This restaurant facade is actually a garish combo of red, orange and yellow, but I thought I’d save you from getting a headache, and just serve it up in gritty city shades of grey. Every time I have to go into the deeps of Los Angeles I come home so very grateful that I don’t live there.
The Exposition Park Rose Garden is a historic 7-acre site containing more than 20,000 rose bushes and more than 200 varieties. My favourite parts of it are the corners, where no roses are growing. This is the south-west corner, tucked between the Natural History Museum and the space shuttle’s external fuel tank.
Mariposa — or “butterfly” in Spanish — is a fitting name for these ethereal flowers that thrive in harsh environments despite their delicate appearance. The mariposa lily is capable of surviving in hot, dry conditions, often on rocky outcrops where other plants cannot grow. These ones are clinging to the very edge of an erosion channel — it’s easy to surmise that many more washed away in the December rain when this section of the cliff collapsed.
I was attracted to the colourful vessels on the shelves, and found myself a seat facing them, at the end of a long table. It’s only now that I’ve scanned and cropped the image that I see how skewiff (one of my Mum’s favourite words) those shelves are! It’s quite comical, really. That upper shelf is ready to take off into orbit!
The fernery is a never ending source of visual delight and sketching inspiration. The very first time I came to the house (nearly ten years ago) I had a vision for what this space could be 🌿🪴
Apparently Callistemons are now Melaleucas. I’ll just keep calling them Bottlebrushes.
Astrida and I went to the Fowler Museum to see a wonderful exhibit of Indigenous Australian textiles from the Northern Territory. Inspired by the graphic images, I played in my sketchbook when I got home.
If you’re in Los Angeles, it’s worth a visit. The exhibition runs through July 10, 2022.
In Liz Steel’s Sketchbook Design class, she shows how, even if you don’t particularly like your first sketch, you can rescue the spread by adding another one, and/or other design elements. I’m not going to win any awards with this spread, but it’s somewhat improved from where it was an hour earlier.
I sketched this coyote a few weeks ago from a different angle. There are eight mosaic sculptures in Malibu’s Legacy Park by the artist Robin Indar. Maybe I’ll eventually get around to sketching them all.
The bush sunflowers are busting out all over our sea-cliffs, making “very effective masses of color, in fine contrast to the blue of the sea below and the sky above”, as Margaret Armstrong rightly observed over a hundred years ago. The bees are happy, and later when the seeds have set, the birds will be too.
hashiworks 