moonbeam report

Ren by moonlight – note the hat

Erwin sitting on a fairy mound under the full moon

The river at “Westies”

Blurred Jeff with moon and Midland

We weren’t entirely a batch of happy little moonbeams. I hadn’t slept the night before, Ren was hyper from his work during the week and Erwin’s head was fizzing with a bit too much beer. That was the unlikely crew.

Drawing after sunset again proved itself to be well worth the effort though, presenting just that perfect mix of ease and challenge. We started at the river bend and as it grew dark and we had downed a few ginger beers and some jelly beans we headed upriver. 1st highlight was a dog with a strobing collar that pissed on Ren’s bag . Typical, I thought, after having myself spent the afternoon trying to recover some semblance of decency to two canvases that my darling little cat had sprayed.

The shed at the river bend is an excellent subject for moonlight painting so take note.

We spent some time on that.

We finished for the night at Erwin’s fairy mound with Ren and I engaged in a deeply philosophical discussion about

1. how we were going to do the underwater safari (still a bit uncertain but it may become more sculptural at this rate) and then

2. What the Frak (thankyou Battlestar Galactica for extending my vocabulary) were we trying to get out of the moonlight safari.

3. A very interesting proposal for another night safari where we will be drawing with lights (I know its been done – but not by us!)

further deep philosophy walking back to the cars

4. All reflections point to us individually and we only have our own POV (Point Of View). Ren: the only thing we really own is our shadow. Also Ren:There is a line between normal and sane ..no insane .. no artists..maybe you know it…something about artists and insanity. Later I guess: The line between the sane and the insane is an artist. That’s it says Ren!

So ended the night ramblings.

jeff

Arse-end safari

Amanda and Ren desperately trying to see something to draw.

Baby Orangutang weeing

The MotorBike frogs eventually save us

Well we did the zoo again today and by popular request the outing has been renamed to the “Arse-end Safari” in honour of the fact that nearly everytime we settled in to draw some beast we ended up with wrong end.  This for some reason seemed particularly pertinent by the time we reached the zebras. We were eventually rescued by the frogs and tortoises  in the Australian wetland section. They stayed perfectly still – great life drawing models.

Ren’s earlier attempt to stir up some action by throwing his waterbottle into the elephant enclosure (he’s too nice to really do that) had failed miserably and he had get it specially retreived. It was amazing that his bottle actually reached the enclosure really because there was a tightly packed pram jam that went practically from the zoo entrance right up to the elephants and back throught the savanah enclosure and ending at the tuck shop: Lot’s of dads on holidays and out with the kiddies.

We even saw Kristen briefly – there is a rare animal nowadays. She was however on strict orders not to draw or paint and was quickly whisked off by her kids into the general maelstrom of the zoo experience.

So it was good fun but maybe fewer bottoms would have been in order – Oh, and wasps.

jeff