A pint of shiraz, my good man!

The last few days have been exciting and entertaining action interspersed with mind-numbing boredom, perhaps enhanced by comparison. Wednesday was ANZAC day, (A public holiday to commemorate the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps, for non-aussies) so me and a couple of friends decided to head down the coast to Surfers Paradise to squeeze the sunlight out of the last few beach-worthy days of autumn. It was the kind of typical Aussie day out I havent had in a while, working on downgrading my skin from white to beige while perving on the kind of shirt-less guys who look seedy and unwashed when they wander around the city but out by the beach are veritable eye-candy.
The next two days involved a lot of sitting around at work, where I acted out the popular cliche that games developers play games all day. For the record, it's not as much fun as you think, especially when the game you're playing is broken and unstable. The company took the opportunity to show around a group of schoolkids who want to get into games, thereby perminantly giving them the wrong idea about what it is we actually do.
A good friend of mine is leaving the country for the US of A and Friday was his big send-off. By a random coincidence our favourite band that we went to dance like nutters to were playing their last gig that night. Clearly they thought it wouldn't be worth going on without their best groupie to cheer them on. The next night was a lot more subdued by contrast, less sweaty mad-cap dancing and more upper-class snootiness, when we attended a wine-tasting night at the local city gardens. Two hours of trotting around a park dotted with colourful lights, tents dispensing free wine and live jazz music left us feeling quite the wine connoisseurs. Especially when one of the last drinks boys filled our glasses almost halfway and we grinned like kids in a candy store at our luck. Wine-drinkers, I have to say, are your more civilised drunks, and a couple took delight in pointing us down one of the more winding paths through the flowerbeds declaring "Iss's juss wundrfl...wundrfzzl"

-- H in Oz

Agreeable Kids Social Club

Last night I was invited along to a free gig at the city library, where some friends-of-friends were going to be playing. Rocking up to the library anticipating some mad tunes was a new experience for me, not that I'm any stranger to the local library by any means, and it was made even more unnerving by the fact that it was all dark and locked up when I got there, slightly late. Eventually some people came out and I was able to slip into the darkened foyer before the doors slid shut again. When I located the small back room it was to see about two dozen late teen to early twenty-somethings all wearing tight jeans and hand-made or op-shop clothes, siting around on chairs or on the floor sipping tea. It was a cosy atmosphere with the tea and cakes to accompany the amateur bands who were performing, not so much on a stage as on the floor in front of the small crowd. I felt as if I'd walked into someone's living room where a few close friends were having a jamming session, frankly I felt a little out of place. It was like some special club where I didn't know the secret handshake. Strangely these are the sort of people most of my other friends assume I hang out with, but beside them I felt very urban and white-collar. All up a strange experience, but one I'm planning to repeat when my friend plays there next week. You should come along, Agreeable Kids Social Club.
In any case, the experience made me want to stretch my artistic muscles that have been atrophying for some months, and I went home and painted up this quick picture. I dont paint often (even digitally) so I still consider myself to be learning but it's nice to sometimes capture a mood like this.

-- H in Oz

Art blogging

Since it's so easy to post here I thought I'd use the hassle-free opportunity to show off some of my more recent pictures. I've had to discontinue my life drawing sessions over the busy period at the office, but now it's died down I'll try to get back into it. It's amazing how much it helps your anatomy knowledge to draw from life. Unfortunately what it mostly teaches you is that reality never looks like what you've been taught in books. Sometimes you can draw something that you'd swear looks just like what's in front of you, and it just looks wrong. Perspective body drawings are the devil for this.

I love having the chance to work on my drawing at work, character art can be few and far between but it's always fun coming up with new designs. This was a character for a game idea that was thrown up some months ago which never came about. She's a disgruntled chain-smoking 50's houswife and she'll kick your arse.


-- H in Oz

the origins of hana-bi

Basically it's a pun on my nickname, Hannah B and the japanese phrase Hana-bi which translates roughly into 'fireworks' or more literally 'fire flowers'. Hana - flower, Bi - fire.

My dad's nickname for me when I was young was Hannah Banana, or HB for short. It kind of stuck with me and I've lifted the initials for most of my website names. My artblog for instance is still called HB-art, a play on my name and the type of lead pencil. (Yeah, yeah, I have a thing for puns.) Hana-bi wasn't the next logical step though until an old boyfriend told me about the movie Hana-bi by his favourite director, Takeshi Kitano and I liked the random connection. The image of the soft and beautiful mixed with the harsh and dangerous is one that really strikes a chord with me.


-- H in Oz

Land of the long white cloud

"The land on the Sea-Coast is high with steep cliffs, and back inland are very high mountains...the face of the Country is of a hilly surface and appeares to be cloathed with wood and Verdure"
-- Captain Cook's journal, 8th October 1769

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My long-awaited trip to New Zealand creeps ever closer and I've managed to book all my travel across this mysterious and fog-shrouded isle. It makes it feel a lot more real and exciting to know that there's no backing out now and the trip really is going to happen. I have less than a month to make sure I have everything I need, although I'm sure I'll be picking things up along the way since I'm bound to forget something vital. I set up this blog to record the journey and as a convenient place to store my photos, to test it I've uploaded a couple of photos from my recent trip to the Nimbin shire hills where I used to live.

-- H in Oz

by way of introduction

So this would be the requisite introductory post where I inform you of what you already must have realised; that this is my first post. I've meant to start an online journal for some time, but somehow life seems to get in the way. I plan to give it a good go this time and see how long my attention span holds. Mostly it'd be a nice place to store and share all the photos I've been taking recently with my fancy-pants new digital camera.
I seem to catch on to new technology rather late in the game, for someone who works in an area like computer games. I think I might actually be a bit of a technophobe. I get a first wave of excitement over some new gadget or program, but try and convince me to pick up the extra-feature, new-and-improved, high-detail, up-to-the-minute version and I quickly pale and back away. It took me almost two years working in games before I bought my first ever games console (having been deprived of computer-aided fun as a barefoot and outdoorsy flower-child). And I have to admit my reluctance to upgrade my computer has stopped me buying the latest PC titles. Simply put, I prefer to wade in the pool of knowledge that is the technology generation, rather than submerge myself beneath those dark and icy waters.
That would be me on the right there, next to my buddy Lester.

-- H in Oz