Happy New Year!

Drawing 671

Drawing 672

Drawing 673

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Drawing 675

Number of the Beast

Drawing 666 (HAH!)

Drawing 667

Drawing 668

Drawing 669

Drawing 670

I am easily amused.

Pineappling!!

Last year I bought a fancy tomato (the name of which escapes me) from the nursery and nurtured it, nursing it along on water bucketed out of the shower, and it rewarded me
with a grand total of six fruit then carked it. Several of the fruit were chewed on by bugs
or possums and fell into the pot. Evidently some seeds made it past the pests and this
one grew in last year's pot. It looks WAAAAY healthier than its parent ever did, and I
water it if I remember, no mollycoddling for this freeloader. It has lots of flowers and
about a dozen little tomatoes growing happily.

Zuchini plants sprawling where winter's snow peas grew against the makeshift trellis. Grown from seed, they are finally producing female flowers after an age of impatient inspecting by me and now:

...actual zuchini. There are several teeny tiny zukes coming along. I picked this one - it's about four or five inches long - and plan to steam it for my dinner. There will be the inevitable zuchini glut at some point, I'm sure, but for now I am Pleased.

My pineapple plant is flowering!

I think. Inflorescence is the proper term, I believe, but this particular growth
looks more like it might just be going straight for fruiting and skipping the
whole flower thing. Don't know, I've never grown a pineapple before!

I planted the top just after christmas 2005. It's survived since then on summers outside and winters inside, except for this past year when I left it outside in the cold weather, though in a sheltered position. It didn't seem to bother the plant much. It has grown considerably over the years, though I wasn't sure it would survive this far south.

And now there is the promise of a pineapple.

A Google search informed me that a pineapple flowers/fruits once and then dies, but will likely produced pups or slips first, so I can plant those plus the top of the (potential) fruit developing. Pineapples are part of the bromeliad family, which may go some way toward explaining its success here: shallow root system, likes shallow poor soil (potted), grows on little water, likes heat (it got some, though not as much as it would have in Queensland).

Can't wait to see what emerges!

Pigtails

Drawing 661

Drawing 662

Drawing 663

Drawing 664

Drawing 665

Artifice

Set 'em Up, Knock 'em Down
(mixed media using tin cans, found paper, Indian ink and watercolour pencils)

Owlish
(mixed media using Indian ink, watercolour pencils and found paper)

Fish Face
(mixed media on canvas using acrylic pain, Indian ink, and dressmaking pattern tissue)

SOLD A Stitch in Time
(mixed media on canvas using acrylic paint, marker, Indian ink, stitching)

SOLD It's the End of the World
(mixed media on canvas using acrylic paint, marker, Indian ink, stitching)

Above are the works I included in a recent group exhibition called Artifice, with some ex-classmates from my Visual Arts course and two other artists (through a mutual friend). Opening night was SO hot, a 39 degree Celsius day, but we still got a good turnout. It was great to catch up with people I've not seen much of over the past year, and meet some new art lovers, too. I sold the two bottom works at opening night, and I was thrilled. They're a bit of a departure for me, but I enjoyed making them and may make more in a similar vein.

Colour seems to be creeping into my work. I tend to work in a limited palette, odd since I'm attracted to colour - the brighter the better - in other things (such as clothes). Perhaps that box of paint will come in handy after all...

Blah blah blah

Drawing 657

Drawing 658

Drawing 659

Drawing 660

The hurrieder I go, the behinder I get.

Oopsie

Drawing 651

Oops, managed to miss a drawing.

In my fiftieth year

Drawing 652

Drawing 653

Drawing 654

Drawing 655

Drawing 656

It's true, the longer between blog posts, the harder it is to get back into the habit. I shall persevere.

Still preparing for the group exhibition, opening this coming Wednesday December 16th. I have two mixed media works to stretch onto frames, one three-part ink/watercolour piece to finish and insert into a bought frame, and one mixed media (ink, acrylic, collage) on canvas to tweak - I think it needs something else to complete it, perhaps some plantlife in the foreground (it's of fish creatures floating in a blood red background with collage weed). And, of course, the staple gun has decided to hide somewhere in the (cluttered) garage. I'd better get a wriggle on, because we hang it on Tuesday!

I turned 49 last Monday. I'm considering embarking on a "fifty" project of some description, perhaps a blog of fifty things I want to achieve or do in the coming year and the following one, too. I figure 2010 is my fiftieth year, and 2011 is my year of actually being fifty, so I get two years to work on my Fifty Project :)
Did consider creating fifty art works based somehow around the number 50, but that may a bit too ambitious added to drawing-a-day, the other half-finished art works lurking around here, and all my other crafty projects. Plus the day to day boring stuff of life. We shall see, I'm still thinking ("I have a cunning plan").