WEEKEND

LAST NIGHT - end of a lovely weekend, warm days cool nights
yesterday morning, a flotilla of about sixteen small boats headed downriver, not sure what the event was but it looked great





i went to see T2 Trainspotting yesterday afternoon, good to see the lovely ewan macgregor onscreen again. on the way home i drove down to lake hawthorn and the swans are just going gangbusters - breeding season this year has produced a  bumper crop!

i got held up 

for quite a while at merbein railway crossing, every now and then a

 very long goods train will crawl across the tracks but i quite like watching the containers, some are very attractive

A WEEK OF WORKING AT HOME

WEATHER IS GOOD, warm and lovely, cool nights. good for work - i've started printing, two days to really set up the studio and find everything i need, i've done a small print just for practice, now for the real thing.

going through all the botanial prints i've done looking for backgrounds for my book - this one is from a series of very subtly coloured ones that i like

saw this advertised

and taped it - what

a shocker. the script

was so clunky i was

embarrassed for 

poor gregory peck.

sophia looked

as gorgeous as

ever in some 

outrageous outfits

i'd like to say it was fun

but it was just awful 

the kingfisher is back

these little fellas seem to have settled into the backyard nicely.
most years they're so high up you can only hear them but this
year they've been very visible and they stay put for ages so it's
not hard to get a decent shot.  very pretty little birds

UPDATE

SINCE MY INTERNET hassles (ongoing, waiting for my telstra case manager to make contact) i seem to be neglecting my poor blog. here's an update of the past week



little mara turned
one yesterday -
little darling

vicki's been getting back into her old computer and found these pics of the archibald weekend we had in sydney in 2000. what fun that was

chatting to max cullen, he also had a painting in the archie, from memory a portrait
of geoffrey rush. i was hung directly opposite the winner, adam cullen's portrait of david wenham.  we met david and got his autograph on our newspapers - i hung onto it for a long time, but who knows where it is now

with fellow victorian finalists peter wegner, who's since won the archibald, and esther erlich who won the doug moran ($100,000).

whoops, seven years bad luck? or a nice big new
mirror mosaic to put in the garden :0)  such lovely
heavyweight old mirror, too good to waste

 I found this court sketch while looking for a particular sketchbook, i remember so well all of us artists trying desperately to draw these thirteen men (so many brothers and cousins, so many eyebrows and beards)    we all congregated at the coffee shop afterwards to swap notes on who wore what, who sat where  :0)  a great group of artists

the fabulous mallee sky, on the way back from mildura for lunch at sue and derek's 

bbq'ed pork skewers  

sue, seated with friends and derek in black.


I'm getting started on my big swan prints again and as i sorted out the press, my materials, paper and photo reference these three gorgeous creatures came across the river towards my place.  an omen :0)

THIS MORNING - it's going to be a hot day after a lot of lovely summer weather, the sunrise was gorgeous

     front yard around 7.30 this morning

later i walked down to the newsagent.   we've had no pelicans since the flood, i guess they'll come back when they've finished breeding in some far flung lake, but in the meantime the swallows have taken over the pylons at the lock

on the way home, two young fluffy kingfishers both brrrrbrrrrrbrrrr-ing for food, no adults in sight

a beautiful photo i found online - inspiration for my swan prints - look at that eye

GOANNARAMA

I KNEW I HAD TWO GOANNAS here but i've only seen them together once, in a weird nose to nose vibrating action on the front lawn - yesterday they strolled across the rise one after the other. 

wildlife seems to be abundant, the floods have left behind so many frogs and insects the other animals are thriving as a result. still no pelicans though :0(

ART VAULT OPENING

looking a bit bald there :-o

PETER LANCASTER
is the owner of Lancaster Press and he's worked with countless artists producing lithographs - a show of the work he's helped produce is on now 'Between a Rock and a Hard Place' opened at the art vault on wednesday.  my 'foundling' was in there, also two of sonja's.  unfortunately peter couldn't be there :0(

Christine Wrest-Smith

 had an exhibition in

 the second gallery.

yesterday she came out

to visit and we had a

trip along the riverbank

 to see the boundary tree and the flood levels on

 the trunks of the huge

 old redgums

after the exhibition - a beautiful evening in mildura

these structures

 have been up for ages -

it's a vineyard but i

can't see evidence of

anything planted.

 looks great as you

 drive by though

love this Merbein section of the drive home

HOOLEY DOOLEY

TELSTRA'S finally put in an official complaint and given me this wifi thing - it's working for the laptop and phone, but still not the telly - i'm stuck with free to air and dvds  :0(

EXCITEMENT - from my bed early yesterday morning i spotted a kingfisher sitting on the power line so i jumped out and grabbed the camera.
all these shots are taken thru the window


got a couple of shots before it flew into the big box tree, i got some more shots then realised there was a second, younger one.

out of focus but i really like this shot

adult top left, young one lower right

a visit from a spiny cheeked honeyeater 

more photos then the youngun flew down to the riverbank where a third was waiting with a fish.  wow, i feel blessed by the bird gods :0)

blurry due to excitement, distance and dirty windows