look up

You wouldn’t believe me if
I painted a sky this blue
But look up – there it is –
and every day it’s new.

 

With the last six months of drought, fires and then COVID, and now the current unrest in the US and the protests in Australia too, I find I’m turning more and more to my immediate surroundings for reassurance that the world is not ending.
Growing up in Melbourne, my prevailing childhood memory of the sky is drizzling grey. In the southern tablelands of NSW (away from the brown exhalations of Canberra) the sky seems to be almost always an astonishing clear deep blue – especially in winter. It surprises me and brings me joy every day.   

more paper cranes

With rainy weather and colder days keeping me out of the garden I’ve been adding more origami cranes to the wall. I also painted in the railing for the one that hasn’t taken off yet. There are still a few more cranes to go to get a whole rainbow flock. And then the long wall to do. I just hope I have enough brown paint left to do the long railing! I was going to put the uprights further apart to save paint. I’m using sample pot size mis-tints from Bunnings and mixing them to get the different shades I want – so it’s very hard to get the same colours again. But, my son said the uprights needed to be close enough together that he couldn’t climb through them – so they are what they are.   

paper cranes

These are the first three of a flock of origami cranes that I’m painting on the wall of one of my son’s room. The plan is to have a flock in rainbow colours, starting with a blue one perched on a railing, and the rest flying up the wall. I haven’t painted in the railing yet, but I felt like painting cranes today so I started with the flying ones.  It wasn’t possible to get all three in shot at once, so here they are separately. You’ll just have to imagine them arranged in an approximate diagonal line going up the wall. The aqua is the lowest, then the green, then the yellow one is up high on the door, and currently the leader of the flock. The plan is to add an orange one, then a red, then a violet, then a dark purple one.

 

a new tree

This is my latest painting project – it’s meant to be a brittle gum, which there are lots of in this area.  The trunk and branches were freehand, and I traced the leaves from ones I picked from trees outside. It didn’t quite come out how I wanted it, but I don’t mind much. The plan is for a wedge-tailed eagle next, circling up high. There are a lot of them around here, and I don’t think I will ever stop finding them extraordinary to watch.