Posted on by Emma

Photography and Words

Hello fellow human beings. I have my October resolution and I am not going to say I am trying, because otherwise I will procrastinate, knowing that I have left you with uncertainty. My little pact I have made with myself is that I will do at least one post every week, and I know that sounds sub optimal, and downright lazy. but it would be better then me lying to you and saying I’ll be doing a post daily.

I have recently found my love for photography, as well as my love for art, for walking, for ice cream, and for many other exciting things I have discovered over the past year. Uncoincidentally, I just received a new phone, and so I am able to take way better photos than my old alternative, and the editing tools are much more advanced, and I am much happier with the results.

I know that my editing skills aren’t out of this world, but what I do know is that they are to my personal style and that everyone’s style is different, and so if you have any suggestions, feel free to leave them in the comments, but any nasty trolls will be banned – remember if you don’t have something noice to say, don’t say anything! *Me groaning at how cheesy I sound repeating that old broken record*

Anyway, below I have written a short but hopefully sweet poem about a picture I took while walking at the beach. I quite enjoyed writing about an image, and so you will be seeing a lot more of image based poetry in the future.

Until next time, I bid you farewell…

The painted sky like a bird
Sheltering the world beneath its wings
Witnessing all the beauty and pain life has to offer
Keeping us safe from greater things

Soft is the sand on a warm, tepid day
Rough and scratchy it seems in the desert
Sinking between little toes, sticking to wet legs
It follows you home, unsure whether you resent it

The glistening water, opaque when deep
The horizon blurring the border between earth and heaven
Underappreciated when temperamental, foggy with its vision of perfection
A fairy tale day is still and tranquil, but storms don't beckon
Posted on by Emma · 2 Comments

Corona Virus

Hello fellow human beings. Today is another day many people face the world through a screen, through an online world, due to being in lockdown. Although this is a sad time for those who have lost loved ones in hospital beds, and for those who are anxiously waiting for results, we still need to remain positive.

Even though during this time there is still political dilemmas, money corruption, and god knows what else, life will return to normal eventually, even if it takes a while. During lockdown and quarantine, and anything that might be stopping you from doing what you love in the future, I urge you to keep persisting with whatever that might be.

Last night I had an online dance class, and we talked for over an hour about all sorts of things, but one statement stuck with me – it was that, everyone is saying what we can’t do, but very rarely are they encouraging us to do what we can do.

You can’t have more than five people in the same house at the same time, you can’t cross state borders, you will be fined for breaking the rules of this period.

It is all good and well giving instructions on what everyone can’t do, because then we know our restrictions, but part of the reason some people break those rules is because they haven’t thought about what they can do, aside from going out to exercise, shopping for necessities.

Generally, if you don’t say it, people don’t think it, and then the only source of entertainment is sitting on the couch drinking beer and watching the footy, or having the excruciating urge to go and see your grandma in Sydney, while you’re in the Northern Territory.

Especially for me as a dancer, I hear constantly from local studios that are also in lockdown whining about how students, seniors even, can’t focus for more than an hour on a zoom call, and then my class is there busting our chops for three hours straight with our teacher in front of us on a tiny screen doing it with us.

It doesn’t matter what situation you are in, there is always another choice, and another alternative. For example, in a dancing context again, one of the girls in my class has to dance in her garage, and she said; “well I obviously can’t jump, so I’ll work on my turns instead!” We all have a different situation to handle, but there are pro’s and con’s to everything.

I am reminded of the saying, “we are all in the same boat”… Well, we are not. Some people live in tiny rental properties, some live in three storey mansions. Some people live in a trash heap, and some live on a private island. The truth is, everyone isn’t in the same boat, but we are all in the same storm. We all have the same global crisis to deal with, but we don’t all have the perfect tools to be perfectly accustomed to it.

We are not all in the same boat, but we are all in the same storm…

But that doesn’t matter. Not when you love something more than life. If you are an artist, who has gone out of business because no-one can come to your gallery, set up a kick-ass website and show your stuff on there. If you are a hairdresser who’s cramped up in a two room apartment with your daughter, be smart with spending your money, and practise doing hairdresser things on your daughter.

If you are a dancer who lives for the praise of others, the applause of an audience and the hard sweat and tears you share with your teammates when in a class, get ’em on a facetime call and shed your sweat and tears with them so you can complain about being sore the next day and know that they are feeling the exact same way! Or if you don’t have enough space, and your room is the size of a toilet, fling your leg up on the wall (but don’t scratch it) and stretch like nobodies business!

Anyway, I guess what I’m trying to say is that, we all have problems, but it is the way we adapt and deal with them that sorts the men out from the boys. So remember to stay positive during these uncertain times, work hard, sweat hard, paint hard, whatever, just stay passionate and know that even if it takes a while, life will return to normal – eventually.

Posted on by Emma

A New Passion

As we all know, throughout lockdown, we have developed our relationships with those we were stuck with (JK) and ourselves, seeing new passions and aspects of ones personality that help us fill out the days without dying of boredom. For me personally, I found that during my many long hours of free time, I was able to kill the clock with my artistic passion.

Even though I am not the best at art, and if I decided to take it on as a career, I would probably die on the streets with not a penny to my name, I still find it exceedingly relaxing, and so today I want to share with you a few sketches and mosaics that I have worked on throughout quarantine.

As you can see, this is already in a post format since I am a part of a drawing art group on Facebook, and so I tried my hardest to make it impressive. Even though the nostrils look like they are flared in anger, and even though the eyes are WAY out of proportion (well, in the picture on the left at least) I am still proud of these two drawings, and they were lots of fun (and sometimes frustration) to complete.

So as you can see, I drew many eyes there, and you can probably infer that I was trying to perfect them before I began any big portraits. I was actually amazed at my ability, but then I had to go and ruin my big, proud moment by searching up videos of people drawing stuff twice as good as me, and of course there are people half my age absolutely smashing it. But even though they are not perfect, they were pretty perfect to me considering the way I used to draw eyes… I won’t show them since it will scar you for life!

Okay, so please, pretty please, don’t judge my mosaic cat, who is named “Sister Penelope”. I only had to make this because it was for a school project, but in the end it was pretty fun. You’re probably wondering to yourself, what in the world was this school project, and you would not be crazy in thinking that, since it legit just looks like some five year old went to town with some beads and some glue.

Well, let me explain. The school project was on Ancient Rome, and it was for humanities, and the objective of the game was to create a pitch giving some insight on Ancient Rome and Pompeii in general and identify a key primary source that fell into one of the following categories:

  • War
  • Conquest
  • Mythology
  • Religion
  • Art
  • Food
  • Agriculture
  • A few others that I have no doubt forgotten!

My group chose art, since that spoke to us collectively the most. As a part of the pitch, we were required to create a persuasive argument explaining why a specific piece of art should be displayed in Pompeii and how can it encourage further questioning of any tourists or visitors in Pompeii so that we as a global community have a deeper understanding of what life was like in Ancient Rome.

Choosing art, my group had a lot of choices as to which piece we would re create, and so we decided on a mosaic that most people generally haven’t heard of which was called “The Roman Cat”, and it was a part of a larger mosaic that depicted birds drinking from a bird bath.

As you can see from the recreation further up, we weren’t 100% accurate, but I felt we did the best we could with what we had, and if we had to do it again, I wouldn’t have changed it, except I might have bought more white and orange beads, seeing as we ran out of them, and they were kind of vital for completion, but you know – we made do!

Thank you for reading this blog post, and please leave a comment if you would like to see more of my artwork in future posts. It seems that I am finally back on track with actually posting regularly, so let’s hope that we keep that momentum up! Just a reminder that I am trying my best to put out quality posts filled with inspiring and fun content, so please don’t leave any hateful or negative comments, although feedback is welcome.

Thanks for reading! 😎