First Strawberry
No picture…because we ate it…one huge ripe strawberry, probably the first outdoor one on the allotment- but I’m not really bragging (much).
Old limonade
A ten minute sketch done to a chorus of “we are hungry can you hurry up?”. I
It’s Mont St Michel last summer.
#209
This is a pencil sketch
This sketch is just like the weather at the moment: a bit rough round the edges but I quite like it ( warmer would be better as colour might be better).
Burgess Hill Open Houses
I am taking work to the festival in Burgess Hill.
There will be prints ( as in handmade ), cakes ( as in handmade) framed watercolours from this blog and otherwise www.art-in-burgess-hill.co.uk/ I am in St Peters Road B. Hill weekend 9th June-10th and 16th June to 17th June. Some of the felt brooches will be for sale.
Great Western Railway nr Pangbourne
size 6″ x 9″ approx. 15cm x 22 cm
Apologies for the (former) silly little postage stamp image it’s a problem which seems to occur at random , of course all that means is that there is some little detail on the uploading process which I miss out without realising I have done so. Then I do it all over again and it still goes wrong until finally on a new day I do it all over again again and it goes right and I still have no idea what it was I did wrong the first four times.
One of my sons was sitting an exam as an external candidate near Reading this is what I did while he was furiously ( I hope ) writing. I used to walk in those far off woods and hunt for edible fungi. Pangbourne is to the left and Mapledurham to the right on the other side of the railway and the river Thames (which is hidden).
I am also putting time into getting ready for an open house exhibition in Burgess Hill where I will be in a house with five other women. Our host artist is Suzanne Bench and she is opening up her Art Deco house as a huge gallery- upstairs and downstairs. We will be doing tea and homemade cakes with squash for children. I have had more work framed than ever before which is slightly scary. I went to a framer in Worthing who had already cut mounts for me , she was very quick and the prices are good. She also has racks and racks of frames already made up at sale prices ( left behind by the previous framer possibly) . It would be possible to spend a whole afternoon there hunting through the precut mounts and frames and finding ones which work , as plenty of my work is square it makes it easy to find something.
#208
The Unknown orchid- original watercolour painting
This is 6in x 8.5in approx 15cm x 20cm approx
I get this orchid to flower once every few years it is scented and rather strange; there is something of the night about it. I found it for sale in, of all places to buy interesting plants, ASDA( or Walmart in the UK for international readers)! I bought two to decorate the house I was selling, the other orchid, a pretty coral pink, died years ago. This one seems to manage on the benign neglect I bestow on the rather more common moth orchid. The painting is drawn at about life size.
I am too nerdy for my own good , of course it felt silly to own an orchid and not know its name….so I googled “maroon green and purple orchid” and came up with: Zygopetalum Louisendorf from the images or rather I picked up a slightly similar Zygopetalum and then regoogled it. Oh the joys of infinite information…or rather information tending to infinity.
Saw the wren today looking busy…something I should be!
#207
Four Chilli Second Go- a painting a day
This painting has been framed and is for sale at Burgess Hill Open Houses see blog for June 4th
This is a more pleasing composition …but not right…I feel like I need to deconstruct all my equipment , clean it , buy some new brushes, get new glasses or something …not sure what.
Collected a large quantity of silver chard from the allotment today and rhubarb again, there were two little shoots of asparagus. last weekend I cleared the bed of all shoots small and large so that it could be cultivated. I made a vat of asparagus soup as they were mostly short or misshapen.
I was very put out to find that the planning officer does not consider the loss of sunlight to our house and garden important…if the new neighbour builds what he wants we will lose so much light and warmth from the winter sun and our view will be decimated. We will literally be overshadowed by their monster extension front and back. getting sun into this garden has been the biggest challenge as it was circled with overgrown trees and hedges when we moved here now something permanant and ugly may sit between us and the sun. Worse the people who want to take the light say they intend to be our new neighbours…how will that work in practice? I prefer to get on with neighbours even ones who are different to us but what does one do when the new people have taken something precious and beautiful about ones home before they even move in? It is always best to avoid neighbourhood disputes but it is very easy to see how they can take hold.
#206
