Finally finished this painting this morning. This one took a whole week of painting and pondering to complete. It’s the biggest canvas I have ever used, 20 inches by 20 inches. I got inspired by a photo I took of my girls when we visited the Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary located in Fig Tree Pocket, a very ordinary suburb in west Brisbane. The photo itself was pretty ordinary, but it made for a lovely painting subject! Isn’t it strange how things that look so ordinary in photo format, actually translate beautifully into paintings?
Of course, I guess with painting, I can take all sorts of liberties with light, shape, colour, moving objects, subtracting and adding things as I will. All in all, I am pretty pleased with this painting.
The sanctuary makes a great day out for families. They even have lots of rest corners with sun chairs and tables with free wifi – these rest stops are called “Bloggers’ corners”. What an excellent idea. What I love about this place is that:
- there is lots of greenery
- many animals roam free – bush turkeys, eastern water dragons, blue tongue lizards and the occasional frilly, curlews, mynahs, there’s even a tame dingo making the rounds with the keepers
- you can buy food pellets and get right up close to feed the kangaroos and even pet them – roo fur is VERY soft
- you can see emus right up close too
- koalas everywhere, even though they do stink of koala pee
- lotsa local wildlife to come face to face with – snakes, platypus (this is Yun’s favourite area), snakes, local birds, dingos, tassie devils, etc – of course, the more dangerous animals are in enclosures
- usually not too crowded
- if you buy an annual pass, you get 20% off all food and souveniers
I really like visiting this place. If only it didn’t take 45 minutes drive to get there, I would be there every weekend.
