This is at least a month's worth of pages -- in and out of sketchbooks, drawn at home and on the road, for myself and for other people. They document a frantic attempt to pin down ideas, before they're forgotten, discarded, discredited, or they simply float away. It's a search and a seeking, an attempt to build, make and bring to reality.
And it's a reminder: Don't forget to rock 'n' roll.
Just a quick little note to say I'm giving away four of my 'Freewheelin'' iron-on patches over on my instagram (@raychponygold)... But you'd better head over there quick, because I'm drawing winners tonight (Australian eastern standard time).
Joe Cocker and John Steinbeck, Jenny Lewis and Charles Manson biographies. Ciders and sketchbooks on a picnic rug in the dappled shade. Coffee at 5am watching the sun rise, walking with bare feet across the dewy lawn to get a better photograph. Watching the neighbour brush her graceful black horses in the soft light of a crisp evening. Tiny nieces and nephews. Mandarin and lime-scents, fresh off the tree. Pandanus palms and pale pink barnacles, collected among the rocks on a lagoon-like beach. Pitch-dark nights and soft beds, and more than anything, peace.
The real upside of Victoria having kinda petulantly unpleasant weather throughout nine months of the year is that sometimes you get a weekend of perfect sunshine blue, and no one has planned for it.
That means when you show up at a well-situated dog-friendly camping ground somewhere along the Great Ocean Road, there's no one else there except for a German couple in a campervan who probably would have been there even if it was snowing.
Another upside of the Great Ocean Road is that the Twelve Apostles is an incredibly famous Australian landmark, and just a far enough trek out of Melbourne to make it the end point of the journey for most people, before they need to turn around and head back because everyone is now tired, hungry and over it. But on the other side of the Apostles, the Peterborough side, there's still so many more beautiful coastal landmarks to visit, from Loch Ard Gorge to the Bay of Martyrs, which are a bit less crowded.
All along that coastline, the intensity of the orange earth against turquoise water was incredible. Maybe everything just seemed more vibrant because it was our first bright, outdoorsy day after a long stint of dreary, drizzly, overcast days. Whatever the cause, I was completely taken with winding walks through coastal scrub, looking down into canyons of ochre-hued cliff-faces filled with restless, rich blue, wandering along deserted beaches strewn with cuttlebones, and finally sprawling out on springy green grass to have an afternoon rest with the Beany dog while Scotty hunted around for fishing spots.
It's pretty idyllic stuff.
Vintage boots, hat and scarf; Volcom Gypsom romper; Three Arrows Leather stash pouch; Penguin Books 'Book of Longing' by Leonard Cohen; Pony Gold 'Myola' shell bolo tie; YSL Black Opium perfume; Sailor Jerry spiced rum.
It's the late-night conversations around fires, over-roasted marshmallows, strong whiskey drinks warming the belly, meandering conversations about travel ambitions to shake off the thought of an impending winter. The empty park at 6am, the rising sun on crisp dewy grass, Humble bouncing in circles, full of bottomless happiness and optimism. It's booking flights, reading books, cooking warm food and drawing cold air into a runner's warm lungs. It's planning the next big leap or tiny step, trying to work out what idea you want to chase most: erasing, redrawing, failing succeeding. It's the ciders and pizza and heaters and records and games and memories. The new boots and old jackets. The warmest socks and the shortest days.
I'm so excited to share my newest creation – so excited, in fact, that I haven't even worn it out the house myself yet, just got straight to the photo snapping!
For a while, I've been playing around with the idea of how to share my painted denim jackets with other people... or at least, something along those lines. A jacket with something bold and weird and pretty spangled across the back. And while the painting allows for big, detailed pieces, it's hugely labour intensive and I'm never really sure the paint isn't going to fade or crack or run... after all, I created them as art pieces.
So, a fabric equivalent. The Freewheelin' patch is my first attempt at capturing some of that painted/customised denim vibe... And hopefully I can come up with a few other interpretations.
Limited run of 100 patches, available in my online store here.
So, it's been a long time since I've provided a comprehensive run-down on all the things that receive my love and appreciation. And it's important to show appreciation, right?
So, firstly, massive 90s-nostalgic, lazy X-files series binges are my hands-down favourite thing right now. But there's also smoothies (did I mention I work for a frozen fruit company?), Thao and the Get Down Stay Down always on the radio, lemon-and-hot-water before sunrise, this golden wonder-piece from Lenni, killer earrings, killer rings, opals, sadness over boots that I cannot afford, a warm Humble dog on a cold morning, gum blossoms starting to peek out, sunshine appreciation in the lead-up to winter, my tiny niece's lounge room ballets, ambitious and audacious plans, talking to old friends about going home and growing old, Link Wray, amazing American road trip stories, heavy sleep and weird dreams, fruit wine by the campfire, and solitude but not loneliness.
I'm sure there's more, but I'll save them for next time.
Crochet dress by Spell and the Gypsy Collective, rug and swimmers by Volcom, rings from Rejoice the Hands, Southset, Lo & Chlo, and Millie Savage.
Some days in the sketchbook are more optimistic than others (see: damn good). But to be honest, lately I've been feeling pretty discouraged about the whole drawing/design/being an illustrator thing. A little directionless, unmotivated, perturbed, unimpressed.
Which, anyway, is usually the way I feel before I spur off down a hyper-motivated manic-driven tangent of ideas.
Hopefully that's what's coming.
Two packed cars are weaving up through the dusty-hot mid-morning high-summer mountain air. Cars filled with city-suburb people with interesting hats or scarves or haircuts and quirky sunglasses and patterned socks and decorative boots. Carrying Eskys and wine bottles and phones and snacks and cigarettes.
And eventually, the cars just stop on the side of the road. All the people and their dogs head down some stairs off the roadside and climb down the bank off the stairs and gather on a plateau of rocks. Water flows down from somewhere – over the rocks, over the plateau, over the toes of the dogs and the people, off a cliff, down a kind-of canyon in the mountain's side – to somewhere.
It's a very simple thing. We're here to swim in the icy water. To sit on the edge of the mountain. To lie in the sun and drink wine and mutter soft conversations. To be quiet, alone, outside, and bordered by something other than collapsing fences on three sides and the back of a house on the other.
Just a quick little time-lapse drawing of my sketchy ink/watercolour/highlight processes.
So excited to see my drawings scattered throughout the pages of the Collective Hub magazine issue 30!
Read more here.
Vintage dress, rings vintage and Cobracult, vintage turquoise necklace, the 2 Bandits Wrangler neck cuff,
This is the place.
You know how I said I stood under a stand of gum trees while two baby hawks fought over prey right over my head? These are the trees.
This is my front yard, growing up, where we saw a big carpet python, where we rode steady horses through long grass, where I collected gum leaves and insects, where we let off a bag of fireworks we found in the shed, where we hauled logs and tidied up when my sister got married.
I started the year sitting on my parents' verandah: listening to the summer rainstorms, working on drawings, occasionally playing Shovels&Rope out of my laptop. But mostly I just observed the daily schedules of the local birdsongs, grabbing my camera, racing across the lawn and jumping the fence whenever I heard the baby hawks in the trees. (I never got a good shot of them... but my mum and her friends did).
So here it is: where I grew up, wearing my father's hat, blossoms from the swamp gum my mother nutured, wearing a dress, bandana and necklace from the markets and op-shops I haunted for all my teenage years. But also rings from one of my long-time favourite silversmiths across the Pacific Ocean – Cobracult.
Truly some of my favourite things.
I've finally updated my online shop with prints, which you can check out here.
I also bought a new urn plant, which, as you can see from the photos, I'm pretty happy about. The only thing to worry about now is how to keep it alive through the imminent Melbourne winter...
We got lost on the way out there, as usual. Got in a fight about how I can’t navigate with maps, and he doesn’t look for signs.
But we got there in the end, anyway. I knew we were on the right track when I saw the cutting horse stud – and I was jealous of the cowboy riding a chestnut horse alongside the road. We knew we were in the right place, for sure, when we got to the emus. We stopped the car in the middle of the dirt track and met them at the fence, where they stood twining their necks together, sliding their dinosaur feet in the dust, blinking their pale lids across overlarge, skittish eyes.
The river itself is a mix – someone’s always blasting eighties hair metal from one of the first campsites, and sometimes there’s ruckus at night. Sometimes there are lots of kids. Boats. Four-wheel drives. Dogs. People bringing their horses down to the sandy riverbank beach, to swim in the 40-degree heat.
But the campsite we chose was isolated and quiet, and apart from the ski boats roaring along the river, it mostly felt like we were alone. I watched the sulfur-crested cockatoos cross the river each morning, and collected their yellow-tinged white feathers along the banks. I watched the sun rise golden and set dusky pink. I got scared at night by koala sounds and wandering animals and our restless dog.
And I mostly liked the quiet, with the high stars behind the gum branches, the river still blindly flowing. I mostly liked having a little bit of time to tap into the real world.
Procrastination breeds weird creations. But I kinda dig it, in a raided-the-primary-school-crafts-cupboard way.
Volcom dress, Wandering Coyote boots, Vanessa Mooney necklace, all else vintage.
I'm trying to keep an eye out for that unseen everyday wonder. Trying to stay sharp to the notion of encountering something new, special, unexpected. To the idea that tiny natural miracles are taking place all the time: quietly, amazingly, and totally unperturbed by the lack of audience, in a kinda tree-falling-in-the-woods manner. But it's hard to keep a hold of these thoughts in the suburbs, in a place dominated by humans and all the things we make and consume, and are so deeply familiar with. While impressive in their own right, the things we make, control, consume have a distinct lack of mystery or wonder – because they're ours.
But I was overwhelmed by this kind of local magic when I visited the farm over summer. All the time, everywhere you look – if you look, quietly, long enough – there's something strange and beautiful to encounter. Baby hawks fought for prey right over my head. I stumbled over a clutch of unearthed water dragon eggs in the paddock bordered by the creek. Streaks of light skated across wide, silent, star-crowded skies. Flowers bloomed and died within hours. What was there one day, was never the same the next.
And all the time, all these things are working hard at whatever it is they're compelled to do. Quietly, wonderfully.
Here's to feeling good all the time.
I've written about Myola before, but on our most recent stay we saw another face of this perfectly sleepy beachside town... long, lazy, rainy afternoons full of naps and holiday reading, one stunningly bright day of stand-up paddle-boarding and kayaking along the river to the sea, chasing hordes of soldier crabs across the estuary flats, long hikes across headlands and rocks to find fishing spots, impromptu pub dinners across the river at Huskisson, crystal waters at Green Patch, geography lessons about exactly what state you're in around Jervis Bay (part of it's ACT, as it turns out...), tame wallabies, killer mosquitos, dead stingrays, early morning beach treks in light rain chasing black cockatoos, and watching through the kitchen window as huge roos hop down the middle of the empty street.
Just writing about it now has me ready to pack the car, shirk responsibility, and speed off up the Hume to a better horizon...
Anti-bad Vibes Shield towel by Volcom, glasses by Sportsgirl, tassel tank from Zara, jewellery by Rejoice the Hands and The 2 Bandits.
Wandering Coyote boots, Lo & Chlo shell boot ornament, Vanessa Mooney necklace, Spellbox ceramic hand necklace, De Bortoli La Bohème Pinot Noir Rosé, vintage dress and hat, Kikki K copper fairy lights, Spell & the Gypsy Collective rings, Rejoice the Hands turquoise ring, Coyote Negro La Ocular ring, vintage earrings, Three Arrows Leather pouch.
There’s nothing like late summer sparkles… Those kinda never-ending evenings and too-hot-for-anything days, the bright mornings and fierce middays, the distant glitters of campfire embers meeting Milky Way scatters, and salt water bursting into a million tiny cool starbursts.
Also, to come to grips with the end of another successful, lazy, indulgent, vagabond summer, I'm starting a new series of prints for my online store... And to help make room, I've set up a discount code (PRINTSALE) for 25% off.
It's now my favourite time of year... the December slide into debauchery, abandon, and eventual newness. I've been working on a few special and illustration projects and ideas lately -- ideas I'd been meaning to get to for a long time, and opportunities I'd been hoping for as well -- so I'm pretty happy with my recent pages.
I'm also very happy that my next update will probably come from the farm where I grew up, surrounded by open space, family, love, good times, and lots of beers!