Blue Mountains artist Gus Carozza has recently built a new art studio, and is going to have the occasional portrait session there,  today was a try out. There were five of us and a sitter and  we did two ten minute poses, a 40 minute and a 20 minute one, this was the first little bit of live practice since November.

a gift of some of the Chinese Tea bags and Lan Cang Ancient Tea

Yesterday at 44C in Richmond was a bit on the hot side! Alan had suggested that I drop round to Price House as 'Summer Peace' (English translation) a Chinese friend  who had sat for us at one of our 'painting practices'  was coming over, and with some photographers as well...  we weren't sure what for!

'Summer Peace' is from China, and she imports some special teas from a certain region of China, where tea cultivation, preparation and drinking is an artform with similarities to our western love and appreciation of wines! It turns out that her husband (who is from England) had recently participated in a tea making competition in China... against some highly prepared commercial contestants, and against all odds had won!

So there was a small photographic crew from a Chinese TV network following Him around doing a documentary of him and his teamaking in Australia. He prepared a special tea for the four of us, with tea I think from some of the ancient  (over 800 and up to 1800 year old) tea plants, which had been stored in a dried mandarin, which we drank from some of Alan's antique cups and the whole event/ceremony and chat was recorded by the film crew.

The film team was sweltering in the heat (it is winter over there) but fortunately the Historic old house feels like it has air conditioning... even though it doesn't.

I don't know if any photos will turn up from this unexpected event, but I do have a photo from the charcoal drawing I did of Sonny when she was sitting for us

 

Its a quiet time of year, and I spent some time in the Piggery Studio looking at the  huge pile of  drawings  that remain from  the last 15 years or so of life drawing... I do cull them periodically but decided the time has come for a more ruthless approach to it!
I was going to recycle and undercoat/gesso most of the A2 size drawings, but realized  that some of them took on a new lease of life if I just cropped them, and  so have trimmed and cropped about 120 or so and put  them into A3 Folders.