Working on old sketches

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Many of my sketches are just that - very quick and in need of a bit of help and care. So I did a bit more work on some of them - mushrooms, shells, aloe vera. Today is a clean-up day with a planned trip to the tip. Meanwhile Peceli has his mind set on getting a new car - a station-waggon, in exchange for his old car with a bit of cash added on. We do need an upgrade, especially when the family living here will soon be ten in number!

Barwon River Bridge

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Messing again with Picasa and Gimp,(though some Gimp images wouldn't open on the second computer!) though I don't know all the possibilities, I used a sketch of one of the Barwon River bridges as a basis for some images, some a bit crude looking, and a photo of the volcanic hollows at Red Rock.

Around Geelong and nearby

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Using coloured pencils I did a bit more work on a few sketches - still a bit wimpy. Emus at Narana, after bushfires at Anakie, a Melbourne suburb near Altona Meadows, boats at Eastern Beach.

Geelong City Streets

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I did two very ordinary sketches on street corners in Geelong but haven't much enthusiasm for drawing at present. Anyway here are some variations. The Easter Island kind of face was quite accidental!

Dedman street - looking up

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Needing to get some exercise this afternoon - after the fog lifted - and do some sketching at the same time, I took a stroll up Dedman street, opposite our house, and decided to look up, and see the shapes of rooftops and chimneys. Somehow Mary Poppins and a song was in my head. So a made four little biro sketches. I want to make a couple of collages using mainly grey, white, blue and black for chimneys and antennas, and perhaps pop in Mary as well. A kid's picture. So far I'm just looking at rooftop shapes. Actually the houses in Dedman Street seem to be too modern for my purpose and I need to go into a suburb which has houses that are 100 or more years old with lots of chimney pots!

Click on the composite picture at top to see enlarged. Actually the original sketches were A4 size each.

Near Osborne House

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While Peceli sorted boxes for a container to go to Fiji, this morning I did some sketching near Osborne House in North Geelong. The Rotary Donation in Kind depot is the old council area next to Osborne House, a historic building which now accommodates some adult classes and a local history project, and in the stables a maritime museum. It used to be the Corio Council offices until the Geelong area councils amalgated (except for lucky Queenscliff). It's not a swimming beach but seems to be used by fishermen and boat people. Looking north there are the wheat silos but these days the ships rarely come in after all the droughts. The Captain Cook from Fiji used to come every month to deliver coconut oil and pick up wheat to make into flour in Suva for bread, biscuits, roti.

The plan for this area is apparently a hotel and marina - private investment I suppose.

After adding watercolour/gouache I used the Picasa 'Illustration' instead of 'Photo' so the painterly effects are exaggerated.

Geelong streets in a mess this week

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They are digging up holes everywhere and putting up barriers to block off traffic and buses are running late. And as usual the bridge over the Yarra Street is still under construction. I did a pencil sketch of the Westfield development (?) from inside a bus. The other sketch was at the Virginia Todd Centre of the garden. I used Peceli's pen to fiddle with the details. I'm not good at drawing straight lines and the trees with the interesting white and black trunks should have been more upright.

Colouring in like a five-year-old

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Not satisfied today, just mucking around filling in with paint in between the lines.

The sound of silence

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I planned to spend four hours today in prayer and meditation with a group, but the program was cancelled due to lack of interest! Okay, if that sounds weird, well I just did some sketching in the city - an alleyway, King George statue in front of the old entrance to the Geelong Art Gallery with a giant Fred Williams painting and others on the outside wall, Greek columns and poinsettias in bloom in the middle of winter. Now that all seems even weirder to me.