Colour in Unlikely Places.

 On my first walk away from the local neighbourhood after the easing of lock-down restrictions, I explored below the new stretch of Skyrail in a distant suburb. Here the graffiti and tagging is everywhere and the backs of all the houses and yards are 'decorated' with a rainbow of colours.

However my eye was drawn to the flowers, nasturtium, rose and a salvia all blooming profusely amongst the graffiti  and corrugated iron fences. What caught my eye in particular was the natural spread of complimentary colours, orange/yellow and purple.

          Couldn't have been planted to better effect if a gardener had done it on purpose. Lovely !

Rainbow Lorikeets.

Ten years ago we would never see these beautiful parrots in suburbia, but for whatever the reason, the Rainbow Lorikeets have moved in and are common in this area.  The birds nest in hollows in trees and here you can see them working on enlarging a hollow in a mature European Plane tree. Tree limbs are regularly cut off when the branches threaten to hit overhead power lines, and where the branch has been removed there is a soft patch of wood that develops into a shallow hollow which the birds enlarge.

The trees develop quite odd shapes as a result of the pruning, sort of 'T' shaped, but it's perfect for these very pretty birds.

The males and females have similar colouring, and you can see where they get their name, Rainbow indeed.
 

Playing Around with Prints

I have always thought that adding to prints with a pen or extra paint was not for me, as I thought that the print should be in its final state when hot off the press or gelatin plate. However I have made so many uninspiring gelatin prints lately that were just border line to be in the bin or not, that I broke with my tradition and went back into the prints with pens and paint.

These moths were printed with my hand carved stamps and acrylic paint, but the paint was just too thick and none of the markings showed up. I'm still not convinced by this as a whole, but parts might be O.K for use on cards. The one below is now much more interesting with the addition of bronze and copper embellishments.

The last one was made with pressed flower tassels from a Garyia eleptica plant, or Silk Tassel Bush. The tassels are rather brittle  when pressed dry, but lasted long enough for me to make several different prints. Here I went back into the print and coloured parts of the moth wings and the flowers with  a soft metallic mauve paint. The gold markings on the moths don't show up in this photo very well, but the overall effect is quite nice I think.

Out Walking

 As we are still in lock down here because of the Covid Virus, our twice daily walks are very important, for us and the dog! For some reason our rescue dog Sophie reacts violently to some other dogs but is quite happy to play and interact with others. There doesn't seem to be any consistent reason that we can find why some other dogs are O.K and others definitely not. It's not size, not gender, colour or any of the obvious variables. It's just a case of liking some dogs and not liking others, rather like people really! One house that we walk past has some sort of a dog behind a fence and gate that I've never seen, but always heard, loudly. This time when walking past with a friend and not with Sophie, I was watched by a pair of eyes.

We have had a much better fall of spring rain this year and as a result the flowers in our garden and in the neighborhood gardens are just beautiful. I love the Gazania flowers with their loud colours and enormous size in our garden and couldn't resist trying an arty shot!