👋 Hello friends!
Happy birthday, little newsletter! On this day, 12 months ago, I sent my first newsletter, and only a few people read it because I forgot to make it public. Way to start strong, Michelle! If you missed it, you can take a walk down memory lane here. Now, here we are at the tenth installment. Thank you for welcoming me into your inboxes each time I hit the send button; it’s not a privilege I take lightly.
I have lots to share with you this month, so let’s jump in, starting with the first part of my illustrated essay about urban sketching in my neighbourhood. Don’t forget to keep scrolling for links to blog posts I’ve published this month — including my word for this year — and some curated goodies that might tickle your fancy.
🏫 Urban Sketching project : Duffy precinct update – part 1
The project was conceived as the COVID lockdown adventure was winding down in mid-June 2022. I was itching to get out of the house to sketch but wasn’t keen on being around too many people, and I hadn’t yet started meeting with my local Urban Sketching group again.
As many ideas do, this one arrived as an ambitious thought whilst driving home from some mundane errand that I would like to draw each of the local suburban shops and track changes as they are upgraded since our local government seemed to have a program of works underway to do these little facelifts around the place. There were signs up announcing the imminent work all over the place. As it happened, the local shops in my suburb were slated for upgrades that year. I needed to try to get out of the house and do stuff, and this was as good a project as any to get me moving and sketching on location again. It was close to home, accessible, and usually a very quiet place. Perfect!
The weather in the second half of 2022 and most of 2023 was very wet, so progress was slow for the landscapers. I would drive by every couple of weeks to see what was happening and if it was worth scheduling a sketching session or if I could capture something new from within the confines of my car. Sometimes, it was months between updates. Ultimately, it took them about 12 months to complete, and I took just shy of 18 months to finish capturing it.
Dear reader...I should note that now I have finished this project, I will likely NOT be doing the same for other local shop upgrades. This took far longer than I thought it might!
Why track changes in suburbia?
Change in our urban environments is constant, and it’s good to see tax dollars at work to improve the community. Sometimes, these changes are rapid, and sometimes, they creep up on us slowly, and having a way to track the transformation really appealed to me. This suburb has seen a lot of changes over the past 20 years or so since bushfires destroyed many homes, so the slow gentrification and overall update have been going on for some time. Modern design new homes nestled between homes that have been there since the seventies. Now was the time for the village centre, as it is known, to be zhoozhed up.
I had been accustomed to sketching fancy buildings and monuments in my urban sketching adventures to date. Working on something closer to home and far more mundane is also equally valid and offered an opportunity to look at my neighbourhood a little closer and to develop my skills. Or, to be more accurate, to dust the rust off my skills that had been confined to virtual sketchwalks from photos and videos throughout the pandemic.
I was lucky enough that the work had not yet begun when I started this project, so I started by sketching the original state of the shops and playground. I had initially thought that the shops would get a facelift too, and I was super excited because they are quite run down. My excitement was short-lived when I tracked down the government project plan page for the upgrades and found that only the landscaping and playground were to get the love and attention. Rumour has it that the shops are owned by an investor who doesn’t live in Canberra and isn’t interested in brightening things up. Bummer.
All told, I finished 23 sketches, and I am pretty pleased with the result. I hope you enjoy them too!
Without further ado, I present the sketches before the work commenced.
In the beginning, there was a little set of shops ...
The sign reads “Duffy Village Shops”, but it’s not so much a village as a suburb these days. I am unsure if it may have been a village when the area was first established, or perhaps they were trying to foster a bit more of a community feel for the place?
The old signage sat at the corner of the main road with the shops in the distance down the little hill. The parkland surrounding was full of weeds, and one dared not wander over it barefoot for fear of the thorns and other nasties. Not attractive at all. I didn’t draw this signage until after doing several other ”before” sketches. I was filling in time while I waited for the groundwork to begin.
Jim, the proprietor of this little supermarket, would have loved to be able to update his shop! The paint on the posts is all chipped and weathered, and the pavement is cracked and worn. Still, he keeps a great range of things and has saved my butt more than once when I forgot to order something we needed for a recipe.
I had high hopes that this old restaurant would be given some love. I have lived in the suburb for about ten years and saw it open once in the first couple of months I was there. It has been closed ever since. We really could use a restaurant in the area!
The extent of the landscaping amounted to a bunch of oversized boulders strategically placed in the centre area to prevent people from parking up there under the trees. No gardens, just gravel. It looked dry and tired. I am pleased to say the trees have been preserved, though.
I suspect the playground had been updated in the nineties by the look of the gear. Typical Australian playgrounds before then were made from treated pine logs, later found to be treated with arsenic. It's not exactly ideal for playground material. Two swings, a seesaw and a climbing frame with a slide were hardly inviting, particularly since it was surrounded by a sea of pine bark that turned rather swampy when it rained. Suffice it to say the playground was not well used.
Though unsightly, the back of the shops wasn’t particularly messy, and there wasn’t a lot there to sketch. A couple of bins, and that’s about it. A lick of paint out there would have done a world of good! (That’s Jim’s car!)
Things were still quiet at this point in the process; not too many people were out and about, and I rarely saw families at the playground. The occasional person would stop and ask me what I was up to, but most smiled and kept walking. It wasn’t until the construction phase, and I had been sighted sitting out sketching several times, that regulars started to stop for a chat, but you’ll have to wait until the next instalment for that added bit of fun!
Next month, I’ll be sharing the sketches from the construction phase, so please consider subscribing – it's free – so you get the latest updates straight to your inbox. Moreover, you get to see them before I publish this little adventure on my art blog!
✒ Things I hit publish on this month
👩🏻🎨 On my art blog - Urban Sketching at Eddison Park
🐌 Wrapping up my year of slowness - 6 things I learned about going slower
🦉 My word for 2024 - Tackling the second half of life — Sageing is my word for 2024
🎨 My favourite creation this month
👀 Curated curiosities
🧀 I have found my new calling in life! I wonder if cheese is more reliable than tea leaves? Hmmm - The Un-Brie-Lievable History of Tyromancy
🧠 Ah, bliss! Stephen Fry has joined the Substack! I haven’t chosen to be a paid subscriber yet, but I suspect I will shortly ... access to this man’s thoughts and incredible writing in my inbox? Yes, please and thank you!
🐸 HA! Clever bin chickens! Australia: How 'bin chickens' learnt to wash poisonous cane toads - BBC News
🐚 Stunning pieces of glass art - Kelly O'Dell Brings Extinct Creatures Back to Life through Vibrant Colored Glass — Colossal (thisiscolossal.com)
🦀 From the beautiful to the very, very silly — wildlife photo competitions always make me smile - 2023 Ocean Art Contest Winners - Underwater Photography Guide (uwphotographyguide.com)
🤪 Well worth the time to watch this one - Why Having Fun Is the Secret to a Healthier Life | Catherine Price | TED (youtube.com)
🧐 What if...we had a chat?
What do you think about our towns and cities changing around us? Do you think about it at all?