Christmas flowers

from w
My sister-in-law's house is always full of flowers, dried seeds, leaves, with a love of nature intruding into the civilized spaces. Margaret has a magical way of bringing in the harmony and complexity of the bush into her domain which is very inviting. On Christmas day I had taken a photo of one of the flower arrangements - in the midst of Christmas muddle of course - then this morning, back at home in Geelong, I have been messing about using an image program to make new shapes and textures.

variations of oriental stall pic

from w
Ouch! Too bright! And shapes fight one another for attention! But this is a way to look at the way colour works in a picture and when it doesn't work well. I used Photo-edit at first then Picasa to make the collage. It's certainly a quick way to see how different colours might work when designing a painting instead of making mistakes that are costly in paint and energy!

I'll post something different to paintings/drawings when I get some pictures from Peceli. We've had Pako Festa lately, a 21st birthday, and Peceli is taking a Fijian funeral in Melbourne today, while I go off to a book club to discuss 'Bel Canto'.

We've been busy lately sorting out stuff for Donation in Kind, and the kindness of the local people is wonderful as people drop in boxes and bags of lovely sewing kits to send to the women of Fiji. It's a project I requested help with - from women to women. Special thanks to the ladies of St Andrew's church for their super donations.