Candelabra Part 1

If I were sketching right now, it would be the candelabra that I brought home from Australia in my most recent trip. It may be the strangest checked item I have had, wrapped beautifully in blue bubble-wrap by my masterful sister, who even knows how to move ancient Egyption artifacts.

It was given to me by my best travelling companion before we even traveled yet, for my 21st birthday. I turned 22 in Athens in 1996 and her playful playdoh gifts on that day have been passed down to the next generation!

Tonight I lighted a candle in her honour, remembering how she lit a candle for her grandmother in every church we visited, and now teaches her children to do the same for her mother. Praying for God's blessing on you all!

Today’s Fishing Haiku

White swans are fishing
For the same small bass we catch
But they are graceful

Nostalgia Part 2

Some more old sketches...

Nostalgia?

Well, i am back in Australia. After all that packing to leave the United States, it's time to do more of the same as i ruefully discover the crazy things i have managed to keep in my storage unit all this time. I guess i don't really need the bits of timber that were hastily shoved into that space, not to mention piles of crumpled old bills in boxes. Here are some sketches whose originals have been culled.

Sometimes I Like Words

Literal intention
Literal interpretation
Verse?
Converse?
Converse!

How come this kind of free-form quasi-haiku feels so natural? The size of an idea?

Drill

Pine

Pine, pining...

Not so much, any more.

Cutting, clipping, prune?

I feel very silly for wanting to call this a prune!



It's a bit of my hydrangea bush from August last year.

Corn

It cracks me up that there are so many processed snack foods made of corn, and yet my favourite instant snack is fresh sweetcorn.



Given that I normally nuke it in the husk (high, 3 minutes, done), I'm usually in a bit of a hurry when I peel it (hot, hot, ouch!). Trying to decide how to sketch it, I peeled this corn really slowly, one piece at a time. It was so beautiful.

I wanted to add, "like getting to know a lover", and then had to laugh at how absurdly dissimilar these things can be!

.

Orthogonal

This is one of the most important discoveries of my life. It's quite possible to cry all evening and still be happy!

The Missing Piece?

I dreamed once of a puzzle piece like this. It was enormous, made of glass, and had a simple design in earthy colours embedded in it. It lay on a bed.

Pills

Three of these pills were actual prescribed medication, and the rest were vitamins.



The vitamins were much more colourful and shiny, and they all had distinct smells, too. Were these for greater psychosomatic effect?

Colour, smell, sketchy entertainment... Clearly I'd gotten my money's worth!

Adapter

Here's what I originally wrote to go with this sketch:

Adapt or die?
Adapt and die?
Dice?
No dice...
Logic fails me: I appear to be a virus.

It was about the idea of a human mind being performance-tested by a computer!

USB

From the beginning of the final year of my engineering course (which involved a software project): University Scariness Begins!

Bottle

I found this little pill bottle half-buried between two trees in my back yard. Like me, it is full of dirt!

Broken

More broken-off appendages. Makes it hard to type!

Forelegs at Dawn

Cicada shells.

I haven't figured out whether they're taking each other's legs like chess pieces, or if they're keeping their own appendages so they can stick them back on later!

Or, maybe they'll stick each other's legs on later and take cross-dressing to a whole new level?

Upside Down

This is a tomato plant I had hanging from my back verandah. There is a 35mm hole in the bottom of the bucket. It was quite a successful way to grow cherry tomatoes, quite prolific, but I never got to taste them. Dang possums!

Transformers

This is why I find mechanical stuff more fun than electrical!

Shallow, aren't I?

Turtle

This image is actually a tiny earring, but it always reminds me of binoculars and a flying turtle.