I spent a whole day in my studio working on a decorative painting based  the carpet of leaves I posted earlier. Using the real leaves as templates I created stencils to cover the surface of the canvas. The painting is in progress and is acrylic on canvas 90x90cm. Until now my posts have been  retrospective…

April 15. Spent the afternoon trying out my new set of oil pastels in the park. Working with a comparatively new medium is always a challenge but the result of my efforts did rather resemble a dogs dinner. Never mind I will try again and maybe even try to recycle the costly piece of oil…

10 April. Boris is the name of the little train which operates in Hotham park weekends and holidays and now the winter is over and tracks are no longer waterlogged he has come out of hibernation.  Children love him.

I have admired and photographed willows and dogwoods in the winter garden and have paintings  in mind waiting  to be done. When I returned, I found the gardeners giving them their annual hair cut. Here are a few before and after shots.

April the first and a  wonderful warm sunny day. I got to the park early and spent several hours sketching. To begin I drew fresh green leaves and a few  trees also took lots of photos. Things seem to happening so fast this spring, blink and you’ve missed it!

 After surveying the devastation caused by the storms it was nice to come on this bed of Hellebores, a foretaste of spring.

The old saying goes, February fill dyke black or white. I had hoped for a bit of white but snow has been replaced by wind and rain this year. I went into the park on a very windy day not long before the great Valentine’s Day storm. I wanted to see what it was like…