Where you wheelie bin?

Am enjoying creating rubbings and thanks to Kraftkolour my new sticks arrived yesterday - worth the wait as I was scrounging around in the bottom of an old take-away container looking for scraps of gold and charcoal last weekend. There's a feeling of being caught naked if I don't have sticks and fabric at the ready. while it's true they spend a lot of time in my knapsack in the back of the car, when required they are as indispensable as the camera.  These are the other two rubbings I made on the 1986 wheelie bin on Coochie - they've now been heat set and are ready to become quilts. There's nothing like an overcast muddle headed Saturday for making quilts and chocolate crackles - feeling rather blessed!

Sketchbook Challenge - More Circles

I  love to cook. Lemon circles go with coriander in the  mortar and pestle and make a fabulous coating for a lamb roast. The roast was also a circle or sorts - except there's nothing left of it to photograph. Back to the circle board ....

Sketchbook challenge and circles

Circles seems to be a feature of everything at the moment - I've been working in charcoal a lot in recent weeks. Enjoying mucky hands and black powdery mess everywhere ... wish I'd remembered to vacuum it up before I went trudging through the house ...

Impressionism of a different kind

The WMBM came to Australia in 1986 - and first lived in the Redland Shire. I found a wheelie bin on Coochie  Mudlo Island and manufactured in 1986 - probably identical to the one WMBM would have put out each week as a new Australian. I made several rubbings of the wheelie bin text - including the warning "No Hot Ashes" against a background of the bamboo stick fence at our "resort". The Shiva residue on my fingers made for great "ghost" text in the background.

Other impressions were strewn along the beach - still pristine and fresh -  Coochie's beaches are liberally sprinkled with shells and coral pieces - a shared space with visitors to the Southern Moreton Bay Islands.

Coochie weekend

Our chariot - the barge from the mainland - expertly carrying our vehicles across Moreton Bay from Victoria Point, Cleveland.There's also a regular passenger ferry service that is a real treat - in the good old days, back before risk aversion and common sense got in the way, we used to have a quiet ale on our way over to the Island on a Friday evening - all the weary workers heading either home or to their home away from home for a weekend of pure peace -  40 minutes from Brisbane city. Coochie has changed a lot in the 30 years since I've been visiting - but hasn't lost any of her magic.

White on white

My new best friend  - five of them actually. While trying to complete a "white on white" challenge, my feathered friend kept investigating in search of morsels. None to be found but that didn't stop her joining in the fun. Creating a collage using only white - a lot of challenges and still a fair way to go - this is the foundation of my jug, mug and petals - created from dried baby wipes, a surgical glove, acrylic paint, pastels, crayon, newspaper edges and packaging papers. 

Coochie Sisters

It was fairly brisk on Saturday morning while we waited for the barge to take us over to Coochie Mudlo Island - a perfect break for sisters to catchup on art, life and each other. we arrived a lot earlier than check in time - and headed around to Norfolk beach where we did black on black charcoal drawings - and waited for our rooms to be ready. It was a long, long day and well ... we did get a lot of drawing done! Also experimented with charcoal backgrounds - for the first hour using only an eraser to create light areas, and the next hour using willow to develop the darker spaces. The third hour was a free for all ...

 Loved the view to Stradbroke Island - huge chill factor but hard to believe this is what we call the middle of winter. It was an absolutely stunning weekend.