Not my finest work

It's nearly 10 months since my last post and I'm laying the blame for that squarely at the very large paws of our new hound! I don't seem to have done anything very creative since we got her, and all my spare time is taken up stalking other dog owners to find enough puppy action to keep her from going crazy.

"Go on girl, get the ball ... Bess, get the ball ... go on girl, you can do it ... the ball, get the BALL" generally elicits a blank look as she wanders off shaking her head. She's really not into the ball or stick thing (apart from shredding them into tiny pieces) so our only option for exercise is finding other non-ball fetching puppies for her to wrestle with.

Sure, it's a lousy excuse, and now that we're over the toilet training and got the hang of dog parenting I think I'd better fill in those 67 missing days. Starting tomorrow as I have to take the dawg for a walk :)

Well, I lost enthusiasm towards the end of my little project and when I counted up all the blank pages, and the month out because of the Nicaraguan Incident, I found I was missing a whopping 67 days out of my 365. Technically I'm 2 months short of finishing. And it's now the end of May. Three months has passed and I haven't filled in any of those blanks. Oh well ... swings and roundabouts Michael would say. On the up side it's 300 drawings more than I would have done normally! And I've contemplated the meaning of life and mark making a bit along the way, mostly along the lines of "why the hell am I bothering with this?" and "what does any of this really mean?" and "do you think chickens think about the past and the future?"




So, I guess it's goodbye to this little experiment ... and on with the next one.




I think I'll try something a bit different this time. Starting on 1 July I'm going to explore one theme for a month at a time and try to actually come up with something a bit more meaningful than zucchinis waving goodbye from the garden as the summer crop comes to an end! Although really I'm not sure what could be more meaningful than that!



Oh yes ... and I'm going to give up drinking again for another month so bottles might feature in my theme of the month! So, I'll keep you posted :)

Well, something monumental happened in January ... I hopped on the wagon for a month! Yep, not a drop of alcohol has passed my lips since 27 January. I would have given up on the 26th, but it seemed a bit un-Australian to do it on Australia Day :) Michael and I are coming full circle and we've given up drinking for 5 weeks (not that I'm counting the days or anything) and we're training for the 24 Hour Megaswim again. That's where this whole 365 drawing project started and the end of Feb 2010 should officially be my 365 days - except for the Nicaragua incident which has put me back a month. And I'll probably have to add another month to that to fill in all the blank pages I've been accumulating.

The occasional gaps where I just didn't have time during the day to come up with a sketch have become a bit more frequent lately and I've been getting more guest appearances in my book ... like the one below from the son of a work colleague (thanks Ollie!!) I really like this and didn't get a chance to ask Ollie if he's a ninja man or what his story is - but he's pretty cool and it's great to have something different to look at!



I haven't really got a theme in my head at the moment so my sketches from January are just a random assortment of things that were passing through my head at the time.



So ... it's head down for the rest of February trying to find a theme that I can keep going with when this project finishes. And then maybe it's time to branch out into some different media!

Christmas lunch has lost some of its appeal since I became a vegetarian (with occasional seafood lapses) 10 years ago. This year for the first time I was tempted by the turkey, which maybe had something to do with the fact that it wasn't 45 degrees with a howling northerly. A nice cool day seems much more appropriate for the turkey/ham arrangement ... but the temptation didn't last long and I made the most of the roast veggies and multitude of fantastic salads.

What's that got to do with drawing? Nothing much, but I did briefly contemplate branching out into a bit of 3D and sculpting a xmas turkey out of tofu. But I decided that idea sucked, so went back to drawing instead.



It was hard to get much done in December and my energy levels seemed to decline in direct proportion to the rise in consumer frenzy driving the rest of the population. I used to like December, mainly because my birthday is in December and as a kid that meant fun ... (even though I used to get ripped off with the joint birthday/Christmas present!) Now I find it horrific that people can spend so much time, energy and money on buying absolute crap for people who don't need it or want it.

So, as usual my family and outlaws got Oxfam chooks, goats, pigs, piles of shit, mozzie nets etc but I did buy some free trade chocolate this year to soften the blow!

Well, November just came and went really! Lots of social stuff happening, and really busy at work, so no time to write about anything ... I've been keeping up the sketching (just) but not really focused on anything in particular. It's quite nice just drawing whatever comes into your head but I think I need to find a theme for the new year. Michael and I are going to be in training again for the 24 Hour Swim for MS in Feb 2010 so I'll come full circle and end the project where I started (except for the extra month I have to tack on because of the Nicaragua Incident!)



A few little sketches from November just to keep this poor old site alive!