Finishing a couple of little birds

 

Before leaving our Maleny home I roughly cut some timber bird forms. I got the time to finish a couple in the Micro Workshop aka garden shed. The opening photo shows the red cedar wee comfort bird sitting on the window sill in the lounge room.

A few process photos follow.

A couple more images of the finished birds follow. They have been sanded and oiled.

Over the next couple of weeks I hope to finish a few more birds in preparation for the Pop Up Art Show in the Armadale Village Hall on 29 and 30 August - 11am to 4pm each day

Fragments from our walks

 

We have been so fortunate to land in the village after a warm spring-summer. There is so much beauty in the cottage garden and on the roadside. Given that the days are long  morning light at about  5.30am and twilight at about 9pm) we try to garden and get two walks in each day. Some of the rewards can be seen in this blog post - many fragments of beauty. 

It is grand to get out whenever one can and be filled with joy and be uplifted by beauty.  

Safely at the cottage

 

The good news is that F and I and all our Pop Up Art Show (Armadale Village Hall 29-30 August products  and workshops (12 & 13 September) resources have arrived safely in the village and in the cottage. 

We have been very fortunate to have had reasonable weather over the last couple of days to enable us to walk. 

This blog post is in two parts - first some images from our walks; and then the unpacked supplies.

Opening image is from the cove- then a few others follow.

Some images of s few of the stashes of unpacked art works etc.

It is grand to be safely at the cottage and inn the village.

 

Peace weather grams installed

 

Because we will be in Scotland on International Day of Peace (21 September) we installed our peace weather grams in the Magnolia tree now before departing - never too early for peace. 

This year Fiona printed Peace is beautiful; and I have printed don't give up on peace.

We have posted and gifted quite a lot of the weather grams - but this year they were sent out into the world without strings as strings apparently  create issue with some postal services. During the week we sat and put strings on the ones going into our Magnolia and the ones that Fiona's dad will distribute among his meditation group.

A few images of the weather grams in the tree follow - including some still hanging in from last year and some gathered and placed on Ken's sculpture chair at our front door.

To round the blog post off I have included some other images of peace related fragments in our front garden.

It is only a small thing - but in reality there will only be peace when enough people stand up for it. May we continue to find peace beautiful and never give up on it.

Birds in the rough

 

I have decided to take some partially made wee birds with me to the cottage so that I can finish them over there.

As you can see from the opening photo I managed to saw and roughly sand 6 wee birds. Some of the process photos follow.  Cutting some blocks; and marking them up using a cardboard template.

This is the first time I have used my small band saw to cut the bird shapes.

Finally another photo of the six birds that are cottage bound. I will be leaving a few home for working on later.

Watercolour work

 

I have finished the two watercolours I started last week as you can see from the opening photo and the one below. Both the bridge and the cottage ruin are located at Latheronwheel Harbour Scotland. The colours of the images are a bit off as they were taken a bit hurriedly.

Progress photos of the work and a couple more of the completed work follow.

Every now and then as artists we need to pause and sort our materials etc. This week I sorted my Daniel Smith watercolours into two tins; and then did new colour swatches to identify which colours were in which tin and on which line. As you can see from the first photo below  I had done this in the past; but with new colours it all needed to be done again.

The last photo below is of some of my watercolour paper that I had tested colours on as I worked - bit messy but interesting in their own right. These sheets were discarded to make room in my watercolour art box.