A Fortnight Gone

How quickly the days go by. It's nearly a fortnight since my last post and I can hardly remember what we did weekend before last. Drew had his first full day rehearsal on the Sunday and came home that night looking like this!

Mum, Megan and I went to Toowoomba to visit the party shop to see what decorations were on offer. We bought some "Wanted" posters, indian head dresses, cactus and a poseable cowboy. Ahem. We also bought all the frozen nibblies at the bulk store place as well as exorbitantly priced toilet rolls which I found at a much cheaper price back home. As well as milo. So any benefit gained from shopping in bulk was negated by the other two items.

We made some more patty cakes and experimented with icing (again) to try to find the exact finish that Megan is demanding, oops I mean that Megan likes! We spread 2 big bales of hay that didn't even cover one side of the garden.

Megan went back to Brisbane early so that she could go to Spotlight and buy the material for the costume that I am yet to make. This is the costume that she doesn't have the pattern for yet. The same costume that I told her I wasn't making if she didn't have the pattern this weekend. The pattern that is still in Cairns somewhere. The costume that is somehow going to miraculously appear without any stress or bother. Ahem again.

Art Class II

Today was my second art class/drawing lesson - I'm still the only student.

Once again I sucked although not quite as bad as last week (maybe) - although the finished product has been touched up here and there by the teacher to "polish" it off. I feel like I'm just putting marks on a page rather than really drawing something - and sometimes I have no idea what to do next so I just put a slash of colour and see what comes of it! It's interesting how, when you look at a drawing or painting in a book, you don't REALLY look at it. You might only give it a cursory glance or flick your eyes over it - but when you have to draw what's on the page you can see a myriad of things that weren't there before - patterns, shapes, light, dark, texture, flat - and driving home today I took more notice of the clouds than usual - how the grey dark clouds sat in the white fluffy ones; how they were flat on the bottom and how the sun shining on them gives a silver lining.

Here's todays' effort: and I've rephotographed the three from last week and given them a bit of gentle treatment by making the edges neater and not so messy. Not sure if it helped.

This says it all.......

but I think I need a new bra...

Mothers Day 2009 - A Story in Pictures

A Long Long Time Ago...........

.......I bought two tickets to the Buddy Holly Show..........

Drew and I went to see The Buddy Holly Story at the QPAC Playhouse on Saturday - I bought the tickets back in November when Megan was still at College and we've waited sooooooo long for this day to arrive.

We left Megan's unit and caught the citycat into Southbank. Walking along the pathway we came across a line of a couple of hundred people, some with guitars, all either filling out or holding bits of paper. I asked someone what they were doing - turns out it was the latest Australian Idol auditions. We went inside the piazza and sat and watched the goings-on for over an hour. Every now and then, 20 or so people would be called and were taken underneath the building to, I assume, their audition in front of the judges. We watched Andrew Gee and Ricky Lee entertain and involve the crowd.

We left there and wandered through the markets - Drew found a moody print of a black female soul singer dressed in a beautiful gold flowing gown, singing with her arm outstretched to the sky while a bass player, just visible in the front left corner, plucks out his tune and two sultry dancers tango in the background. It's set in a smoky bar that's quite dingy and dark and it's very evocative and emotive. He loved it. I found one of a single guitar player perched on a stool, bathed in a pool of light, his head hung over his instrument as if he's exhausted. Again, it's very emotive.

Drew is a real market kid - he loves to wander and look. We checked out the bracelets and t-shirts and badges and ate popcorn and wandered some more; we found a little camel keyring at a leather stall. We ate lunch then made our way to QPAC, found where we needed to go, bought two Buddy shirts and some other gear then went to our seats. We were in Row C which was actually Row 5 - they were great seats. The theatre filled quickly and at last it started.

From the very first song I wanted to jump up and sing and clap and dance - it was so exciting. I sang every song to myself and some out loud. Interval came too quickly and the second half was even better than the first. I cried when he died - a single guitar on a stand, lit by a spotlight portrayed his death. All through the show I could barely sit still in my seat - and when the Winter Dance Party at Clear Lake Iowa started, I could hardly contain myself. The Big Bopper was wonderful but Ritchie Valens - well he just stole the show. He shook and shimmied and swivelled and wiggled and it was just pure joy to watch - tinged with sadness because I knew what was coming. When Johnny B Goode came on we all stood up (at last) and I sang my heart out and clapped 'til my hands hurt - it was just fantastic. I couldn't stop smiling and laughing and cheering and crying. When they all came to take their bows I yelled out to Ritchie; I'm sure he heard me, his eyebrow twitched!!

I loved it and I want to go back again and again. I sat there thinking - I don't have enough music in my life any more. It can make you feel so good and evoke so many memories, feelings and responses - and without music there's a little something missing. It used to be such a big part of my life at the farm - the guitar, nights around the piano; it's in me, it just can't find its' way out.

So we left Buddy and went walking again. Drew is fascinated by the bicycle man on the wire so we took about 15 photos before we got the three of us in!

We had a very well made coffee and delicious hot chocolate at a little coffee shop in Little Stanley St (I think). We sat there together and talked about what it would be like to live in Brisbane and do the things we'd just done on a more regular basis. It was such a brilliant day, both in content and weather wise. We sat and watched the people go by.

Finally, we thought we'd better leave and made our way over to the citycat. The moon was beautiful in the sky and the river was a ribbon of silver. We took another 15 photos trying to get the moon in with us.



The ride home on the citycat was quiet and peaceful. I love the motion of the citycats - I want to come back here one weekend and ride from one end of the river to the other and back again.

Drew's Creative Eye

I notice a certain creativity in Drew's photography - sometimes intended, sometimes not. There were several other good shots that he'd taken in the garden but they were slightly blurred (using a compact digital on low res) so I didn't post them here but they show promise.

Being Creative

The quilt is progressing slowly; the squares are cut out and the pattern established - except I've changed my mind as to its' final purpose and I think I'll make it a doona cover. Of course, by the time I get around to finishing it, it may have gone through several more reincarnations before it finds its' final identity. At the moment it's not quite big enough to be a doona cover and sewing all the squares is going to make it smaller so I probably need another thirty or so squares to do a complete row around the outside. I might make the outer edge all one colour, otherwise I'll have to find seven new patterns or buy more of the same and rearrange them all. I pretty well exhausted the supply of different purple patterns at the fabric store so it looks like more of the same might be the answer. Who knows what it might end up looking like!

I started drawing classes last Tuesday and was the only student - good in some respects, maybe not in others - the added scrutiny was a little unnerving. I cannot believe how much I suck at drawing - well actually I can believe it as I did warn the teacher that I was probably going to be the worst student she'd ever had. I can draw stick figures and nothing else but she assured me that I'd be able to add some flesh to the sticks by the time I'd finished. The classes run for seven weeks.

I arrived at 9am and there was nobody there except a man in a very large truck who, it turned out, was delivering roofing iron. I had to move my car and ended up backing into a gum tree and cracking the rear flicker light. The teacher turned up a little later and I found out at the end of the lesson that it doesn't actually start until 9-30. I had been thinking it was all a bit disorganised but as it turned out, I was early.

So the lesson for Tuesday was drawing "skies", using pastels. I tried to copy a stormy sky from a book, a blue sky with fluffy clouds from the real sky and a purple/orange sky from another book. It was not easy and I didn't really enjoy the whole process, only parts of it. I think I probably have to overcome this perception I have that I'm totally hopeless at drawing and try to just embrace the creativity of the process rather than expecting the end product to be of any certain standard. I also think it would have been helpful if I'd spent the first half hour just playing and practicing with the pastels to get a feel for how to use them and the different effects that can be produced with them.

However,the teacher was very encouraging and helpful. After three hours I'd had enough though and was totally over the purple/orange one. I thought it looked ridiculous.

My real aim of doing the drawing classes was/is to learn to draw naive characters - girls with triangle faces and hair; straight legs with no knees; whimsical figures that I can add to words I've written - not so much fantasy figures but animals and people that represent animals and people but might never be real animals and people. I didn't actually communicate that to the teacher at the beginning when I first booked but maybe I can swing it that way in the next couple of weeks.

Here are my very first official pieces from my very first official drawing classes (not counting Grade 8 Art which I also sucked at).