Hi, Friends, did you enjoy your Easter Holiday? We had a great time in the "BUSH" (= "wild or uncultivated country," in Australian English). We had to drive down to Town to buy food, see people, sheep or cows. The trees are alive and the creatures that share it all with us are very generous!
One more, yes, Friends, please get surprised that we stayed at an all-handmade house. Thirty years ago, like pioneers, my dear friend's sibling built up the house brick by brick with friends' help on a hill. Tada~~, see this wonderful and super-solid brick house with a chimney and water tanks! What I loved most was that the house has all 19th century setting in it -- no electricity! As if we were time slipping back to a frontier time!
Can you imagine? Oh, everything antique in the house, around the house amused visitors such as a kitchen, an attic room, a loo, furniture, coal irons, oil lamps, a white tin pail bucket etc, etc, Hail the builders' frontier spirit!
I'll take you into the house.
Here, a kitchen has a very old fashioned atmosphere. What would you like to cook for dinner? I've also learned how much important water is in bush. We tried to save it as much as possible.
Now, let me take you to upstairs. Watch your steps (no handle!). I've loved this attic bedroom so much. You cannot imagine how much I got excited to sketch this room and its light! Hope you can feel the mood.
BTW, an out side of the house, I picked up a small animal's skull, old and broken. I googled a rabbit, a possum, a kangaroo, a wombat, a flying fox, a sheep, a dingo, a cat, but none of them seems to match that skull (*or simply because my lack of knowledge of animal anatomy...) Mystery?! Does anyone have an idea?
In the bush, kangaroos and wombats are next doors. I've found that kangaroos' grey is camouflaging them in the bush, because gum trees and eucalyptus tree trunks are grey! It was very hard to tell kangaroos in trees. Some brave kangaroos came to the house, just under our window or even at a door! Wow!! They quickly skipped away from us, when we looked at them. So, all my sketched kangaroos are back figures.
In bush walking, the friends said, "Wombats put (their pulled down) trees over their holes and cover it." Oh, I see. But trees were too big and too clear. I said, "Well, in my eyes, it's more like
showing off their
house number plates, not cover-up!" We giggled!
When a night came, so many stars came up. Those dark starry skies were incredible. Interestingly, when the bright moon rose, the stars lost shining and the dark sky got brighter.
Then, a chimney was so pleasant in eye and for heart. Come closer and make yourself at home. Relax! (*Under a lamp, in the nearly darkness, I made this image! But an enhanced value worked well. Hurray!)
Each of us said, "I want to stay here more and don't want to go back to Sydney!" at the end of holidays.
It was wonderful to stay in a countryside. My picture book mentor
Ann James is so glad to know this experience has enriched my images. Great inspirations for illustration!! Friends, go to the "bush" and sketch anything that interests you!
Friends, Happy Painting!
