52-Week Illustration Challenge, Week 45

Watercolour - with no pencil lines - based on a photograph I took one Autumn in Bright, Victoria. The painting came together very quickly after a night of compiling a big batch of report card marks, but I'd had the composition in my head all last week. Getting into the painting was very therapeutic. My reward!

Week 45: Leaves

Update:

Eucalyptus shape cut from green handmade paper remnant, with koala sketch drawn in white Unibolt Signo pigment ink, metallic silver Pilot marker and fine point black Sharpie. No pencil lines! Mounted on a pre-printed Origami paper square.

Week 45: Leaves II

I ended up with a spare eucalyptus leaf shape last night, cut from green handmade paper remnant, so I decided a lyrebird would be the best fit for the available area. Sketched in brown Staedtler Triplus fineliner, white Unibolt Signo pigment ink, metallic silver and gold Pilot markers and fine point black Sharpie. No pencil lines! Mounted on a sheet of black card.

Week 45: Leaves III

Assemblage art of a leafy apple tree with torn brown Ingres paper, candy mint leaves, acid drops and Jaffas on a blue piece of nylon fabric.

Week 45: Leaves IV

Happy Halloween

Australia doesn't really embrace Halloween all that much, but it always pays to have a stash of candy at the front door on Halloween night, just in case any trick or treaters pass by. Most years, I don't get any visitors - so I have to eat the evidence.

Shucks.


Twisties' Bag of Ghosts!

Just in time for Halloween 2011, these crunchy and "spookily flavoured" snacks (above), from the makers of regular Twisties, are spiced with paprika. Yum! It's unusual for Australian food companies to bother with Halloween-themed foods.

Happy Hallowe'en!

Mr Potato Head strikes it lucky!

What a pity! No trick-or-treaters in my street, so I ate their candy. Well... someone had to do it!



Happy Hallowe'en, everyone!

Favourite showbag?

The Sydney Royal Easter Show will be here before we know it. I was asked about my favourite showbag.

Now, showbags have certainly evolved a lot over the decades. When they first appeared, they were free, and specialized in promoting various commercial product brands by way of cute, miniaturized bottles and packets.

Then there was a move to full-sized products, collected by theme or manufacturer, in reasonably-priced bags, complete with a few plastic novelties and a "Phantom" comic.

As a kid in the 60s and 70s, our traditional Easter Show gift from my grandmother was a Minties showbag each, made of thick paper and with string handles. I think she must have analyzed all the showbags one year, and designated this as the best value for money. There was always a cellophane-wrapped cardboard box of Minties, plus a box of Jaffas, a box of hard Marella Jubes, liquorice novelties, and some sweets you only ever saw once a year - in the Minties showbag! (Plus a few plastic novelties. And a "Phantom" comic.)

These days, there seem to be two types of bags: a bag of novelties, or a bag of varieties of packaged sweets plus one novelty. Most bags are plastic, except the ones promoting non-plastic, recyclable alternatives.

Back to nostalgia, though, my grandmother's own annual purchase was the Easter Show bumper-sized box of Vincent's Powders, a size that wasn't ever available in regular chemist stores, corner stores or supermarkets. Can you even buy Vincent's Powders any more? They seemed to fade away once the codeine had to be removed from them...

Party mix

Okay, so I bought a big bag of Kenman's Party Mix lollies (candy for the US readers) - and they're 99% fat free - but they are not the expected traditional varieties. No snakes, no bananas, no black cats, no strawberries-and-cream. A few jelly babies, sure, but the rest of them are quasi-fruit jellies in "party" shapes: little chocolate ice cream cones, cupcakes, drink bottles, shooting stars, life-sized lips, mobile phones(?) and decapitated clown heads. And you know what? Those clown heads taste funny. Boom, boom.



On Friday a parcel arrived from Amazon. About two months ago, I finally tracked down a cute little Christmas ditty that Baz & Pilko (Barry Ion and Tony Pilkington) used to play in the late 80s on Sydney radio station 2UW's breakfast show, now the home of MIX 106.5 FM. Every Christmas, little comedy guest voice, "Peter Plus", used to introduce a song, supposedly sung by his kid sister, "Personality". (Personality Plus, get it?)

The song concerned someone, strongly suspected of being Santa Claus, who was stuck in the chimney on Christmas Eve, and met his demise up there, and was still stuck a day, then a week, then a month, then a year later. "Plussy" (voice of Barry Ion, IIRC) never gave a lot of notice that the song was about to be played, so taping it off-air was impossible. At the time, and over several years, I tried to find out the details of the song, since I suspected it was a commercial track from the USA. Rummaging through the Comedy Section of many record shops didn't bear fruit. A friend, who knew one of the 2UW on-air personalities, music guru Gary Jaegar, also drew a blank. Gary had told us the song was probably someone's old demo track and therefore not available on record. So I stopped looking.

Well, thanks to the wonders of Google and the Internet, typing in Santa "stuck up in the chimney" brought me, not only the full song lyrics to "The Chimney Song", as sung by one Lorna List, but also a link to Amazon and the CD version, on which the song is available as Track #2. And so "Twisted Christmas" (1987), by the Bob Rivers Comedy Corp, arrived at my place - after a short delay while Amazon restocked (in time for Christmas, I presume) - but missing my Midwinter Christmas party by a full two weeks. Sigh.

Gosh! The coveted lyrics are now available as a ringtone, and even as a little window for a web page! Isn't technology marvellous?

It was Amazon's second recording miracle in recent months. My dog, Jack, accidentally broke a friend's precious 78 RPM record of Spike Jones and His City Slickers singing the novelty song, "Wild Bill Hiccup" (1949). This was a song from Maria's childhood - or, more likely, her mother's childhood - which the family played on her grandmother's antique, hand-cranked record player - and Jack destroyed the 78 in one, ah, record leap onto a chair (after the stack had been moved during some renovations to their house). Good ol' Amazon. Look what I found with a little diligent searching. Now, I'm sure my friend won't need to hear "Wild Bill Hiccup" on CD all that often, but at least I know that she can, if she so desires, and without thinking black thoughts about Jack-be-nimble and his mountain goat-like feats.