On the Future of this Blog

This space has been at the back of my mind for a while now. I have left it to dwindle, shrink in the shadow of the rest of my life. Perhaps I lost the drive since the focus of the content was so broad. A record of my life in New Zealand just doesn't seem all that interesting either.

I have been working on a new blog, with a much more focused directive. Will I maintain this one? Not in it's current state, that's for sure. I'm toying around with using this space as an electronic window into my sketchbook. We'll see.

South Island part 1

I'm going to start at the end, swimming with the dolphins in Kaikoura.

Mom and I got up super early our last day on the South Island to take a tour with Encounter Kaikoura. These folks know their stuff, I highly recommend them. It was probably one of the best tours I've ever been on, definitely worth getting up at 4:30am for.

You know when a tour advertises swimming with dolphins and you picture your arse freezing in the ocean while you bob around, squinting at the occasional fin breaking the surface 100 metres away? Well, this was unbelievably better than that. There were times when I was surrounded by half a dozen dolphins swimming circles around me within arms reach.

There's a chill in the air!

It's starting to get cooler in Wellington, which doesn't say much since the summer highs barely pushed past the mid 20s, and I'm in mourning for my tomatoes. It's unlikely that the green globes hanging from the wind stooped plants will ever ripen. I knew this was going to happen, but I needed to see for myself if there was even a smidgen of hope that I could grow tomatoes out of doors around here. Next year there will be a greenhouse. In the meantime I'm hunting for green tomato recipes.

Editing...

Hello, how's it going? Sorry for the long absence. I've promised a few of you new pix, and they're coming, but I'm still editing. Editing... the bane of an artist's existence. That final step when I come face to face with the plethora of rubbish I've produced and now have to polish to simulate the jewel it ain't.

On the bright side, if all artists spat out pure perfection with each shutter click, each stroke of a brush, each punch of a key, the horde of analytical desk jockeys turning the cogs of empires such as Adobe would be out of work. Right?

In the meantime I've added a few new sketches in my doodles page.

Oscars Weta Style

Apes & Tintin were up for a couple of Oscars, so Weta threw a party. The fact that we didn't win this year wasn't enough to dampen our spirits. It kind of helped that the booze was free. ;)