Meet Dawn Tan - my illustrative superhero

Dawn Tan loves to draw vegetables and boy, does she do it well. Based in Yarraville, but an illustrator of the world, Dawn is the inner west’s Queen of Colour. I discovered her vibrant illustrations while reading one of my favourite magazines. I was first drawn to her watercolour drawing of a croissant, but a little research drew me to her sublime vegie sketches.

“I absolutely love vegetables. There’s something about the colours, textures, tastes and shapes. There are so many different varieties and ways of eating and cooking different vegetables. Growing up in Singapore, I was used to all the Asian vegetable varieties. I remember being in shock when I arrived in Australia – there were just so many new vegetable types that I had never seen before: Brussel sprouts, fennel, dill!

“My husband and I went to London recently and we were blown away by all the different salads at Ottolenghi. They were all filled with strange but new vegetables we’ve never seen or tried before. Vegetables are amazing!”

Dawn runs regular classes teaching food enthusiasts how to draw, paint and colour fruit and vegetables. Perhaps the perfect experience to expand your culinary horizons, but how do you choose what to draw as there are so many varieties to choose from?

“It’s so hard to pick what my favourite vegetable is, but I do draw a lot of corn. I love the colour yellow so it’s only natural that I like drawing (and eating) corn, right?”

“I do cook quite a bit and really enjoy the process of doing so. I find it so relaxing. I love cooking soup at this time of year. I swear by this amazing chunky vegetable and bean soup by Jools Oliver. I’ve cooked it so much my husband is sick of it already, but it’s so good for you with all that crunchy kale.

“I love my local Pompello in Seddon and the Village Store in Yarraville for fruit and vegetables. However, for most of my weekly haul, my husband and I head to the fruit and vegetable store in Highpoint or venture to the South Melbourne Market.

If you don’t bump into Dawn at your local fruit and vegetable supplier, you can find her teaching at one of her workshops or head on over to her website to view her work at www.dawn-tan.com

Don’t like your daily dose of fruit and veg, Dawn does a wicked sketch of house frontages too.

Images courtesy of Dawn Tan.

This profile first appeared in the May issue of The Westsider.

The most favourite things that I did in 2015

Oh 2015, you were a nice year. A busy year. A year with a super long winter. A year full of fun, creativity, exhaustion, exercise, deliciousness, arguments, love, and heaps of funny moments.

These are my most favourite things I did in 2015:

1. Held my buddy's new born baby and told her that everything is ok.
2. Watched my son discover how to spin his balance bike wheels while he watched me run after him.
3. Loved my job and worked with some of the raddest talents on this earth: Kurt Elling, Renee Fleming, Tripod, Ben Northey, Sir Andrew Davis, Flight Facilities, Reggie Watts... oh so many!
4. Taught myself to make a wicked pizza dough.
5. Argued with my husband. Then we got a cleaner. Now everything is peachy.
6. Cut my own fringe. Never again.
7. Decluttered my whole house. It smells like space and air.
8. Fell in love with my local community, especially following a car accident / sick child / sick me / lonely days / happy days / desperate for a time-out day.
9. Watched the whole Cars movie and cried the whole way through.
10. Became obsessed with the deepest part of the ocean.
11. Had my stories published in magazines and newspapers.
12. Discovered sunrise.  5.30am aint so bad.
13. Welcomed my best buddy home from New York.
14. Made some excellent new friends, just when I thought I had met all my friends already.
15. Became a toddler and started dressing like one. Life is so much better in overalls.
16. Drove down the coast listening to Dragon the whole way. It felt free.
17. Taught myself how to macrame and now our house looks like an indoor Jumanji.
18. Completed a latch hook rug which took three months to make.
19. Lied about having diarrhea so I could have five minutes to myself in the toilet.
20. Took my son to the zoo. Heaps. Animals are the best.

How to buy a house by watching cracking classic films

A few years ago my then-boyfriend-now-husband Reggie and I were lying in our bed in our rented house in Windsor. It was an ace house filled with cracks and splinters. It was next to a pub with an pink elephant on the roof and it was home for five years.

We had been asleep for about an hour. I was sleep stressing because I had to get up at 4.30am the next morning to work on a film shoot. So I had one eye open and on the clock.

I must have drifted because when I heard the HUGE gunshot outside my window I leaped out of bed and peeked through the corner of my curtain.

There was a man lying on the ground softly saying 'Help, help'. Reggie was already out the door (and fully dressed - no shoes) helping the man get off the road. My neighbour's boyfriend was next to him (wearing his girlfriend's pj's) and they were chatting to the shot dude seeing if he was ok.

Within minutes an ambulance and a couple of cop cars turned up. The shooter was nowhere to be seen and it was all a little scary.

Cheef Dog hid under the quilt the whole time. The shot guy was ok, lost a bit of blood from his leg and was taken to hospital. A giant vacuum cleaner came and swept the street and washed the blood down the drain. By the time I left for work, it looked like nothing had EVER happened there. Except every time I walked past my fence, I would notice the bullet hole that sat right in front of our bedroom.

So we decided to buy a house. We'd been looking for a bit and had saved a little deposit, but it was time to get serious. But we had to save more money and quickly.

I sat and thought hard. Super hard. How could I save ALL my money but still have a life? It was coming up to winter, movie night time!

I sent all the people I liked an email asking for their all-time top five favourite films listed in order. I took all these lists and created a giant list of 100 films I had never seen and watched them over winter and spring. The idea was to hire VIDEOS each week instead of going to the pub and boozing on.

And it worked. I saved HEAPS of money. We were finally able to move out of Windsor to the western suburbs of Melbourne (because that's safer... right?)

Here's my top ten films in order if you are planning to buy a house:

1. High Noon

2. Cool Hand Luke

3. Bullitt

4. The Wild Bunch

5. The Apartment

6. The Last Picture Show

7. Roadhouse

8. 12 Angry Men

9. Hud

10. How the West Was Won

Happy savings!
xx