
polychromous pencils and water-soluble ink
Clouds were on the list of suggested sketches we might do for the month of April. Great, I thought. Clouds just happen to be a favourite of mine to sketch, so I didn’t hesitate to start. I had captured a cloud scene on camera during the week, and when I viewed the image again, I knew that this sketch would be different. I had been sketching with pen and watercolour wash for most of the month, but I was pulled into a memory of a series of cloud drawings I had done many years before using only coloured pencil and graphite. I opened my boxes of polychromas pencils and selected the colours. I was in my happy place. Continue reading



I know many authors who have tried publishing their writing through various online sources, and have found the experience, difficult, tedious and frustratingly slow. It needn’t be that way.





If you have been following my blogs you will know that reading and writing take up a fair chunk of my life. My passion for the written word started early, as I was read to as a pre-schooler, and once I could read, I couldn’t stop. I became a keen visitor to the Upper Hutt public library taking home many books at a time. As a teen I was fortunate to read some excellent writers of short fiction. Two that resonate with me today are Janet Frame, one of our (New Zealand’s) most respected authors, and Britain’s Doris Lessing. I have read so many other authors since I have lost count. It is not these lauded authors I wish to speak about however, but what makes a story stand out for me, and why I can remember it, months or even years later.