Art: #huevember2019, 2

This began as a piece of paper I used for practicing leaf shapes with a new brush, using indigo with a bit of yellow top and bottom.

Then, doing this project, I’m recycling paper as I go since everything I do is trial and error.

So, when trying phthalo blue over indigo and mopping out the centres of shapes–another thing to practice–that fish became a thing when I added its eye.

I realize that it is only through the corrugations formed by leaf shapes that I have a shaped mouth, and that I’ll probably never be able to reproduce it.

This pic began with red. Bush-fires have burnt out large swathes of forest and hundreds of animals have died, four humans among them.

Red mixed with indigo and phthalo blue gave me the fire-ground. Indigo for the bat with a touch of orange for its eyes. The blue touches contrasted and made the clouds. Made it realistic, in fact.

After the fire when dead trees stand smoking and still aglow. The sun still shines, an angry ball. This little scene was to give me shades in indigo, but as usual I get carried away by the content.

Real Life: Bush Fire Emergency

Hugh and Nan Nicholson’s rainforest burning

Those of us in my region living in towns feel ourselves fairly safe in this emergency. So far. People from out of town have been evacuated and are staying with us. Others ask us to store their precious goods. I’m hosting four musical instruments and three large containers with photos and documents.

Recharging batteries is another thing we can do for people who no longer have electricity laid on. Whose power lines and generator sheds have been burned. In two cases I heard of today, the fire was stopped only a few meters from the main house.

The bushfire season began early this year. We’ve been burning since September, and the fires are getting worse, if that’s possible. Hotter, faster, and more destructive. In the past, diligent back-burning and fuel reduction in winter reduced your chances of being burnt out in summer. Now there’s hardly time. Winters are shorter and we’ve had less than half the rain we had last year when we already had a third less than in 2017.

It’s possible for a fire-ground to be burnt twice in two months. This despite the traditional view that rain-forest plantings, in contrast to Eucalyptus forest, will protect your property. No such thing now. Fires burn so hot that rainforests don’t stand a chance and they don’t grow back the way eucalyptus trees recover.

How will we live in a forever-blackened landscape?

Catherine Ingram’s article Facing Extinction, about the state of the world and humanity’s chances of surviving, is more a prescription for coping with the grief than a wake up call. It’s too late, she says, to try and save our Nature.

The way my countryside is burning, it certainly feels too late. I’m with Landcare. We plant trees. What if no trees survive either? It’s difficult to plan how to live now, when there’s said to be no future.

Art: #Huevember, 1

As well as tripping over imagery while researching online, I use photos and any images I may have produced in the past and present, as inspiration for my writing.

Though inspiration may not be the exact word.

Often I need to describe something so that it resembles reality. Landscapes are easy. Find a photo of a landscape and describe how your MC operates in it. Old calendars are great, although they do get cliched, almost always using the same Disney-esque castle in Bavaria, for example. Travel photos, my own and anyone else’s, are my next resource. But, of course, sometimes I’ll want a landscape not on Earth.

And this year I tripped over #huevember. “Make one painting every day of the week, using the appropriate color on the color wheel as the main color for that day.”

Huevember colorwheel from https://brushwarriors.com/what-is-huevember/

I could do that, I thought. If I was painting. [I hadn’t painted for over 6 months when I thought that.]

But, once you do start thinking that way, it’s hard not to get excited by something like #huevember. So. I fell for the dark orange dedicated to November 7, got my paints out and continued the journey of learning to paint with watercolors.

Here I painted over the top of an uninteresting yellow scene. Turned out pretty impressive and got me over my initial will-I-won’t-I-commit doubts.

Burnt orange mediated by grainy paper, November 8

I painted this one over an uninteresting pink scene and didn’t get the desired burn-orange hue. May do it again sometime …

Scarlet … I don’t have a cool red tubepaint, or watercolor crayon. Had to dig out some old aquarelle pencils. This is an experimental animal-look pattern that might work for a shaman’s cloak.