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For most of my twenties I moved house every six months, from Landsborough, to Melbourne, to Canberra, Sydney, Maleny, Brisbane, Caloundra. Back and forth, North and South, never settling anywhere. So when I bought my house in the Glass House Mountains at age thirty and was finally able to put down roots and really feel like I had a home, it was life changing for me.
Early this year my relationship broke down in a dramatic
fashion and the home I had loved was gone. I've spent the last eight months
living in a room of my mums house with my three kids but I still dream about my
garden and the home I created for myself.
One of the reasons I chose that spot was because it was on a
hill, I always wanted to live on top of a hill, so when I was searching for
this home I obsessively checked the topographic map of the houses online,
before I would go look at them.
In this picture and the other self portraits I experimented
with, I included a map of my home, some topographical and others from Google
Earth.
I tried to think of other things I could add to this picture
to give it more visual impact, but in the end I left it as is because I prefer
the simplicity and the darkness of it. My house is right behind my eyes. I hope this image isn't so dark as to take away from the message I feel it has about my deep connection to my home.

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When I was a child I spent most of my time drawing and reading books in the house that my parents built, I still remember drawing the wooden cut out patterns around the doors and the leadlight windows that my dad made. As I got older and then moved house dozens of times, it became very clear to me how important it can be to have a ‘home’. It was always wonderful for me when I could help someone to feel good, whether when I made them their dream wedding dress as a dress maker, or later when people could feel their strength building when I was their personal trainer. Those occupations can seem so different superficially, but they were both satisfying to me for the same reason. In the future I would love to be able to help people feel at home in a new landscape, I believe that connection and appreciation of our landscapes is key to developing a sustainable future.

I took this photo of myself with the mobile Lightroom app and then used Capture to turn it into the basic shapes. I overlaid this on a topographical map of the broader Sunshine Coast because I think the variety of colours is more interesting to look at than the smaller area of the Glass House Mountains.

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Creating a better world for future generations that fixes problems and creates solutions that are inclusive for everyone.

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To make good and ecologically responsible design which provides for the basic needs of the Earth and all of it's inhabitants.

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Keren Dobia's photography is so rich in detail and colour. I love still life photography, and I feel like she really takes it to the next level in the way she combines the portrait of her subject and items that represent them as people.

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I don't know much about Daniel Plaskett, but this loose abstracted watercolour style is really beautiful and evocative.

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Catcoq creates watercolour tutorials which I have followed occasionally, I really like the clean and bright paintings she makes, they feel optimistic and happy to me. Full of energy and sunshine.

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I was a corsetiere/eveningwear designer for ten years, and I always loved bold, dramatic design. People who live their own style are inspiring to me, and Iris Apfel combines so many elements to create her totally unique designs. The colours and textures she puts together are amazing.

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I love this organic and earthy style.

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Amanda Stronza takes still life photographs of animals that she finds deceased on the side of the road. The way she lovingly creates beautiful portraits of these creatures speaks to me and I feel shows care and respect for them. I feel like they also say something about the value of their lives, and how little it matters to society at large, I can't stand the apathy people have for them, so I think this is beautiful.

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Somewhere landscape architects create really beautiful Australian landscapes, it's one of the styles I aspire to be able to incorporate into my own designs one day.

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William Morris and the whole arts and crafts movement is one of my favourite styles of all time. The handmade nature and attention to detail are amazing.

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ATHENA NANGALA GRANITES - YANJIRLPIRRI JUKURRPA (STAR DREAMING)

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ATHENA NANGALA GRANITES - YANJIRLPIRRI JUKURRPA (STAR DREAMING)

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The patterns and shapes in Indigenous art are so organic and beautiful, I can get lost looking at them.

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I really enjoyed the walking lines exercise and did quite a few of them at home. They remind me of a tablecloth that my Nanna had when I was a kid, made out of some hideous nylon type fabric, but with a beautiful royal blue line pattern all over.

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Another example of just flat out bold style. The colour and geometry in a lot of the patterns really grab me.

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I used Adobe Captures pattern creator, on a pattern I drew with ink on paper, to make this new tiled pattern.

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First portrait. Me in my office. Embracing my "resting bitch face".

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Art nouveau and the fonts of the time are some of my favourites because of the organic, but also seriously ornate nature of it all.

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I initially found this a bit of a struggle as I've had a logo that I've used for my own business for a long time. Letting go of the old one so I could come up with something new was a challenge!
I started by just writing my name in some different fonts. My given name is Shael Erda, and being unusual has meant that I've spent a lot of time talking about and spelling it to strangers and I feel like that helped shape me in some small way. Shael is pronounced the same way as shale, sedimentary rock, and Erda was a Nordic earth goddess who has her own Rune symbol. I ended up combining these elements to come up with an abstract icon I'm pretty happy with.

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Final logo.
It uses elements of repetition and also symmetry.

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Continuous line drawings of flowers in my garden. I was trying to find one to use as part of a logo, but never really found the exact balance I was after.

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Pic per day Mp4

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This picture is a little more fun, it incorporates the topographical map of the Sunshine coast, and some of the plants from my garden. Including the ones my daughters decorated my glasses with.

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self portrait 1 with topographic map overlay

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I turned the bird drawing I did in week four studio into a vector image. I could have simplified it more and removed the background, but I quite like the texture of the colours that the image tracer made.

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I chose the Mount Cootha botanical gardens as inspiration for my icons. My favourite four visual representations I used Capture to simplify into basic shapes and then tidied them up some more in Photoshop. Minimalism isn't a strength of mine so I just tried to ignore extraneous detail as much as possible! Easier with some icons then others, planetarium building= simple, arid garden= impossible to just pick one plant because they're all amazing.