chinese gardens

The weather's been amazing this week - cool, and quite breezy - quite uncharacteristic for the rainy season. Out on Clarke Quay on Wednesday night I wore a sleeveless top and was actually cold!! It hasn't rained all week and everything is wilting and dying in the garden. There are way too many leaves to rake up. For once, I'd be really happy for a really heavy downpour. Anyway, it seemed like a great time to go out to the Chinese Gardens and draw with my friend Jane.

But today both the heat and humidity have gone up a few notches. I think we stayed for a couple of hours and decided that we couldn't take it anymore. We found a spot in the shade to draw a round entrance, and then later a pagoda. My oil pastels were melting nicely in the heat, and so was I. By the time I'd fnished my pagoda sketch sweat was just dripping off me - yep, time to stop. Not to be defeated, we'll go back another time (err...earlier in the day might be better!), and bring our own picnic. As we left we saw two huge monitor lizards swimming across the lake - we've decided to go to Sungei Buloh (a mangrove area to the north of the island, which also has monitor lizards as well as kingfishers and wetland species) - so we're not totally put off by the weather, which can be debilitating. I really liked the fact that my oil pastels came out in sympathy with me and reacted the same way I did!

after the downpour

Well the downpour seems to have stopped, at least for today. I've been a bit frustrated as it's been so wet lately that I couldn't get to draw outside. It was actually cool (by Singapore standards) and a little breezy, really nice. Anyway, I grabbed the chance and did a couple of drawings of what I think is some kind of fig species - I've no idea which. There was a fish tail palm in the middle of it all, but I don't think this was the host tree. It was pretty hard to draw, roots all over the place and hard to follow. If my drawing looks confusing, it's because it was! I'm now wondering about recording some of the sounds I hear - they were incredible today - high pitched whine of cicadas (which is pretty standard), warbling orioles, hooting sounds from a drongo, and the funny clicking sounds of squirrels...

saga trees

Earlier this week I took myself off to draw tree roots. On a practical level they are easier to draw than branches – no neck strain! I just love tree root forms - how they contort, and grow around and over obstacles. They really are a delight to draw. I am planning to use these drawings as the basis for a some embossed paper images.