I don’t make a fuss about Christmas, but it is a good chance to spend time with family, if we’re all around. Hmm, I am normally the only one that is away at this time of year!

Anyway, this year we are having two very low key family days – on the 25th and Boxing Day (26th Dec) – but this morning I thought I’d do something different and go to Bondi Beach!

As Chris Haldane also didn’t have family commitments till later in the day, we thought we would go for breakfast and a little sketch. It wasn’t a gorgeous day – big dark overhead cloud –  but it was nice not to be so hot. We managed to get a great spot for our breakfast.

I am not a mega fan of Bondi – Manly is much nicer in my opinion – but this is the view from the road.

Quite a few people on the beach – but bearable. The place gets packed with Poms (English) later in the day and I wouldn’t want to be around then. It didn’t really feel like Xmas Day at all and that was a nice change.We when walked till we found a bench to sit and started our sketches. This part of Bondi is normally packed but it was fairly quiet this morning and there wasn’t really any opportunity for me to ask someone to take our photo. So I had to resort to an old style ‘selfie’ – propping the camera on a ledge, setting 10 sec self timer and rushing back to location in time. I have decided to leave this photo uncropped – it was the best I could do!

And here is the sketch in the context of my sketchbook.

Then I went to my brother’s place for Xmas dinner and some fun time with the kids. Here is the rushed sketch of my breakfast(I hate eating cold food!) and another pressure situation capturing the gingerbread house before it was attacked.

It is hard to sketch when I am constantly being asked “Aunty Liz come and play with me!”

I managed to start my sketch of today’s favourite present during rest time, but painting was high risk with a 4 year old jumping around on the sofa alongside me. I now know all about Octonauts.

I was hoping to actually sketch my family today, but maybe tomorrow when we have the full clan together my Aunty duty will be less!

Oh, just for the record, I did two more sketches last night (Christmas Eve) as a way to create a break from my work and slow my pace.

I enjoy reading some architectural history/theory books as relaxation (yes, I know, that is a little odd) so last night was reading a book on Palladio – it gets me dreaming about a trip to Italy as well. Doing these sketches will be a permanent reminder of the concepts and details I discovered – there will be no need to take written notes as the thoughts are encoded in the lines! Anyway, these sketches are a bit random, but part of my Christmas experience this year (last Xmas it was the Pantheon!)

BTW For those of you that are wondering why I didn’t go to church here are my thoughts on Christmas.

I hope you all have had, are having or will have as fun and as relaxing a day as I did!

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