More monkey business

It's a pleasant Sunday afternoon in the garden...


But ever get the idea you're being watched?

On the other side of the fence....

Troops arrive

oops - a couple are distracted...

but some are checking out the possibilities

for lunch...

Frangipani trees bite the dust...again :(

Illustration Friday

©Caroline Soer2010

The word this week is 'journey'. My offering is a watercolour on gessoed mountboard that I painted for Laurel as part of a travelling book exchange, a while back. On the opposite page is Robert Frost's lovely poem 'The Road Not Taken'.

What a cheek!

This morning I was disturbed in my studio.

This monkey came in via the window and sat on Mum's desk!!!!! (You may recognise the photo from the day he came into the kitchen and stole frozen rice - story here). Mum was upstairs but came running and shouted like some crazy woman at him, but he got very cross and threatened her, lunging forward and baring huge yellow teeth and we were scared, so backed off quickly and slammed the door shut. MOL!!!

Mum was worried that he would create havoc in there so ran to fetch her camera to chase him away ( Monkeys don't like cameras!). Fortunately, that just gave him time to get back through the open window without losing face and when we carefully peeked around the door again he was making his exit and was off like a shot when he saw Mum with the camera.

It wouldn't have been a problem of course, one left hook from me and he'd have beaten a hasty retreat I'm sure!

Fortunately, no real damage done! He obviously didn't think much of Mum's sketchbooks - personally, I think he came in to play with the bubblewrap!

Illustration Friday

'Come along dear ... open wide' - watercolour
©Caroline Soer 2011

There were lots of possibilities for this week's word 'bottled'. I thought about doing something along the lines of Alice in Wonderland with her 'Drink Me' potion and that then led me to this little watercolour of Mama mouse dosing up her unfortunate son! You've got to feel sorry for the poor wee lad- Castor Oil - eeuch! To check out his expression, click the illustration, then click again to enlarge fully.

Playtime!

I came across this stunning peacock in my Flickr files today and had fun making a photo mosaic.

And another of the yellow and white flowers in my hillview garden


And then another - got hooked on playing with colour!

and shape!

Last two mosaics are made up of pics I took at the fabulous Four Seasons Hotel Spa in Langkawi.

Illustration Friday

'Duet'

Watercolour paint and pencils with gouache ©Caroline Soer 2011

It's been several weeks since I took part in Illustration Friday. :( Here's a last minute offering for Illustration Friday's 'Duet' which I started happily enough in watercolour, but it wasn't long before I'd made a bit of a hash of it (must be out of practice), so rescued it with my trusty watercolour pencils and gouache!

Help Japan project

A little bird told me about this worthy project! Makiko Hastings, of Shin Shin blog, is a Japanese ceramicist who currently lives in North Yorkshire, UK. She is aiming to raise money for the Japan earthquake appeal with the sale of these cute little ceramic birds. If you'd like to read more, buy a bird (a pair would be nice!) and/or donate please click here.

In my garden

My garden is full of pinkness!

I put together these montages with Big Huge Labs Mosaic Maker.

Yellowness coming soon!

Fun new way to view your blog!

Have you heard about the new blogger tool Dynamic Views? It's a fun new way to view your blog!

Take a look at my blog in Snapshot view or try Flipcard, Mosaic, Sidebar, and Timeslide.

If you want to try this out yourself just add "/view" to the end of your blog URL i.e. http://yourblog.blogspot.com/view and then use the blue scroll bar on the top right to swap between the different views.

Read more about it here - have fun!

Mothers' Day

Happy Mothers' Day!