Blue sky morning and gorgeous morning sunlight - such beautiful contrasts and details.
As you will see this blog is mainly about the blossoms themselves - and a bit of fungi; but the birds and bees were actively enjoying the blossoms as well.
I so need the beauty of nature to remind me not to dwell too long in the darkness.
I'm determined to complete my push to restock my ladle stash. As you can see from the photo above today I got to make a couple of bigger soup ladles (9cm in diameter) with reclaimed solid brass handles; and tiny ladles (3.5cm in diameter). See polished reclaimed brass handle in photo below.
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There are two types of tiny ladles one for jams or sauces and the other for scooping olives out of a jar. The olive ladles have drain holes in the bowl and right angled handles.
You can see the difference between the two tiny ladles below in some of the process photos.
I have also been experimenting with handles - below are a pair of twisted 3mm brass wire handles and a pair of simple 3mm wire handles - probably for salad servers.
The tiny ladles are quite delicate and have 2mm brass wire handles which are a nightmare to flatten, drill and rivet to the ladle bowl!
As you can see from the image above I indeed have four small watercolours on the go. Three are of the same building but from different angles because the owner commissioned three works for herself and relatives; and the fourth is a historic ruin that was also commissioned.
One advantage of doing the three of the building concurrently is that I get to use some of the same or similar colours from the pallet.
The images below show the sketches for the works.
The following image show my experiments with ink and pens to see what worked for creating the fine lines of the window frames.
Some more progress-process images follow.
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I'm hoping that I get these four finished over the next couple of weeks amongst other tasks and other creative bits. When these are done I will have completed all the watercolour commissions.
Fiona and I are fortunate that we can wander into G's orchid house and soak up the beauty Orchid beauty. Such beauty is particularly welcome on mornings like this morning which was grey and raining.
But first let us enjoy the beauty of some of the orchids on show at the moment.
And as promised a few photos of a dismal morning. I did an inside walk!!!
It is grand that even in grey and dismal times if we look hard enough we can find bits of beauty to lift one's spirit.
Fiona and I spent some of our creative time moving and rearranging some of our garden sculptural pieces. We did this because we want to see and appreciate some pieces more out the front of our home; and because by rearranging we see the pieces with new eyes.
The opening photo with early morning sunlight shows the arrangement we have achieved so far - I say so far because we will be adding to what is there and maybe achieving a different balance.
The following photos simply show some of the pieces in morning light.
I took a photo of the trio of posts across from our front door; but took it from behind as we rarely take the time to see things from different angles.
Given I only had one small (4.5 cm) ladle left in my stock I decided to make a few more ladles of different sizes. To start with I have made 4 medium (6-7.5 cm) sized ladles - see opening photo.
The ladles are made from silver-plated brass cut from salvaged placemats and serving trays. I start by cutting circles of metal; then roughly forming them into shallow bowls; then planishing the back of the bowls to set the finished shape; and finally grinding and polishing them. See some bowl form process photos follow.
Once the bowl forms are finished, handles are made out of brass rod or hardened thick brass wire; and the formed handles are drilled in preparation for riveting the handles to the bowl forms. See some process photos below.
The ladles are then given a final grind and polish to create the shiny functional pieces shown in the opening and closing photos of this blog post.
We have a whole lot of heavy earthworks taking place below our home. The ground is being cleared for new housing. The downside is the grassed area where the local wallabies visited and grazed is now gone. The good news is that at dusk yesterday the wallabies ( three) still came up from the creek at the back and crossed the scorched earth (photo above and below) and made their way the slope and through the fence to the hospital grounds next door to graze. This morning on my walk I saw one at the front of our village happily grazing - hence my title resilient wallabies.
We often hear the small brown honey eaters at dawn; and on my walk I managed to photograph one of these shy birds feed on a grevillea in rather dim light.
The blossoms in the house, in the village and on the road verges defy winter.
The early morning winter light is still dark and a little foreboding.
Such variety of beauty to remind me of hope.
