Weekly Drawing 56: Tinker-man

Tinker-man rides to the village. Milford - on sea, Hampshire

"Tinker-man rides to the village on his butchers bike to buy some bread.
As always he scans the back streets to see what he might find along the way..."

                                                                                                         Joel Tarling

Weekly drawing 55: Junk Castle

While my parents were building our family home on the south coast. I started building a cubby house called Junk Castle after Robin Klein's book Junk Castle published by Oxford University Press, 1983 and Illustrated by Rolf Heimann.

Using the walls from the old pit toilet, odd bits of building materials and things I scored from the local tip such as the slippery dip. I created my own fun.

I drew this from memory and I thought it was exactly as I remember it. But when found an old photo I could see I'd missed a lot of the wonderful details. Where I had obviously added more as I found different bits and pieces. I was about to redraw it, until I realised I'd unintentionally drawn it, how I saw it back in 1983. As the best cubby house in the world and perfect in every way.

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.

DIY woodwork with found objects

We have a beautiful old timber bench in our kitchen. Which I scored FREE because it was being thrown out and about to be sent to landfill. The bench was perfect in every way, but was missing a drawer. This is the story of How the bench got its drawer.

Last Friday, I was lucky enough to find an old timber drawer being thrown out on Little Eveleigh St in Redfern. However it was 15cm too long for our bench, so I cut it down.

This what it looked like after cut down and sanded. But it still wasn't fitting, so...

I went to The Bower in Marrickville and bought a little hand plane for $4 to shave the sides down a touch.

One of my favourite details is the dovetail joint:

The drawer now fits!

I also made a timber knife and fork divider for the drawer. I used $2 worth of timber from The Bower and some wood I found dumped in a laneway a couple of streets away.

I wanted to retain the original quality and style of the timber bench. I'm amazed at how well it all came together. 

I find imagining a found object's potential is extremely rewarding, and wish more people would repair and fix things. Each time I find something and fix it up, I feel I've saved it and I enjoy the process.

Weekly drawing 53: My big sister

This weekly drawing is a tribute to my wonderful big sister and is based on a Bermagui primary school photo of us. My childhood was definitely more fun because of her.

We lived 5km out of town along the coast and my sister and I were the only kids at our school bus stop. However this didn't seem to bother us. While we waited we made a hand ball court by sweeping the clay, so there was a smooth area to play. And the property over the fence was dairy farm, I would sometimes amuse my sister by singing to the cows "Da do ron-ron- ron". To our amazement they would all huddle over to listen. These were magical days.