Experiment: Shellac + Egg Carton

How to Draw a Bum!

Jonah(10) and Hugo(7) regularly inform me I need a drawing tutorial from the masters. This week Hugo sternly instructed me that I needed to draw bums because that's what Jonah was drawing. And, as Hugo is also the house DJ, this would need to be done while listening to Sir Mix-A-Lot! (hence the dancing bums!)

The Book Thief!

My Dad sent me this funny photo today and I was so busy laughing my head off, it took me a while to recognise the book thief/mad shopper as our dear friend and fabulous artist KK (aka Kaye Green). When I was studying, my sister and I used to help out in her print studio and what's more, I have her to thank for introducing me to the quirky teller of Uncle Bob Tales, Chris Robinson.

Pacific Book Review Star!

Tales of My Uncle Bob

Title: Tales of My Uncle Bob
Author: Chris Robinson
Illustrations by: Claire Wildish
Publisher: Xlibris
ISBN: 978-1-5245-2039-7
Pages: 108
Genre: Children’s Book
Reviewed by: Beth Adams

Pacific Book Review Star
Awarded to Books of Excellent Merit

In this enjoyable children’s storybook, Tales of My Uncle Bob, author Chris Robinson takes to the lighthearted vernacular of the world “Down Under.” With the dusty and barren deserts, scorpions and snakes, Uncle Bob is the personification of a loner – a cowboy of the outback. Even the way he came into this world had a uniqueness – found in a hollow tree as a baby with his feet sticking out. He was brought to the local post office and dropped on the doorstep. An abandoned little boy, reluctantly adopted by his “Mum” and not having a name until he needed one – for a birth certificate. Fred and Mike would be just fine, but since the fee for the filing of a birth certificate was 2 Bob – hence Bob became his name. Uncle Bob was a man as course as the old fashioned cowboy image, living as a role model for a lifestyle measured by the calendar, not by the clock. Perfectly content to be left with a jar a Vegemite and a jug of water, Uncle Bob made his way among the horses and goats of the Australian outback, finding pleasure in the nothingness and needing little. Tough as nails, he taught himself how to write his name, and learned from the land the lessons of the world.

Tales of My Uncle Bob is filled with stories which are fanciful while being quite innocent. There is one about Bob, as a kid, noticing that ants would dig holes and dump the different colors of sand each in its own pile. Unknowingly Uncle Bob found the pile of yellow sand to be heavy and had a luster to it, so he put it in an empty Vegemite jar and kept it in his room. He managed to collect three jars of this sand when one day his Mum discovered it and noticed it was gold. After proving to his Mum he found the gold and didn’t take it, his Mum stayed up all night on the porch with a shotgun in her lap so nobody would steal it, and the next morning they took it into town for money.

Uncle Bob was a great horseman. Once he went to prove his skills by having his horse jump over a fence – as a bet. Little did he know on the other side of the fence was a rocky ravine which would kill anyone landing on it. Off Uncle Bob went into the air on his horse, but at the top he realized he made an error in judgment! Saying something into the ear of his horse, the two miraculously turned in mid-air, landing safely back on the side in which they started. What a close call!

Then my favorite was when Uncle Bob entered a goat race – the winner was to get $5,000. Well obviously Uncle Bob won, but in the excitement the goat ate the award money. Goats eat anything, you know. With the location, phrases and humor of the Aussie outback, Uncle Bob rivals Crocodile Dundee for the best of Australian export. Combining the master word crafting of Chris Robinson, complimented by whimsical illustrations by Claire Wildish, Uncle Bob takes children’s imagination far away, chapter-by-chapter, into the adventures of the outback. Each story can be read by youngsters and the Tales of My Uncle Bob will embellish the imagination of generations of children as this book is a keepsake to any family library. Because when all things are good in Australia, the expression is, “Bob’s your Uncle.” It’s nice to have an Uncle Bob.

Uncle Bob - Reviewed!!

Tales of My Uncle Bob
by Chris Robinson (writer), Claire Wildish (illustrator)
Xlibris

reviewed by Toby Berry

"The water at this place was deep enough to swallow a house, if that was a sort of thing you were likely to want to do."

This book will have readers smiling from page to page and front to back. Robinson is funny and drops quirky sentences and stories like little surprises between more serious verse. Each chapter relates a tale that may or may not be entirely true as recalled by the narrator whose Uncle Bob was "not so much born as discovered." He was reportedly found in a boab tree and then bundled up and left at the post office. He was then discovered and taken in by Miss Mary O'Toole. Hmmm, coincidence, or is this allegorical?

Uncle Bob's stories involve his life wandering the Australian desert droving cattle, at least mostly. In one story, Uncle Bob is swallowed by a snake. He escapes back out the mouth by climbing the rungs of the ribs of the shocked reptile. So, of course, readers are thinking Jonah and the whale. Then suddenly, "...he realized that as he had made his way out, he had turned the whole snake inside out, and the poor, enormous reptile...his insides on the outside, completely the wrong way round!" Did Uncle Bob destroy evil, or was it just a silly story and a snake?

The book is an easy read, and the sometimes quirky angles bring The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster to mind. The illustrator for Robinson’s tales, Claire Wildish, draws whimsical and fun artwork for the book, which is also reminiscent of the black and white simple sketches in Juster’s work. The author is brilliant at his craft, and his book is the kind that you pick up repeatedly when you need a lighthearted read. A good way to end any day, whether bad, good, or frightful, Robinson’s book should sit on the bedside stand, tattered and well worn.

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Buy "Tales of my Uncle Bob here"!

Fullers Bookshop, Hobart

Cockroach printing with Robyn Buttered Toast

Last year I considered studying again but nothing about it really excited me.  Somehow, I have accidentally, magically ended up getting printing master classes from my very good friend Robyn Finlay. She likes tea and rust and dirt, so she never thinks it's weird when I ask her to help me print cockroaches! 

(N.B My gorgeous children call her "Buttered Toast" because...she LOVES buttered toast!)