On Saturday morning one of our friend’s little girls came screaming down to the beach in tears after making a trip to the primitive bathroom facilities. She said that she had seen a dragon. We didn’t think much of it…and chalked it up to the furtile imagination of a seven-year-old girl…until we went back up to the tents and came face to face with a family of lace monitors.

They are BIG lizards … as long as a medium sized dog, but with short stubby legs. She HAD seen a dragon! The family of dragons, so far as we could tell, consisted of two adults and a juvenile, and they wandered lazily past our campsite a couple of times a day in search of the sunny spots on the cliffs.

As a child my mum used to read me may Gibbs’ Snugglepot and Cuddlepie stories and for a long time I have wanted to have a go at drawing a banksia pod. Here’s what I came up with:

I had hoped for some time early this morning to draw a family of blue wrens that I observed as I wrote my morning pages, but instead I was visited by the sweet Miss Emily who scared the birds away, but who was so interested in my paints and pens that I simply couldn’t resist her charms. Here’s the drawing that we created together.

I love the excitement of little minds playing with pretty colours and seeing how paints mix and swirl together. Perhaps she was a reminder to nurture my own inner child artist.

I loved it! Pastels are so quick and responsive and I love the feeling of the chalky pencil dragging over the toothy paper, followed by the buttery blending as I move the pigment together to make something entirely new.

A Parisian woman watches on

I’ve been back from France now for almost three months and finally I can say that I am making progress on my book! Yay! I have finished the actual travelogue part of my journals, and I’m working on approximately 30 supplementary sketches to fill out the second Moleskine. Today I start on the tedious task of high res scanning my journals so that I have print-ready images to share

I cannot tell you how excited I am that I am working on this project!

learning how to do maps and freehand lettering…

Crap photo…but practising buildings…

Sketches during worship this morning…

Loving that I am making time to draw so much.

One of my architectural practice pieces for the trip…

I’m too excited to keep this a secret any longer!

I have been inspired by the beautiful Blurb books created by Liz Steel showcasing her urban sketches and adventures with Borrmini, that I am thinking that I will create a Blurb book of my own from my adventures in France later this year. I am more than a little excited

What is a Blurb book? It’s a book that is available for order and printed on demand just for you and then posted directly to you. Nifty system huh?

My French holiday sketchbook will contain all of the sketches I manage to capture while I’m travelling, and be combined with the odd photo here and there as well as excerpts from my written journals. I am so wound up about it that the anticipation is just about killing me I may even include some of the lead up and preparation sketches and back story …. we’ll see.

Anyway…I’m telling you all now so that I can’t chicken out later I would love to have it out in time for Christmas, but having a realistic look at my work schedule and art commissions on the list…it will probably be early next year.

The colour behind the food was supposed to be “redder” I don’t like the way the sketchpaper in the Molekskines takes colour. Will almost definitely be taking a watercolour Moley to France later in the year.

4 x 6″
Graphite on W&N Bristol Board