My life is one big holiday, they say!

   Here are a few photos of my life since about a month ago when I last posted. The first half of November I was in Christchurch with Caleb who was on holiday from Uni. We went tramping out in the mountains in the Arthur's Pass area with Thomas and a couple of their friends. We hitched out to Arthur's Pass and spent three nights tramping on the west coast side.

   I've never been in mountains as big as this before and it was an amazing experience. The artist side of me worked hard to figure out those mountains. I'd seen a lot of paintings of mountains and they seemed to me to to be not quite right, no artist seemed to be able to capture the huge solidness of them, and then I saw the mountains for myself and I was amazed at how like those paintings they looked! They seem so airy and full of colour, the shadows of clouds constantly moving over them reminded me of water reflections and when the clouds came down low they were lost in a soft fog. I should love to go down there one day and spent a while in the mountains trying to capture in paint that sense of solidness and hugeness as well as that airy elusiveness.

Almost at Carrol Hut, Arthur's Pass behind us.

A waterfall in the stream which flowed past the hut.

Thomas and me. The rivers down there are amazing, big and braided.

    Dilon's Hut on the river flats which we enjoyed very much apart from the west coast sand flies. Caleb caught a nice big trout while the rest of us were still sleeping. Went for a walk up the river and had fun on the cable car.

  We walked out down the river and hitched back to Christchurch. Caleb and I waited a few hours in the misty rain and sand flies before we were picked up by a kindly Dutch couple touring in a campervan. Finally got back a few hours after the others and after walkinf for an hour from the edge of the city. Hitching remains unreliable...

   The next day but one we were off again doing more exhausting stuff, this time mountain bike riding for two days with Caleb and Thomas. We rode from the Uni up and along the port hills and on to Banks Peninsula and Packhorse Hut.

   In packhorse hut, a pretty stone hut, where we stayed the night, in the morning a whole lot of day trampers turned up so we cleared up and spent most of the day carrying out bikes up and around something like a mountain before finally being able to bike down the steep farm road and fields on the other side. That was exhilarating and terrifying! Only one accident when Caleb's chain broke and he went flying and landed with his bike on top of him.

Well, I've been home for three weeks now and have been getting ready for another hut drawing trip for The Art of a Hut project, and have been doing a bit of painting and drawing for myself.

    I drove out to Tarara one day last week to do some paintings of the huge boulders strewn around the foot of that big rock. But somehow I forgot my paintbrushes! I considered finger painting, but ended up just doing a watercolour sketch and hunting around for interesting compositions to paint another time.

This is what has been going on in my studio this week. The violin is a ticklish thing to draw, get one line or curve wrong and it looks all off.

   I ordered a whole lot of new business cards and they arrived in the mail the other day. They are nice and shiny and stiff, sorry about my blurry phone photo.

   This weekend I'm leaving on another hut hop. This time in the Tararuas near Wellington. We will be spending two weeks in there, tramping two loops of seven nights each. I'm hoping to get some good drawings done I'm getting excited now and looking forwards to it. !!!!

Ruahine Hut Drawing

   At the beginning of July I went off on another hut drawing trip in the Ruahine Range. There were three of us, Caleb, my brother Nathaniel, and me. Nathaniel and I hitched and bussed down to Hawke's Bay where we met up with Caleb,  was on holiday from University, and headed out to the hills for a week. We stayed at six huts in all in as many nights and I managed to draw four and a half of them. The half being a quick sketch of the last hut where the weather was none too good and time running out to get out before the river rose too high. 

  This is the first hut we tramped to. Ellis Hut, also known as Murderers Hut. It has an interesting history one story was of a convicted murderer being tracked down and captured in this hut. It wasn't the most comfortable hut to stay in during winter. The fire smoked as bad as the worst of them and one could see the light of day where the light of day should not be seen. So we had a smokey chilly night and woke up with headaches. But alive. And I never got cold! When I was working in the South Island a few months ago I invested in a good down sleeping bag. The brand is One Planet and sleeps in comfort down to -7. I have yet to feel the cold in it.

  A typical lunch, though it's not always burnt and the sausages were a bonus. In the background you can see the rotten logs which the boys were pulling huhu grubs out of. They fried them up, about half a cup full and ate them with relish. I managed to down a few, and would have liked them only the thought and the sight was a bit much! They tasted like bits of fat, slightly nutty.

   This is inside Poutaki Hut a less popular hut near Ellis hut. This hut is doomed not to be repaired again by DOC. Once it becomes too run down it will be pulled down. It's quite unfortunate as it was one of the nicest huts, quite cozy with a roaring stove called Little Dorrit. I did a painting of this hut, you can see it sitting in the window, drying. I used fake oil paint (water mixable) with no medium so it dried fast. The light changes so fast that it was quite a challenge, but it remained my favorite piece from that trip.

            My painting of Poutaki Hut. I have another post here with more about this painting.

   The third hut was the popular Sunrise hut. It is so popular that we met five people here (three separate parties) during a mid-winter Wednesday in a snowstorm. It began to snow while we were walking up early in the morning. We were excited with the first small flakes of snow, not knowing how much snow we would be seeing before the end of the week. At the hut it was very windy and snowed almost continually until the next morning when the sun came out again. 

   I managed to draw the hut from the shelter of the low trees which protected me from most of the wind. But the snow still fell all over me until I became as white as a snowman. Fortunately the snow didn't affect my drawing too much. I used charcoal and the snow falling on it I just brushed away, it was quite dry while still frozen. It did get a bit damp once I brought it inside the warm hut.

   Caleb and I look hilarious in this photo. I had just about all my clothes on and some borrowed from Caleb. I stayed warm enough. Caleb did a bit of hunting but we moved around a bit much for that to be very successful and he only got a possum for our dinner.

  Lots and lots of snow! Heaps of fun and excitement!

   The last hut we stayed at was Howlets Hut. (Via Daphne hut which I also drew) My favorite hut of the trip. It is one of the highest huts in the North Island and is not a DOC hut but owned by the Heretaunga Tramping Club. We got there on a wild evening, almost got blown off the ridge at the top but managed to stumble into the little sheltered hollow where sits the hut looking beautiful. One can only really appreciate the beauty of a hut when one has tramped for hours for the sight of it! During the night it began to rain and the snow to melt. We were conscious of having to walk down the Tukituki river on our way out and were not sure how quickly it was rising, so we walked out early and I only had an hour to sketch the hut. The river was higher and stronger going out, and the snow had melted very quickly and was running down the path making it slippery very.

   This is just a quick word about our trip. I have been very busy lately trying to get in eight hours of drawing and painting each day as well everything else...

   Next hut trip is planned for sometime in September and will be down south somewhere. Probably the Terrible Tararuas which I am excited to become acquainted with.

South Island and Newsletter!! I'm off...!

   Today I leave home and on Monday I fly to the South Island. It's been my dream for years to go down there. And now I am going!!

   I'm not taking my laptop and don't hope to be in contact with the internet for the couple of months I'm away. So don't expect to hear from me online before the end of May. But when I come back I will get back on my blog and tell you all about it and share some of my sketches. I'll be apple picking near Nelson for five weeks, and hopefully get to tramp to some huts in the weekends. Here is my March/April Newsletter. In which I write a bit more about what this artists been up to lately.

  Here are just a few of the huts I want to visit and draw if I get the chance.

 I've been packing today, and look who wants to come with me! Not this time Pansy!..

Well, I'm going to go now and ride my horse, Tigger, one last time before I go. Then I've got to quickly finish packing and leave. 

Good bye.  :-)

Last Update before Christmas!

So, I'm all ready to go. All I have to do now is write this post and then I can sleep so I can wake up early tomorrow to leave. I'm all packed, but the food situation still looks like this:

This is before grocery shopping for the trip, most of it is the remains of Caleb's possum trapping trip. We did lot's of baking today so the tins are full of hearty musili bar like biscuits which will keep us going on our long walks. Our staple diet will be rice, that's alright, I like rice! Caleb assures me possum is really good to eat, I'm not so sure. Possum is one of the worst smells! But I'm willing to try it! Hopefully he will be able to catch us more appetizing meat like venison, rabbit and trout. He has all his fishing and hunting permits already sorted out for that. We shall see how plentiful the game is, and I'll let you know when I come back for Christmas...

All my drawing supplies have been packed. My paper is stored in a plastic folder for the car, and when we go tramping to the huts I will roll up as much sheets as I will need into the black tube to carry it in. I have a drawing board which Caleb drilled some holes into today so that we can strap it onto a pack. I will mask paper to that for drawing, then roll it up again into the tube once I have finished drawing a hut. 

 

I also have some sketchbooks to fill up. And I was given a very cute watercolour set and tiny moleskin sketchbook which I shall enjoy using. I have restarted my drawing every day challenge. I never did complete my challenge to draw every day the year I was 20. I got up to day 199 and then from then on it dwindled away, mostly because of the hut drawing project which majorly distracted me. But I began the challenge again the day after my 21st birthday last Friday the 15th. This time I think I have more of a chance to complete it and draw every day I'm 21. I know what I'm in for now, and I'm more focused on drawing now. Also, I have begun it in an A4 sketchbook and shall complete a series of them this year. It will be easier than just drawing on loose sheets of paper like I was doing originally. 

Here are the first two pages of my sketchbook for drawing every day:

So the first huts we head to are in the Kaimai range near Tauranga. I will be drawing in there for a week before we head down to the mass of huts in the Te Ureweras. It was a bit of a challenge trying to make a route through there, and pick out which huts I want to draw. The only information I have of them is from the DOC website and a hut book I have which has only a limited number of huts. But I managed to write down a list of huts I particularly want to see. My goal is to draw 15 huts in this first month. The areas circled are where we will be until Christmas.

So, goodbye you all. I will write up a long update when I come back for Christmas, around the 20th of December. Take care..