Two beauties

 

I got time to whittle away at some timber to carve a couple of timber vases as you can see from the photo above. The smaller tall one on the left is carved from a piece of the fallen liquid amber tree branch; and the one on the right from a scrap of rough cut camphor laurel.

Some process photos follow. In one you can see that I used the draw blade to shave the rough cut area off the camphor laurel. I was going to leave the bark on the liquid amber but found it had lifted in the drying process is ib the end it had to be removed.

I must say - carving these forms can be quite relaxing. The only drawback I have had to date has been that fine wood dust has the tendency to get in my eyes even when wearing protective glasses.

 

Beauty without backgrounds

 

The photos from my walk this morning focussed on the simple but beautiful flowers etc that were on the roadside. I have removed the backgrounds to the photos to highlight the beauty.

There was also a beautiful wallaby with a joey in its pouch in a yard on my walk.

Such simple local beauty helps me to find a balance to the darkness and atrocities across the globe at the moment.

Trio of posts completed

 

I achieved my goal of finishing the three post sculpture today. A photo of the finished trio outdoors above. The photo below is of the completed posts in the workshop before heading outdoors.

A few more photos of the trio from different angles and with a couple of different backgrounds follow.

The trio is now stored away in the workshop awaiting installation.

This has been a grand project. I have: used my last 3m long 200mm square log of cypress pine; created posts with heaps of niches - inspired by a work at the back of Qld gallery of modern art; used most of the rusted metal that was lying around; and given myself the opportunity to scale down stuff in the workshop. The bonus of course is that there are now three gorgeous posts to go out into the world and to weather further.

Post progress

 

Over the last week I have been grabbing a bit of time here and there to add the rusty bits to the three posts that will make up my current post installation.  The rusty bits are mainly going into the niches I cut and chiselled into the posts.

I have set the three post up on a bench and am doing work an all three - ensuring I'm spreading like pieces of metal across the three posts.

Following are some images of some of the niches. The idea of the rust in the niches is to invite viewers to get closer to the posts to check out the beauty of each little arrangement in each niche - small rust artworks!!!

I'm hoping that I might get to finish the work over the weekend - but we will see. 

Mainly banksias

 

My morning walk took me past a small stand of banksia bushes. I think there are three to four different bushes clumped together. I was taken by the way the morning sun was beginning to catch the blossoms and in some cases making them stand out against a blue sky.

This blog simply pays homage to the variety and beauty of these blossoms in their various stages of growth - in random order!!!

A couple more sights that caught my eye are below.

A sunlit and blue sky morning is certainly good for the spirit.

A highland coo and a highland cottage

 

During the week I managed to finish or almost finish a couple more watercolours including the highland coo; and our cottage in Scotland. The coo watercolour (above) is taken from a photograph I took whilst we were last over in Scotland; and the cottage (below) is taken from a photo I took after we had had a light dusting of snow.

A few process photos follow.

I say 'almost' finished as I did the watercolours at home from scratch - that is without the supervision of my watercolour tutor Megan. Hopefully I will get to class next week and get Megan to run a critical eye over both works.