Kittys Drawings

Hi!
This is an image heavy post. Naturally.

So without further ado – Piccies!

We made some wine….These are some previous years vintage, still in their demijohns waiting for bottling.

Dad is building a boat. Since he has never made one with a round bottom before (the last boat had a V shaped hull), he’s making a 1/5 scale prototype first.

The chickens and ducks

And, the views around the winery…

I suck at editing photos – so I’ve only done a bit of levels and the occasional brightening. Need to get better! I love how GREEN the whole place is.

Anyways, I best be off. Gotta work on my latest commission Seeyas!

Hi Everyone!
I’m back from Tassie! I had a grand time catching up with my parents and my friends down there. I also got to check out MONA which is all kinds of awesome. More on the trip later – First things first!

Just before I left, I heard from (Iron Chef) Shellie that I had won her Decor giveaway and the fancy resealable containers arrived on the day before I had to fly out. Now I don’t usually splurge on these kinds of things so winning some good quality stuff to put my lunch in was a big bonus. They totally kick ass over my cheap Ikea ones which are all warped from being nuked in the microwave one too many times.

Look at the goodies

Now for some Tassie pics! These are from the Hipstamatic contingent of photos. I’m not sure the ones on my proper camera will be any good so you may or may not see them on here. Do you want to see them?

Either way, I will upload them to my Flickr account soon when finish editing (argh!). I’ve got a squillion things to catch up here at home and still lots to do before Fiji – which is less than four weeks away. I need to get SEWING!

More of a rundown of what I got up to later!

‘Til soon!

Hello my poor neglected readers!
I’m here to bring you some colour – for the first time in ages.

This is a flyer I’ve drawn up for my parents’ vineyard (St Imre) – Mum is holding monthly Saturday dinners (I think they’re monthly right Mum??) where she cooks a meal and shares some wine and it’s all good times and awesome food. If you’re in Tassie then you need to get down there, Mum’s cooking is fantastic! And I’m not just biased, even the fussy boyfriend always loves her cooking.  I always have a bunch of things to request whenever I visit, favourites from when I was a kid that I just can’t make myself.
Worth a visit just to try proper Hungarian food – there’s not that many places you can get that in this fair country

So yeh – this is the flyer I will be printing off which will be available around parts of Tas. It didn’t take me too long as I can’t be my slackie self with this one. I’m sure the design will change over time but Mum loves it so that makes me happy. Yay!

Here’s a link to the bloggy too.

Well – off to bed now to read my book. Night!

I’m back from my little holiday to Tasmania. Back to work today too. Eurgh. Hehe ;-P
We did a lot of fun things while there and also some relaxing things. I got to catch up on all the developments to the winery – since I last visited, my parents moved out of the old rundown house at the bottom of the property and into the converted winery. Dad raised the roof of the building to allow room for upstairs living quarters. He also moved his wood workshop out into a new purpose-built shed and where it used to belong is now the lounge and dining area.
Not everything is finished yet – the upstairs area only has walls so far – no windows and bare floorboards. Regardless, our bed was still comfy and the silence down there permits a good nights rest – except for when the rooster decides to crow at the ungodly hour of 3am!!
Downstairs is all complete however – the kitchen is fit for commercial use and will also be the kitchen for the cafe. Mum is super happy about having a brand new oven, stove and shiny industrial coffee machine. Essential! The lounge is nice and open and with plenty of space in comparison to the cramped, dark room in the old house. The best bit of the whole new living area is the massive outdoor area! Breakfast and most dinners can be had there as it’s sheltered from the elements. It’s good to sit outside and have breakkie

I took lots of photos this time surprisingly! Which is why I’m actually blogging about this in greater detail. Somewhat unsurprisingly though, my photos are neither a complete documentation of my trip, nor very good. Heh! So I present to you a selection of what I took. These were taken on the Thursday as I wandered around discovering stuff – Jonny was busy in Dad’s workshop playing with the Big Boys Toys.

Some veggies from the greenhouse:

The killing block (look away if you’re a veggo hehe) and some obligatory grapes

Jonny working on stuff and my Mum watering the plants

Cows (or bull to be precise)

Chickens & Ducks

Farm things

Flowers and timber

Bits and pieces from around the house

And finally, some things from the cellar door.

So there it is, a small glimpse into my parent’s winery. While there I also helped set up the St Imre website – which is now live and can be seen here: CLICKY. Still ironing a few things out and adding content. The blog is still not fully incorporated to look like the rest of the site. But getting there! You should soon be able to buy wine directly from the site. Yay!

Now it’s back to drawing and testing out how my wonderful new computer copes with some work.
Bye!

Happy Aussie Day guys! Hope you’re all suitably relaxing and possibly downing a beer or three. Absolute stunner of a day here in Melbs too. Yeah!

Not doing much here ourselves. Just listening to tunes and chillin out. I made double choc pancakes for breakfast. Yummo. Might go for a ride later also.

Onto some art stuff…..
I finally got the labels printed for my parent’s palinka (the Hungarian name for grappa)….45% alcohol made out of the fermented grape skins left after the pressing. You can make it out of pretty much any fruit though – some people use pears or plums too. Whatever you have an excess of!
There’s two bottle sizes…375ml and 100ml…the label is a bit squeezy on the smallest one…so Mum, if you want the label a bit smaller I can send some over because I still have plenty of paper.
It turned out pretty good I think. Looks great against our exposed brick wall and stainless steel bench (I still LOVE my house so much). That’s some great reflection there that you just can’t fake in Photoshop! Hehehe.

Other stuff….I went to my first Melbourne Gra-fight Club meet with the local ConceptArt peeps on Sunday. We bum around in town for a few hours sketching people we see. Lots of lessons to be learnt and cool people to hang with. Here are the results. Pretty blah but they get better as I started getting the hang of the process.
(click the pics to go to my Flickr account if you want to see larger)

The only one I really like is the profile of the guy with the glasses and the grandpa hat.

And finally something a bit prettier….A cute corset by Maya Hansen – soooo many pretty corsets. Want!! Oh and excuse the deformed head. I suck.

Seeyas!

Meet Fergus – Mum and Dad’s stud Highland bull.
Well this is my rendition of him. Notice how feminine he looks! If you were to see his big loooong lashes in real life you would agree Fergus is a very placid bull – he must be over 3 years old now and he’s only just starting to fill out. Highlands take quite a while to reach their full size. He is so tame that Mum can brush his tail and he doesn’t mind a bit.

If you want to see some more pics of him, head over to my Mum’s blog —> St Imre Vineyard. There you can also see the rest of Fergus’ brood.

This took about 2 hours to do. Spread out over two days as there was much to do at home.
This weekend I shall be picking up my bike! I got a very nice tax return so I can afford to take it off layby. Unfortunately the weather looks rather miserable so I’m not sure I’ll be doing a lot of riding. Melbourne has been copping some pretty crazy weather lately. You think we’d all be used to it, but I don’t think you can ever get used to such utter randomness.

Well then, bye bye folks! Off for the week. I might be able to nip in a post on the weekend if you’re lucky

Right – So I’ve added some wine to the glass. And also inside the bottles. But they went a lot darker than expected when I put the wine inside. It doesn’t actually fill the entire of the bottle but it’s still rendered quite dark.

It took a long time to get the wine looking as dark as this. It’s still not right by a long shot. Very very tricky this! I don’t know if it’s my lights stuffing things up, or the layer of “air” that mirrors the wine glass (which is used to get the glass looking more realistic).

The wine also reflects too much and I have NO idea what those itty bitty little squares are that are turning up. The lights again? I could pick at this alllll day couldn’t I!?

But the good bits are: I looooove the look of the stem and the base of the glass. I made the rim a bit thicker too so it looks nicer around that area. The bottles are looking pretty good at the mo too.

What do you think?

I’m off to Tassie this weekend too – Just for the weekend, coming back on Tuesday. Shan’t be doing much – Haven’t had time or money to buy things for the press. Not sure when our next trip will be – will have to think about that when we get back to Melbourne I think it’s Mum and Dad’s turn to come up for Christmas. Teehee