Picnic on the grass but not Manet

from W
Yesterday our gang went to the Botanical Gardens and took a picnic lunch and I had ten minutes to take photos shadowed by a thirteen-year-old before the rest took off to swim at Eastern Beach and I went home to mess around with photos and drawings. Today I did some more drawing etc. until we had a delightful visit from relatives for a barbecue lunch in our back yard. It's still holidays for all of us!

Lean on me

from w
Lean on me. No I don't think so. The lady collects flowers and Mr Bunce who designed the Geelong Botanical Gardens, though strictly wooden, may not approve. We had a fine walk around the gardens this afternoon for exercise after three days of barbecue and lovo food. The Gardens are beautiful at present, green and lush and we even discovered pawpaw trees with budding fruit. Then my batteries conked out - blame it on the cheeky photo.

Ferns in Botanical Gardens

from w
Between half chopping down an old tea-tree in the front garden, leaning on a verandah post and knocking that down and a young friend fixing it up, cleaning out rooms for visitors coming, buying a bed etc., going to medical appointments, taking boxes of books to Donation in Kind, there's barely a moment to do anything with my pictures. However I used two of the ferns and trees in the Geelong Botanical Gardens to play around with.

Early days of spring

from w
Here are more pictures - photos or variations - from our walk in the Geelong Botanical Gardens. It truly is a beautiful place and a place for a stroll with occasional rests, not a full work-out though, like in the Contours gym I have joined a couple of weeks ago! I got measured and weighed and taken through ten machines and ten platform workouts. Felt fine afterwards but it was something different indeed to leaning over a computer for a few hours each day.

Last day of winter

from w
Tomorrow is September 1st - spring at last. This morning Peceli and I went for a walk around the Geelong Botanical Gardens, a dull morning without sunshine but not too cold. I took a few photos of the dragon blood tree and then made variations.

Lost and found - number three

from w,
Here is another of the paintings that I have't seen for several years, that turned up on top of a cupboard. There was a huge fig tree in the Geelong Botanical Gardens with twists and turns in the trunk and roots that resembled a figure. Over the years I have looked again for this 'figure in a tree' but cannot find it. It must have been chopped or else grew differently. I took a photo of the original picture which is large, and then made some variations which were not possible in the earlier days where I mainly worked with scissors and a photocopier.Click on any image to see enlarged.

Elkhorn on tree adding colour

from w
I sharpened up a whole bunch of pencils and added colour to the sketch I made the other day in the Geelong Botanical Gardens, just using coloured pencils then took it a few steps further using Photo-edit. I'd made a mistake in the original drawing, forgeting to put that round shape onto the tree from which the fern grows. Using opposite colours certainly makes it a bit scary looking.

A collage of trees

from w
Putting the original pencil sketches and dabbled pictures together here's a kind of collage or quilt of trees from the Geelong Botanical Gardens

Trees in Geelong Botanical

from w
Though I'm too impatient to draw detailed botanical illustration, I do like to draw a variety of trees because they are so different, particularly the lumpy ginkho three which is linked with Buddha and ancient China. One here is of a sandpaper fig which has a very smooth bark and the other is a tree that looks almost dying with branches that appear to be like strings of sausages. It's an amazing world. click on any picture to see enlarged. I used pencil when I roamed around the garden, and then oil pastels when I came home. The weather is better, a bit sunny so I'm not hugging the heat and hibernating so much. This morning Peceli and I will go again to Donation in Kind to sort books.

Fallen petals and leaves

from w
While in the Botanical Gardens yesterday I noticed thousands of fallen petals from the flowering bushes so picked up a few bits and pieces. The following pictures were made just by scanning a random selection of found objects - part design, part chance, which is my way of making a composition. Dying leaves, dying flowers. Not a line drawn though.