And the winner is…..

Cathy has won the book with the toned pages. Congratulations Cathy.

There is also a runner-up. I have another book with plain pages in a different style and I don’t seem to have a photo of it. Julia has won that. As soon as I get the opportunity, I will photograph it and you can see it.

Sorry to those who missed out. A good result though – one winner in the USA and one in Australia.

This sketch is another of my Australian native plants. I do not know what this one is called. The colours in the one in this picture are more true (lots more yellow). I used the Copic Multiliner in olive, and added some Tombow is the yellow and lime.

 

Banksia in Tombows

This is different type of banksia. I did it with the fine end of Tombow pens. Of course, the fine end of a Tombow is not as fine as the Copic Multiliner (or Pigma Micron, Artline etc). It achieves what I’m trying to avoid for the purposes of this 75 day challenge – using the colour to add tone. I prefer to use fine lines rather than blocks of colour for the present. That said, it turned out OK. I love the way the leaves spiral around the flower, and I think I’ll sketch another one with the Copic Multiliners one day soon.

If you haven’t yet entered the book giveaway, please do. You have to comment on the 500th post, not this one. Large numbers of people were looking at my blog last weekend, so maybe we have a lot of weekend bloggers, because strangely numbers are down this week. Chances are all the better for those who have commented.  I’m not going to extend the time because I have a house guest arriving on Friday and I want to have this all sorted before he comes.

Vampire

Last week I went to draw at the National Maritime Museum with Alissa. It was a beautiful day after a long winter, so we chose to sit outside & draw something from the heritage fleet.

This is HMAS Vampire. I liked the way the shadows were falling on the bow. In my youth I knew some sailors from the Vampire – my flat mate had a boyfriend from her home town who was on board. Now the ship is in a museum. Weird.

I was using a Tombow pen then a waterbrush to stretch out the shadows. At home I put a wash of battleship grey on the hull.  The actual grey on the ship had a lot of yellow in it, but I had to be a bit careful translating that to paint or I’d have had a yellow ship.

 

Batubulan

I went to Batubulan to buy this little statue. I don’t know which of the gods of the Hindu pantheon it is supposed to be (if any) because the people didn’t speak English well enough to understand my question. Anyway he has a benevolent face and very strange hands and feet. I carried him back on the plane from Bali in my hand luggage wrapped in my beach towel. He’s not much more than a foot high but my golly he is heavy. He lives in my courtyard now & is getting up a nice coating of moss in some places.

I drew him with a Tombow pen then put in the shadows by wetting with a waterbrush. The pale green is a little watercolour to show where the mossy areas are.

Making offerings

This EDiM was to draw somebody doing something. It was either work from a photo, or a cat sleeping (and we’ve done that.)

I went through my photos and came up with this one I took at a cremation in Bali. It was a very large cremation, in the sense that many people were being cremated on the same day. It was very simple – no  bulls, or towers. Everything was quite plain and made from bamboo and grasses. The offerings were simple, as well, with no fruit, flowers, chickens, or gold leaf.

It was at Penestanan, above Ubud, and was very picturesque winding its way through the trees. Sad though, knowing that even for this simple cremation, and sharing costs, the families would have had to save up for a long time to fulfil their obligations.

I used my Lamy Safari pen, then added colour with Tombows.

Awesome

Two weeks ago, drawing at Cockatoo Island. I’ve been to Cockatoo Island twice to see the Biennale and found most of it underwhelming. Also went to the MCA (Museum of Contemporary Art) this week – underwhelmed again. I’d love to get inside the head of the person who chooses the art so I could understand the reason for the decisions. Too much video art -debatable quality in a lot of the other art. The concept is one thing – it should be carried out with quality. Maybe I’m just old fashioned.
There were some glitter paintings inside this building. Off to our right was a trestle table with some young girls supervising children with glitter painting. They were telling all the children that the glitter paintings inside the building were ‘awesome’ (over and over again). I wondered aloud to my companion if they were COFA volunteers (where we went to art school) and it proved to be correct. Hence the heading in blue glitter
This is my new sketchbook of Como paper so I used my Coptic Multiliner and Tombows (a challenge). I plan not to use wet media in this book. I am neglecting blogging at the moment for a whole lot of other artistic pursuits like rejigging my acrylics course and painting new student samples and writing notes for various things I’m teaching or facilitating.