Leunig, cleavers and blind contour birds...

Here's a recent page from my art journal.  The top half is a newspaper clipping given to me by a neighbour - it's a Leunig cartoon about how to approach a turkey, published at Christmas.  It's very sweet - one approaches the turkey and becomes friends.  The cleaver exits the picture.  The bottom half is the paper that my cleaver was wrapped in.  When we went cleaver shopping, we went to an Asian kitchen shop in Victoria St, Richmond.  There were several lightweight cleavers on display, and Paula and I fingered them dubiously.  Eventually Paula asked the woman at the counter if she had anything heavier.  She produced a substantial cast iron cleaver, saying with a very strong accent, "Good for killing chicken and duck."  Ah ha.  We knew we were looking at the right cleaver.  I thought the paper was particularly fetching.

The bird was one of my blind contour drawings which I particularly liked.  As you can see, it's yet another page in my journal about my journey to become a chicken-killer.