Back from the 'warm'

A Chillago honeyeater

Warm? You wouldnt have thought so when we go there Brrrrrrrrr.
And the worst part was everyone up in that part of the world was fighting off or recovering from the latest lurgy which sent me on my butt for a couple of days in bed.
Started off really fresh and ready for some fun and drawing but ended up in bed snuffling and hacking with fever. But the sailing trip was not to be postponed for something as simple as flu.
Unfortunately lack of energy didnt leave me much to squander on drawing - or struggle with the rather wild rocking of the boat. But it was fun even if standing on the edge of the table in the middle of a rather wild tacking session was a tad scary.
Himself indoors has now decided that sailing has all the adrenalin of mad motor cycle riding without the gravel rash so that might be a future for the household- that and living in that part of the world. Which I must admit is looking more and more attractive with each chilly minute I am back in Melbourne.
The guys were trying to get me onto the outer reef to do some snorkelling but when we got to McKay it was too rough to snorkel and there were SEVEN helicopters on the cay in the middle of nowhere. It was like something from a James Bond Movie- weird to say the least.

Low Isles on Sunset

But I like sailing- well cool laid back sailing not that knuckle chewing other kind the boys indulged in on the way to McKay Reef. And the turtles were amazing and the whale we sighted. Apparently Migaloo has been spotted this season, when we arrived in Cairns there was an article in local paper that he had not been seen in the area so far on this years migration. But "Willow" a former Low Isles charter vessel had reported seeing him which was good to hear.

I'll post a few more photos as I sort them out off T's computer and hopefully get mine back tomorrow.

The Perils of Technology

And our almost total reliance upon it
It lets you down folks!!!!!
Aaargh
I was slack with the blog over my break but I was busy playing
I have done two quilts -no pics because they are all on my other pc which is being rebuilt - some braiding and just puddling for fun. Nary a painting or exercise for painting to be seen.

sigh whimper grumble moan and I have been without my pc for four whole days which is tough for a net junkie like me.
I have hooked up hubbys so I can get a fix now and then so the withdrawal twitches are not so bad.
Started back to VU on Monday -REALLY tough to drag my carcass out of bed after such a long break and on a truly FILTHY winter day here. Although the views from the new premises did make up for the wretched weather.
Got a couple of assignments to take with me to Queensland, the timing of the work and the holiday will fit in well although the painting assignment will be very tricky to complete on time because I dont want to drag a pile of paint with me so I am going get down to that over the next couple of days so I can finish it around the right time- here's hoping.
Pics of the view were taken on my phone, I plan to take in my real cam on Monday to get some shots. Maybe some of within the gallery space at the Uni as well- that is spectacularly good btw
/R

A Howlin' Wolf

Anyone who knows me well knows my abiding interest in the vulpine, and vulpine like dogs having been brought up around German Shepherds. I adore wolves and live on the ONLY continent without them alas. So I get my fix when I can.

And hell being a fan of the great Howlin' Wolf aka Chester Burnett dont hurt either.

You know I'm the Wolf baby, you know I stays in the woods

You know I'm the Wolf babe, you know I stays in the woods

Well when you get in trouble, you call the wolf out of the woods
Well you want my money, well you want me to spend it on you

Well you want my money, babe you want the Wolf to spend it on you

Just as soon as you get my fortune, she said what in the world I want with you?
Well I spend my money, trying to make you satisfied

Well, I have spent my money darlin', tryin' to make you satisfied

Well, the woman who took my money and took my home and,

oh the Wolf gonna wreck her life

From my printmaking adventures

The process for this was from my first real effort in lino cutting- from development of imagery to the end product etc. I got this back today and photographed it tonight.
Julie was cool with me experimenting on fabric and I did a couple on white cotton lawn and one on some pole dyed silk. One of the cotton examples went into my journal and I decided to play with the other with some stitch. It was a pretty basic process of stitching mostly straight stitching once the stitch formed some form of resist I dripped silk paint onto the still visible fabric to knock back the 'whiteness' of it. It was met with enthusiam by all and sundry but I cant help feeling it is a bit run of the mill embellishment wise but it was a nice gentle exercise to test the boundaries- which after the discussions on Monday are about to be pushed to the limit.
I have been experimenting with eyelets and other items on canvas and the next assignment in painting is about music - which slots into my longterm aim to do a piece based upon my love of Blues. giggle snicker I already have a working title in my head "blue is a colour you can feel"
Any hoo this is the froggie- Frankie would have approved I am sure

Free as a bird

Well almost only Wednesday and Thursday to get through now. Hoping to get some work done for myself but first i am going sort out all my crap clustered around the house and re file it all- oh I know it will all migrate again around the house. I NEED A STUDIO!!
I do have a little project I am whipping through at the moment, some friends are getting a puppy and all new 'babies' need blankets but other than that I just want to sort out my gear into the things I need to have available for school and the stuff I want to play with in between and hopefully starting to incorporate my stuff into my school work.
After the conversation today with my tutors I am feeling okay about the future of my painting endeavours. *giggle* they might come to regret it now I have been given permission to test the boundaries because I have always been more than capable of pinching a bit more than the proverbial inch. Already some ideas are bubbling in my head - nutting out techniques will be fun but it might lead to a disappearance of oil paints in my life. NOT that I will regret that at all. Oh well if not a disappearance then certainly a reduction of its presence YEE HAA!!!

I should be painting

but I am so bored with it all- I have finish tweaking a couple of paintings for class. I am definitely NOT cut out for painting. It is such a slow process and I get very impatient with it. I need the results I get to be apparent or I get discouraged by it. But I am working on the stitched collage piece too so life is not too bad.
These are three canvases which are nothing special I will probably paint over two of them but the centre one has caught my interest. It is the painting from the aforementioned collage class assignment which I just let go and decided to have fun with the colours and go where they led me. I do like the subtleties of colour you can achieve with oils but it is such a painstaking process and due to lack of room I cannot afford to have more than one piece in progress at one time so I have to wait and wait and wait to continue working on it.

Aaargh enough moaning time to get on with it

Catch you in a few days

/R

Bit Blurry

I'll have to get my mate 'Wolfy' to teach me about these camera phones ;-)

This is my concertina book for Printmaking - I can get on with my other stuff tomorrow now that is out of the way yippee.

On the couch with the doc again today- ooh I just realised how that sounds ROFLMAO. But here's hoping.

Having a quiet giggle

This is an old bit from a while back- but in Printmaking we are going to be making a Concertina Book and have been told we can use what we like to cover it. The choice for me is to do a piece with bonded and embellished tissue or maybe dear old crepe paper- it has such a nice texture and when you wax it with metallic looks deliciously grainy. The box below was done in crepe paper. Musing about doing it now at home because I can knock it over in about an hour or so because I have the materials already so I can use my time in class to finish my edition printing.

Choices, choices. But we have made another one, I am going to miss week 2 and 3 of next semester in favour of a break in Nth Qld. Winter only officially started today but I am already sick of it so off to book flights today YIPPPEEEE

The Recipe

This week was a dear friend's birthday and she requested her usual indulgence which is a batch of my infamous Caramel, Macadamia and Hazlenut slice. A completely delicious and gooey concoction that is only really for special occasions but last week some of us got together and had some morning tea and I said I was going to be making this so making more was not really a problem.
So I made it and took it in today and several people wanted the recipe which is the purpose of this particular post.

The photo above is by Marina Oliphant from The Age when they published my recipe last year in an article by Matt Preston - actually they published two of my recipes *blush* NO I dont spend much time making naughty sweeties - only some of it and only for special folks

This is the recipe - Enjoy

Caramel, Macadamia and Hazelnut slice

INGREDIENTS
Base:
150g (1 cup) plain flour
1¿2 tsp cinnamon
60g (1/2 cup) hazelnut meal
90g (1/2 cup) brown sugar
90g dark chocolate
80g unsalted butter
1 egg, lightly beaten
Topping:
100g hazelnuts
395g tin condensed milk
2 tbsp golden syrup
50g butter
100g macadamia nuts
100g dark chocolate,melted
METHOD
· To make the base: Sift flour and cinnamon into a bowl. Stir in hazelnut meal and sugar.
· Melt chocolate and butter together and cool. Add to dry ingredients when cooled. Add egg and mix well.
· Press mixture into lined and greased tin (a standard 18x28- centimetre tray or similar) and bake for 15 minutes at 180C.
· While the slice is baking, toast hazelnuts in the oven for eight minutes.
Remove and de-skin by placing in a brown paper bag and rubbing furiously.
- Remove base from oven. Have a cup of tea and bit of a sit with the paper while it cools to room temperature in the tin.
· To make the topping: Mix condensed milk, golden syrup and butter in saucepan and heat, stirring until it almost boils.
· Pour mixture over the base and top with nuts.Bake for 15 minutes and leave to cool.
· Drizzle lines of the melted chocolate over the top until covered with a lacy coating of chocolate.Cut with a bread knife.

Three cheers

for my drawing/painting tutor Paul. I could have kissed him yesterday when he said I could turn a collage assignment into a stitch piece. I have been hanging out SO badly for something like this.
The assignment was to make a collage of a still life set out for the class and I was using my hand coloured papers and enjoying it and then talking with Paul about it he said go ahead and stitch

Well it will be different for this school
/R

mucking about and moving forward

Weird few days, but with some judicious self medication and some gradual work the worst is over. Although waking up with a mouth like a bottom of a bird cage is not fun but it was only TWO glasses of wine- on an empty stomach albeit *blush*
Seriously it has left my temper rather short so I am being a bit of a hermit because I am not really suitable for polite company at the moment.
Spent yesterday working on a little bag to keep my essentials in for classes- phone, wallet, keys, specs etc because I have decided with the total lack of storage space I am suffering from at present it is easier to set up two back packs for classes- one with my painting gear and another with my printmaking and drawing stuff. I did some discharge dyeing by putting some black homespun into a 1:1 bleach and water bath and experimented with my new water brush on the fabric too which was fun. I used the samples up to make the little back and when I get the dig cam batteries charged up will take a pic of it- very satisfying to just do something creative and also practical for myself for a change.
Onward and upward
/R

Yesterday

This time yesterday life was good! I had spoken to my tutor about applying for Recognition of Prior Learning for Media and Studio Studies and he had agreed that it was probably a good idea. Which means no more colour exercises which is definitely a good thing for me because I was going slowly out of my mind doing that again. I have done very little homework in that class because I had done that all before and motivation for that was NIL.

I dont have problems doing the theory based work at all and homework for drawing and printmaking is fun with a capital F, only slightly less so for painting. I am NEVER going to be a great painter. but yesterday I was feeling unshackled at last and could actually feel my creative self as a physical being for the first time in a while which was pretty exciting.

Then the axis of the earth shifted after a phone call and now I have a couple of choices. Let it get me down and disappear into the despair again or I use it. Bit numb at the moment and cant really describe what it is and I think I am only writing this to try and put it all into perspective for myself.

Oh god give me a couple of days the the Gothic humour will reassert itself! But today I think it is a good day to curl up on the sofa with some chockies and the fire. :-) well there is some compensation for feeling this way after all.

Next assignment

The next assignment is 'Drapery" drawing draped fabric. This is another phone cam shot of the charcoal and conte part of the assignment. The brief calls for this one -on grey paper- and another in greylead pencil on white paper. I think I may be getting it .
What's the verdict?

I am a nerd after all

I did it Soph!!
Never having worked in HTML before was freaky but I managed to load up some links and even add a counter/location thingy on the side. It took a few goes and I had to change the main appearance of the blog so I could find the right bits so I could insert the bits of HTML to make the super links. I might change it all again to another design for the page that I like. THis one is okay but lime green? eeeck that lime green is yuk.

Sophie is a textile artist and very very talented so visit her page. Wolfy is a photography nut, well he DOES work in the industry so he gets lots of new toys to play with and the results end up on his page.

Working proof

Talk about frustration! I have so many ideas bubbling in my head at present for textiles but I am still swamped with painting and drawing tasks to complete. Printmaking is keeping me sane though because I can see SO many possibilities for my textiles in that much more so than I can with painting and studio studies is driving me around the twist.
I am so over painting colour scales and exercises.
GRRRRR lol

oh well we soldier on
this is a piece I am working on at present taken on my wonderful new phone. (Thank you for that Anders you wonderful devil now I dont have any excuse for not working on an idea lol)


Thank heavens for the resources from working on my stuff at Box Hill, I dont have to do much to think of ideas for work.

Ruminations on a theme

The brief for one particular assignment is Interior/Exterior. It is a pretty broad based brief and we can use abstract or representational to work our theme.
Probably because of the work I have been doing for the Exhibition and other reasons I seem to come back to the mask- part of the theme of Armour.

Interior being the innermost thoughts, fears and sensibilities being protected from the Exterior of outside.
I have this image in my head I want to try and get down, a mask obscuring the view of the room beyond. A carnivale type masquerade mask. The wearing of the mask in the past at Carnivale or Mardi Gras allowed the wearer anonymity to behave in a way they would not normally so the mask can be protection but also a form of dutch courage for want of a better term.
But what do I make the room beyond? A brilliant ballroom or a darkened place of rendezvous?

Hmmmn time to do some research. This has got to be finished for Monday so not much research only tonight and down to painting tomorrow before going to collect my stuff from the Gallery.

Three down! Progress

Despite lingering Peggy Lee moments I am plodding on and doing the stubborn thing- this is supposed to be a pomegranate- going to eat the model tomorrow :-)
But at least that is one assignment finished, only the two paintings, three separate visual diary updates, another drawing of mixed media usage and an essay to go.
A week of anti climax- who needs it?

Peggy Lee moments

Is that all there is, is that all there is
If that's all there is my friends, then let's keep dancing
Let's break out the booze and have a ball
If that's all there is

Allowing myself a Peggy Lee moment or two, there is always a downer after all the upheaval and emotional impact of an "Exhibition/Opening". Spent Monday and yesterday doing as little as possible after Sunday. Probably because the next few days are going to be a bit busy. Well here is hoping it is that and not another period of frustrated inactivity because nothing seems relevent.

The past few months have been pretty fraught on lots of levels. Personal stuff that I was able to work out -WHEN I finally got some energy to work on my pieces for the exhibition dragged me back early on. Unfortunately part of that situation is likely to rear it's ugly head again a bit further down the track but so far I am able to put that on the backburner and will sort it out as it arises. Which is good in one level because I am not obsessing about it but having that there is not heaps of fun. But unfortunately that is beyond any control of mine.

Then there was starting at VU and the usual nerves and sense of exhaustion that happens with new places, people, routines to be coupled with an entire new learning curve. PHEW LOL. Just as all that was happening we had the Commonwealth Games here in Melbourne which was fabbydoo as my mate would describe it. Squillions of exhibitions and music to run around-when I should have been working on my pieces and homework. And friends from Fiji visiting and family things.
But I dont regret making time to see Jimmy Cliff and Miriam Makeba or any of the exhibitions I went to.

Then there was the Exhibition itself and all the stuff involved with organisational work going on as well as the 'work' itself, two weeks before due delivery of the pieces I had hit a wall. A minor disaster in my work was juxtaposed with a personal attack on me. I just didnt need that. But nor was I going to let it go unchallenged because in the past I have let stuff from this sector go unchallenged for the sake of a peaceful life. This time there was no real choice but to respond. Which I did but it left me angry and far from impressed with a number of aspects of group politics. I think my response was rational and not too personal but I must admit my first instinct was to violence LOL. Which was healthy because I didnt resort to that :-)
Went through a bit of crisis there and spent a weekend on T's shoulder saying the usual not gonna do this - cant do this- wont do this- freak out stuff when it is all coming to a head. But responding rationally did give me a bit a of lift. And now it is all over but....... giggle snicker ROFLMAO. Yeah the witch in me still exists and being a tad more articulate dont hurt either!!

What I am trying to avoid is the anticlimax but cant help it there is always that sense of it after all this- ah the rollercoaster of life.
Sounds like a good time to start listening to BB King rather than Peggy Lee

Let the GOOD times Roll


Hey, everybody, let's have some fun
You only live but once
And when you're dead you're done,
so Let the good times roll, let the good times roll
I don't care if you're young or old Get together, let the good times roll

All over bar the shouting

This is Esther Holland our wonderful Speaker and former tutor, and again she nailed us each and everyone with a precis of our pieces- and personalities. She is amazing.
The long item is the concertina book that Sue Freckleton made and we all contributed pages to as a thank you for Opening the Exhibition. I did hear Esther comment to her son that she would have to make sure that was provided for in the Will. Sue's book was EXQUISITE. And she was the only one of us not taught by Esther and the one who suggested her as the Speaker because the rest of us had talked about her so much.
And Sue was amazed at how well Esther summed up her work and the thoughts behind it.

The Opening went really well. A good half of the guests were family and friends. T and Mum were outside and said a number of people came in from the street to examine the works so that is good news. Catherine reports a solid dribble over the past week.

The works were as expected very diverse again. Sue Freckleton's Kaleidoscope was fabulous and Lesley's feathers were gorgeous. Marlene's quilts won many hearts including T's he raved about her work last night. Said of course that 'Your work was strong darling"
Mel Rayner's pieces were show stoppers and caught many an eye in the window. Suz' shoes were worthy of Imelda Marcos.
Michelle's silk box got a lot of admiration and Sophie's rust dyed book was fabulous.
Soph has a blog too http://essellesbabble.blogspot.com when I work out how to link pages I will put her link in GRRR lol

Trisha a girl I hadnt seen since about 1978 turned up which was a real kick. We went to primary school together and secondary school for a while but we had lost touch until recently. And a couple of friends from my new course came too which was great fun. Not too bad fizz and pretty good tucker and lots of fun.
Needless to say I got home a bit tiddled and pretty tired last night.
Feeling pretty good over all and it was nice to see my pieces in the gallery context and not just as they clutter up my house LOL.

Almost there

These are the two fronts for the vest I am making
a variation on crazy patchwork
hope it works
just going to stitch a single layer back on and bind the edges with satin stitch
/R