Taste of Melbourne 2010 (pic HEAVY)
Hi All!
No drawing for you this week – folks are down and its been busy-busy here. Today we went to the Taste of Melbourne….photos aren’t as good as last year – the difference between a point-&-shoot and a super DSLR is big – but I’d have to say the event was a lot better. Overall much better organised and laid out. It was easier to navigate and they had quite a lot of things upstairs whereas last year it was only extra seating. Speaking of seating, it was much easier to get a table to park at – or eat standing at one of the astroturf covered box things
So here’s some silly photos and some of the foods I nommed.
Starting off with some alcohol – nice
(Smirnoff vodka cranberry things. Shuddup!)
Pistachio panna cotta & caramel salted popcorn from Sarti. Tasty and not too sweet
Crowd shot – it was busy but not unbearably so. You never had to wait long to get your hands on some yums. This was taken at the start when the doors had only just opened.
Yellow curry of wagyu beef w/ cucumber relish from Longrain. This was tasty indeed. And a very generous portion.
Pork BELLEH!! Omg. With peas, wild sorrel coulis, purple potato and fromage frais from Embrasse. This was super yum but probably could have had a dash more seasoning in the pork crumb. But gee, I really love pork belleh (scuse my horrid shiny thumb – I’d just got a free hand treatment thingo which left moisturiser on my hands)
Dad making a difficult decision….
Smoked duck, apple & walnut rillettes from Libertine. Interesting. Toasts where a bit too crispy but the flavours were nice.
Truffle rabbit agnolotti w/ game consomme again from Libertine. This was the better dish of the two.
Ben & Jerry’s ice cream. I retract my earlier judgment that B&Js aint all that….Guess I just tried a dud flavour the first time cos this was YUM!! Phish Food (the choc one) was a clear winner with choc bits, caramel AND marshmallow. *drool*
Get in my belleh!!!
Blurry photo of vanilla panna cotta w/ blood orange jelly from Mr Wolf. Better than the pistachio one
Spicy meatballs w/ freekah, parsley salad & Turkish bread from The European. Tangy and delicious and filling too.
Derp
And then we did some wine tasting. Yes, I drank all that. The Mr didn’t finish his share. Pussy
And to finish off with some sweets – from Sweet Treats (I think that’s what they were called). Had some Crowns left. I have such a big dumb head. Heh.
Thanks go to Innocent Bystander and Agenda Melbourne for my tickets. It was definitely a great bonus not having to pay for entry as I really think the price for it is a bit too high.
Hopefully my next post will be drawing related….
Seeya round!

Life Drawing – 16th August
Hi All,
The last life drawing class for quite some time – busy in the coming weeks and who knows when I’ll get to go next. We were learning about light this time so some of these were drawn in the dark!
This weekend was spent cleaning in preparation for my parents coming to visit soon. I scored some free tickets to the Taste of Melbourne and we’re going to go see the European Masters exhibtion at the NGV – It’s going to be a big weekend! In the meantime, the cleanup meant we rearranged our office area. Its always good when my desk gets a tidy as I feel that much more motivated to draw stuff
We put up some art we’ve had for a while but never displayed and my bf is in the process of getting some frames for a couple of his photo prints. I think I’ll print up some of my own drawings and get those framed too – believe it or not, I only have one of my paintings on display in our home!
And now that life drawing is finished for the time being, I’ve been pushing myself to get started on the digital again. I do have something in the works which is just a practice but I’m liking it. No previews until it’s finished as I have a terrible habit of never finishing those drawings that I show previews of.
Other exciting news - I shall be taking part in a Melbourne Spring Fashion Week event as an assistant to a well known blogger. I won’t spill the secret just yet as I haven’t even had a fitting yet (!!) so I don’t want to babble too much. All I’ll say now is that it ties in very nicely to my insatiable obsession with vintage threads….
So in the next few weeks you’ll probably get some different posts that aren’t ALL about drawing. Til then, seeya!

Life Drawing – 9th August
Hello
Down to the second last life drawing class (I think). Drapery was the subject this time and how we see the figure differently with clothes on. Drawing clothing can disguise the true form and it can be more difficult to draw ‘across the body’ like you would with a nude. Instead, you can fall into the trap of only drawing the outline which leaves things looking flat.
Warm ups….I think all the ones I scanned are about 30 seconds. Funnily enough, it feels better to use 30 seconds instead of 1 minute per pose for the warm up – gets you loosened up quicker. Our teacher likens these to stretching before going for a jog
The contour and the tone drawing. I did a blind contour this time – not looking at the page while you draw and not lifting your charcoal.
I did two drawings again for the final 20/20mins. The first one without any drapery and the second one with. Kinda stuffed up the arm on the first one….
So after tomorrow I think I have no more classes. I’ll need to get back into the self-direction. Get back into this digital stuff. I have a whole bunch of inspiration pics – and lots of ideas ready to go. Need to get off my ass and DO IT.
Bya!

Life Drawing – 2nd August
Hii!
Bit late this week huh?
Not much to say about life drawing for this week – we focused on linework which I’m never that comfortable with.
Warm-ups:
Then some longer poses…
Then the final – I did 2 different ones in the 2 lots of 20mins we had this time. Only because I wasn’t too pleased with where the first one was going. Boo. And still not too sure about the last one either.
For the first time in ages, I’ve attempted to do some drawing outside of my classes. Yeh, I’m that slack. Funny thing I noticed is that I draw VERY differently when I’m muckin’ about at home. I think it’s that I don’t have as much room – drawing with my hand instead of my arm….and having a model is much different to using a photograph for reference. The photograph flattens everything and I can’t ‘feel’ the shape of the form in the same way. If only I could use a real model for reference ALL the time. Wouldn’t that be nice?
Til next week, seeeeeya!

Life Drawing – 26th July
Hiii!
More life drawing for everyone
Colour this time! I had heaps of fun with this lesson and it was good to dig out the pastels – haven’t used them since my uni days! Did LOTS of drawings – the majority of them dreadful – but I have to put the really shit ones up so the half decent ones look a bit better ehehehee.
The quality of photos is absolutely terrible and I apologise in advance – I can’t nuke the levels out of them like I would with a B&W. They look a bit more vibrant in real life – winter sun and all that, crappy camera – hard to take a good pic. But enough of the EXCUSES, time for drawings
The worst first – 1 min and 2 min warm ups:
Contours – the first was meant to be 7 mins one colour and 7 mins the next but I finished early (always going too fast!) and did the next one quickly. Then 10 mins doing a drawing based on shading and using 3 colours. My third was the background colour heh.
Then the final pose – two lots of 20mins. I did the first sketch and realised it was way too big for the page so I scrapped it and started again. Really pleased with the end result – using blue really grounded the whole thing I think. Shame the pics are so craaaaaaaap argh sorry!!
Some close ups
K, that’s enough nekkid man-bum for a day
Until next time!

Life Drawing – 19th July
Howdy!
Some life drawing for this week. New model – new techniques. Getting better at getting form out quicker but don’t think I did so well on the last pose this time.
This week we were learning about scale and space…how the size of your drawing on the page affects how the viewer reacts to it. We did an initial drawing of the figure, then “zoomed in” on a particular area. This area we drew small first, and then on the final 10 minute drawing, it was to be as big as we could fit on the page.
Small:
Then as big as we could do it. It doesn’t quite have the same impact on a screen
Then, the final pose…which is meh…We did this in two 20min blocks…but then model changed angle ever so slightly the second time round and I just couldn’t resolve the difference. Not the model’s fault either, it was his first time and he did a good job.
That’s all for this week folks!

Life Drawing July 12th
Hi All
Slackie blogger is back. Been a bit of a hectic week here at home and also we’ve been SHAPED. How can that be when we’ve got a 70/70GB download limit??? Well I’m sure downloading 50 or so gigs of files won’t help *ahem*…so I’m posting in those rare few hours of awake-ness before 12pm on a weekend ehehe.
This week’s life drawing we were focusing on the head and how we shouldn’t treat it any differently to how we draw the rest of the body. It can be hard trying to draw a face quickly while disassociating yourself from the fact it’s a face and trying to get all the features accurate. We were told not to aim for a likeness, just DRAW.
And draw I did
So here’s the results…A bit blah but I like the last one. Usual mix of quick warm ups, contours and then the longer poses at the end.
And this time Boof wanted to check out what was going on. This photo is better of the drawing too – less blurry! I SUCK at photography ehehe.







































































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