace in with a yellow ochre watercolour pencil. The sun was moving fast (I was multi-tasking with household chores) so I moved it along to follow the sun & roughed in the shadows. Then I got a post office pen (a dip pen) and sepia ink & drew the necklace. Finally I took my brush to the watercolour pencil and then added a little more dark to the beads. I must say that I like the line that the dip pen gives. It’s much more hesitant and wavery – and more scratchy too, but somehow it seems more me. I have the full range of Matisse Inks so I plan to try them all with this process..
The other night while I was lying on the floor doing exercises, I pulled this book out of the bottom shelf of the book case to revisit it. It is The Artist’s Drawing Book by Moira Huntly. It’s an old book and you can get a second hand copy very cheaply. Reading it again during the last couple of days, I realised that it is like a bible to materiality. Moira Huntly shares her processes with drawings in a huge range of different materials. There’s inspiration in there to keep me going way past Every Day in May – perhaps past the end of the year. I’d say – buy it!
that Cynthia gave me for a gift, so that the others could see it. Bali is my second home. Cynthia and her husband had visited it for the first time and followed many of my recommendations. You can read about her visit on her 
. It’s not that I have so many perfumes. It’s just that I never know what to buy. I know which perfumes I like, but I haven’t found a way to look up perfumes I like and find similar. 
, I read about in a Vogue magazine at the hairdresser’s.
and it told me a blog and a forum to look up reviews, as well as an A to Z guide to perfumes. I just loved the book and learnt so much and will probably buy a copy – it had to go back to the library. They are very um……….blunt, about many of the perfumes, so it is a hilarious read. I had it for two months and didn’t want to give it back.
– well, I was up to page 11 when I did this drawing – I wanted to go back to Iron Cove to draw some more boats. The part I’d read was the part about small boats – dinghies. It’s interesting because boats like this are very simple, so you just tend to draw. But boats can have quite complex perspective, and even with simple ones you need to be thinking about perspective. I’m happier with my two front dinghies because I put this into practice.
by Julian Fellowes. You may remember his name from the screenplay of “Young Victoria”. This book is set in England and is about two men in their sixties who were deb’s delights back in the 1960s. It is screamingly funny – one man looks up quite a number of ex-debs to find out which of them may have borne a child to the other man. I went to live in England for a number of years in 1969 and what I found fascinating was the protagonist’s comparison between the England of that time and the England of the present day. I worked for a while at 
which is set at least thirty years earlier but deals with people of the same class. I even have procured from Canada the w
– she’s already famous for having written 
. I’ve read both now, – they’re both funny, but I think the ‘glue’ one is amazing. It really brightened up my Christmas. Christmas Day itself was a bit trying, so on Boxing Day it was bliss to have this wonderful book to read. On Monday night I went to hear the author speak – she’s here from England for the Adelaide Writers’ Festival. She was all you could hope for – she did three readings from the book and then took questions.
