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Second Valley causeway, looking towards Normanville.

A little while ago, it occurred to me that maybe I should give watercolour a crack. The theory was that I’d be able to work fast enough to bang out a painting during toddler naps. In reality, I’ve still only finished a handful of works over the last six months, and as a consequence my skill development has been glacial. That said, it’s still a pleasure to sit down with the brushes and attempt to wrangle the Czech-made watercolour set into South Australia’s less exuberant colour palette.

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This is based on a photograph our friend Jess took of an attempt to walk to Second Valley from the block. I was taken with the mood of Jess’s photo, with the dark figures of the hikers against the sepia of the landscape and a brooding sky. Didn’t quite capture that. Ah well. Pretty pleased with my ‘wet-on-wet’ sky though!

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This ‘block diagram’ of the property was inspired by the work of nature educator John Muir Laws (http://www.johnmuirlaws.com/). It’s a great process to visualise the observed contours of a place and to populate it with other natural phenomena. Maybe this will become an annual tradition and another way of celebrating change on the property.