Weekly drawing 72: Camping in St Ives bushland

Anthony and I camping at St Ives, 1989

When I was 14, Anthony and I spent many weekends camping in the bushland at St Ives . We would walk down from Acron Oval to the Cascades and then along Middle harbour creek to our favourite sandstone overhang, were we would camp overnight. 

I felt a great feeling of freedom in the bush. I was relived to get away from the bland suburb of St Ives and it's ever growing shopping centre. At times while camping I would imagine how the local Aborigines once lived in St Ives, fishing in the creek and sleeping in the same sandstone shelter which we used for our camp site.

Unfortunately we couldn't enjoy the same simple pleasures because the creeks were now very polluted from urban and industrial runoff. So we had to carry everything we needed into the bush and ration our food and water for the journey. To conserve water and save energy we cleverly hid water bottles at certain secret places along the track (behind trees under leaf mulch) 

To me pollution doesn't mean it's all over and everything is destroyed. It just makes me think we need to clean up our act, so one day we can have clean waterways again. Imagine one day going for a walk in Sydney bushland and confidently drinking or swimming in the water, it would be awesome.

Weekly drawing 54: Ibis infestation and child art

Feeling inspired this week, so it's two drawings...

Drawing 1

Ibis infestation is a kids book idea 

Eat your worms about eating the right foods. 

Why would an Ibis's would love eating Subway Wrappers,
McDonalds rubbish and hairy bits of chicken instead of foraging
in their native wetlands far from the cities?

Drawing 2

Sailing in a storm

My daughter 18 months has started enjoying to draw (scribble, scribble turn the page scribble, scribble). She has trouble understanding why I won't let her scribble all through my sketch book. So this is a drawing we did together, in my sketch book to prove that I can share too.

Weekly Drawing 43: Fruit Bat umbrella design

I love creating a design which plays on the shape of an object. To me a Fruit bat already looks a bit like an umbrella.  When it's open it looks like the bat is flying and closed it's alseep.  Plus imagine if this design took off. The next time it rained it would look like a flocks of bats flying out of every pedestrain tunnel in the city. Pretty cool!

Weekly drawing week 42: The Surly Water Dragon

The Surly Water Dragon sits by the river.

This weeks drawing is a tribute to all the surly Water Dragons I've recently seen sun baking by Toongabbie creek. As I would walk up to the creek bank they would scurry as fast as they could and splosh!! into the water. I think the term "Chicken would be in order for the these fearsome looking scardey cats"