Hobart, the capital city of Tasmania, has generally been devoid of street art but very recently this has been changing. Some of it is decorative, some I think are trying to subtly convey powerful messages and one mural is definitely explicitly trying to present a visual picture of a controversial proposal. I’d like to think that the purpose of the mural is to help the community better understand what is being proposed and hopefully gather more opposition to thwart this application.
A scene painted on the back of a petrol station near Howrah Beach on the Eastern Shore of HobartThis mural in Mather’s Lane, in the centre of the city, has a real Mexican feel to itThis mural is on Criterion Street, also in the centre of Hobart
This mural is on the next building in Criterion Street, Hobart. I think it has a powerful message about mobile phones. I think the world probably is a lonelier place for the lonely. You used to be able to strike up a conversation with somebody waiting at a bus stop or in a cafe, but not now because everybody’s eyes are locked onto their phones.
There are plans to build Hobart’s first sky scraper which thankfully is being met with some resistance to protect the low rise historic precinct and not devalue Hobart’s heritage-era architecture.
A visual of the height of the proposed skyscraper compared to the current “tall” buildings in Hobart
This scaled drawing is painted on a wall of the new University of Tasmania (UTAS) students’ residence located on Elizabeth Street, Hobart.
Enjoy the rest of your day and the street art in your town/city. Cheers from PJ Paintings
As usual, there is a lot going on in Hobart this weekend, the Christmas Pageant Parade, the Point to Pinnacle and the Paul Kelly concert at Mona, to name a few. It strikes me as strange to have a Christmas Pageant in November. I think it must be a difficult task to explain to children why Santa Claus is here instead of in the North Pole knee deep in toys and managing gift wrapping conveyor belts running 24/7, I suppose that is why he employs elves, and that Christmas is still a month away.
The Point to Pinnacle Competition is arguably the world’s toughest half marathon (21.1 km). The starting point is at the Wrest Point Casino, Australia’s first legal casino, opened on February 10, 1973, and it finishes on the pinnacle of Mt Wellington. You can also do the Point to Pub 10km run/walk. It’s the same route but ends at the Ferntree Pub. Quite a few competitors stopped at my stall, many that have traveled from the mainland of Australia and further abroad, including one couple from the UK now living in New Zealand.
Mount Wellington. I took this photo from Lord Street, HobartA Point to Pinnacle runner nearing the finish line.
I also met quite a few people who have taken advantage of the flight specials for the inauguration of the Adelaide – Hobart direct flights. A lady from Melbourne, who collects everything with a kookaburra theme, bought a ‘The Three Amigos’ print. Yesterday, she visited Richmond, Tasmania and bought a kookaburra printed bag.
The Three Amigos
The Christmas cards are popular at this time of the year. A Canadian from Toronto, a lady from just south of Scotland, two ladies from the UK travelling together, another lady from the UK, who had ridden on a motorbike on the mainland with her partner, he was continuing to drive the Nullarbor while she is visiting a friend in Tasmania, bought Christmas card packs.
Snowbirds
A little boy chose an A-3 sized ‘Family Outing’ (emus driving a red mini) print for his bedroom. I asked him how old he was and he said that he was four, but his dad said he was three, but he kept saying he was four and then his dad conceded and said that he was almost four.
Family Outing
A young lady stopped at the stall and thought that surfing emus would be a perfect gift for her in-laws that live by the beach in NSW. She showed it and various other prints to her partner using Facetime. He shopped at Salamanca Market while sitting on a couch in Melbourne. In the end, he agreed that indeed ‘Surfing Clifton Beach, Tasmania’ was the perfect gift.
Surfing Clifton Beach, Tasmania
Today’s most popular print was a tie between: The Three Amigos and Suspended
Suspended
After the market and a short recoup time, it was off to the Paul Kelly concert at MONA. It was an awesome outdoor concert and the back-up singers, Vika and Linda Bull, were amazing too. The seagull-behaviour intrigued me. They flew in swooping circles above us during songs with a more ballad nature and flew away with the songs that had people up on their feet and bopping to the music. I wonder if there has been a study done about birds and their musical preferences??
My view at the Paul Kelly concert. One of the ladies was wearing a hat that I think is supposed to look like you’re wearing a strawberry on your head.
A thought to ponder: “Go and make interesting mistakes, make amazing mistakes, make glorious and fantastic mistakes. Break rules. Leave the world more interesting for your being here. Make. Good. Art.” ~Neil Gaima
Wishing you many happy, creative moments, from Pjpaintings stall #30 at Salamanca Market.
I’ve just returned from attending a stunning wedding in Byron Bay, NSW. I stayed in the quaint little town of Bangalow. The main street is lined with awesome shops that have unique items for sale, unlike the chain store items that you see everywhere.
The main street in Bangalow
Bangalow has carefully furnished and designed coffee shops. I like cafes that take you to a different place, where the surroundings gently move you into the relax space and frame of mind, cafes that aren’t shouting commercialism, noise and customer high turnover as a priority. Lunch at “Woods, Get Forked and Fly”, with a happy, all female staff that were singing along to the music while preparing food, was fun and yummy.
A great little cafe right next to an equally great gallery in Bangalow
We passed by the A & I Hall, with pressed tin lining the walls inside, and it just so happened that the community was putting on “Chicago”. A couple young girls were rehearsing their dance moves on the front deck of the hall. There was such a nice community buzz around.
Chicago Musical was a sold out community event
When it rained, I tried my hand at urban sketching again. I sketched the two buildings I could see out my window, the Anglican church and the little police station.
Bangalow’s cute police stationthe police station across the street from us
Bangalow’s Anglican ChurchThe sketch book with different coloured pages that I used in Bangalow. Not ideal for watercolour but… it worked
I thoroughly enjoyed this little town and I feel like I haven’t finished exploring it. Bangalow, I hope to see you again soon and I hope you are able too!
With Inktober 2017 done and dusted, I would like to reflect upon what I believe were the benefits from this experience for me. Last year, it was easily identifiable, the discovery of platypus drawing . This year, the positives are not as discernible, but with a little reflection I have been able to tease some out:
My drawing confidence has grown. I find drawing things to look 3-D on a 2-D plane challenging, and I think I’ve improved with all this daily practice via the Inktober challenge platform.
My enjoyment of drawing with just a black Artline pen has increased.
Creating tones with a black Artline pen has improved (less is more) and this developed skill has carried over into my urban sketching.
I think that there has also been a tiny bit of improvement with speed and looseness.
Here are all my Inktober 2017 drawings. Which one is your favourite?
My favourite is the hare. I like this one best for several reasons. I drew it when I was seriously contemplating throwing in the towel. I drew the hare’s head and thought, “I don’t want to do Inktober anymore”, but I pushed myself to finish it off, so I drew the body really quickly. I’m pleased with how quickly I drew this picture, the less is more concept, the suggestions drawn for the body and hence the less detailed body directs your eye to focus on the hare’s head.
For Day 28 and 29, I used some artistic license and drew a nest on an emu’s head. In the emus’ world, the nest is made on the ground and consists of mainly grass. The male incubates the eggs for eight weeks, surviving on his accumulated body fat and any morning dew that he can reach. He stands up only to turn the eggs, about 10 times a day. Chicks are cared for by the male for a further four to six months.
I love this photo of dad taking his children for a walk. I’m not sure who the photographer is.
Day 28 – Love
I thought of naming Day 29’s picture “It’s a woman’s world”. It soooo isn’t in the human’s realm, but it could be argued that it is more so in the emu realm.
Day 29 “it’s a woman’s world”
Day 30
By day 30, I felt like I was dragging myself to the finish line. I saw a safety pin and I thought, good enough, I’ll sketch it. I have discovered that if you draw enough of the same item, it doesn’t matter what it is, it usually ends up being a really, really cool work of art. Why is this… apparently we are hard wired to look for patterns because our brains must find order in a world full of chaos, this helps us to survive. Patterns are comforting.
Often, I have had friends point out a flat faced building with lots of windows and comment that it would make a boring drawing, but I beg to differ. I think the repetitive pattern the many windows create somehow, inexplicably, make for a really great end product. Evidently our eyes will naturally be drawn to patterns, the regularity of texture on bark, the delicate trace of a spider web or the spiral of a pine cone.
I would have liked to draw more safety pins but I ran out of steam.
Day 30 – pinning my hopes on you
Day 31
Day 31, crossing the Finish Line and breathing a collective sigh with all the other Inktoberers from across the globe.
Hooray!
Thanks for stopping by and I extend my congratulations to all Inktober 2017 participants. It’s been fun despite it feeling like a hard slog at times. I’ll be taking up the challenge again in 2018, all being well. 🙂
This morning, my friend and I attempted to sketch 119 Macquarie Street. We set up at Franklin Square. There are so many awesome buildings to sketch from this vantage point.
I thought I would try a more sketchy style, which has somewhat developed during the Inktober Challenge, hoping that it would maybe help speed up my sketching rather than my usual line drawing approach. It didn’t. I so admire people that can get a lot down on paper in a short time, including close to accurate volumes and angles. I can now see what went wrong on the right side of the drawing, but after the fact is a little late. I suppose with lots and lots of practice I will get closer to achieving speed and accuracy.
The tower of 119 Macquarie Street building in HobartThe whole 119 Macquarie Street building
This is my line drawing style/attempt of the Town Hall, also drawn sitting in Franklin Square.
I think Inktoberers all over the world breathed a collective sigh when October 31st arrived, not because Halloween had arrived but the end of Inktober had arrived!! I didn’t expect I would maintain the pace of a new drawing everyday.
Here are more drawings that drew me closer to the finish line:
Day 24
By this time I was struggling with thinking of things that I was motivated enough to try to draw. I saw a close up of this dragon fly. The colours were amazing…. so a dragonfly is what I drew.
Dragonfly
Day 25:
There was a family of raccoons living under the front steps of a house I rented in North Vancouver, B.C., Canada. One day, I heard a lot of squawking and squealing noises and went outside to see what was happening and that is when I unexpectedly walked into a tree climbing lesson. The adult raccoon, with its front paws, picked up and placed a young, squirming, noisily protesting raccoon at the base of the tree and nudged it up the tree with its nose. It squealed and complained loudly all the way up and down the tree. Then the adult raccoon plucked it off the tree and repeated the process with the other two young raccoons, each having the same reaction as the first one. They made sure that everybody knew they were not enjoying their first day of tree-climbing school, but obviously an essential skill for raccoons to master so their protests were ignored by their teacher.
A raccoon for the Inktober prompt word “mask”
Day 26:
A Fairy Penguin for day 26. It is the smallest of all penguins and breeds on the mainland of Australia and Tasmania. I’ve had the privilege of seeing them scurry up the beach several times. So cute!
Fairy Penguin
Day 27:
For day 27, a pelican, a common sight on the mainland of Australia. Sometimes I told my young children, ‘not to be a silly pelican, eating more than your belican’. A pelican’s beak can hold more than its belly can. Hence, there are several limericks that have been crafted about this unusual feat:
It could have started with a disaster, but thankfully luck was on my side this morning. I loaded a few last items into the car, which fills the car up to the ceiling, and then headed up the steep driveway incline. At the top of the driveway, I noticed the warning light telling me that my boot (trunk) isn’t properly closed. It wasn’t closed at all!! It is amazing that the framed original painting didn’t slide out and smash on the driveway or street.
My bicep curls and side arm raises with bags of groceries and knapsack must be paying off because for the first time ever, I was able to get the 27kg gazebo set up 100% by myself. After getting high fives from neigbouring stall holders celebrating such a feat, I went about the business of setting up and apologising to customers enduring my neighbour’s music choice, but I suppose knowing when to fold ‘em, walk away and so on is an important life skill (lol).
We had rain, wind and sunshine today. A gentleman bought “Salamanca Saturdays” and emu Christmas cards to take to Wichita, USA. He’s going in December, a rather cool time of the year to visit.
Salamanca Saturdays with Mt Wellington in the background
A father, who bought “Hayride” four years ago for his son’s bedroom, came by to buy another print to go with Hayride. He asked if I had another rural scene, which I really should have, but sadly I don’t, but it has started the rural creative juices flowing…. He settled on “Outback Glamping”.
Outback Glamping with Uluru in the background
A couple, from Gosford, NSW, whose daughter’s name is Bird, bought “Beauty Queens IV” for her. A lady, visiting from Mackay, QLD, that had a tough time deciding which print to choose, settled on “Red Ute”. A Texan, USA couple bought some emu Christmas cards. A mother from Mornington Peninsula, VIC bought “Rising above it” for her daughter. She said that her daughter loves the colours in the painting. A couple from Sydney, NSW, bought a small ink and watercolour original painting of a platypus. They pulled out a brand new $10 note, hesitated, gave it a second look and commented they hadn’t seen one before. I thought that maybe they weren’t Australian then, asked where they were from, because I’ve seen heaps, (but I would, working at a stall) but they were Australian. We had a good laugh. It was funnier in real time, trust me.
Rising above it
A long-time friend of mine sent me a photo of friends that were visiting her from Melbourne with their A-2 sized “Poppy Fields” print they had got earlier in the day from me! Hobart is a small place.
Poppy Fields
Today’s most popular print was a tie between: The Three Amigos and Who, Who, Who are You? II
The Three Amigos
A thought to ponder: “You don’t make art out of good intentions.” ― Gustave Flaubert
Wishing you many happy, creative moments, from the Pjpaintings stall #30 at Salamanca Market
The Unfurling Artist: journalising creative journeying 