Archive
Rose William Morris – a painting a day
size 6 in x 4.5 in 15cm x 12cm watercolour on heavy weight rag paper
I went to the dentist today and had to wait an hour and forty five minutes in a hot waiting room,for the first part of the wait we were told to go away and get a drink (black tea only).
When we eventually found the cafe a gang of young men were beginning a” belly buster challenge”. The cafe is doing this as a special on days when England are playing in the world cup. One of them was served the challenge on two plates on a tray. The job looked impossible but he stuck to it manfully despite looking ill and finding it harder and harder to swallow. The meal consisted of:
3 fried eggs (that would be me out of the running for a start)
3 rashers of bacon,
3 sausages
Black pudding
2 hash browns,
Chips,
Mushrooms
Tomoato mash (not sure what that is),
Bubble and squeak
Toast
And he washed it down with a coke!!! There was a point at which his mates jumped up from the table thinking he was going to spew, but he didn’t. He finished it all.
All the above cost him nothing as the price was refunded if it was eaten and donated to charity if there was anything left. An older customer made a quip across the room about one more wafer thin slice, the reference and the sketch had to be explained round the table. I sipped my black tea and felt my age, the chap who made the Monty Python reference was grey haired and balding. Probably younger than me then.
Here is a painting of a David Austin climbing rose William Morris which I got from Sainsburys for £5.00
I have also added a photo of a bit of flower bed which looks good at the moment. The Campanula perscifolia were skulking further back and didn’t flower. So this spring I dug them up and hauled them forward,result:
#79 a painting a day by Alison Warner on her lemon a day art blog
Shirley Poppy III – a painting a day
size 6 in x 4.5 in 15cm x 12cm watercolour on heavy weight rag paper
The Geography is over there is no more to do on that. There remain two Science papers and Citizenship and Food Technology.
Not much of a idea on how to revise Citizenship as I don’t have a clue what it is.
I have continued with the Shirley poppy as it really is very beautiful and it has attracted a lot of attention on e-bay. Today’s version is done without any pencil drawing just freehand paint.
After his exam No1 son said it was the day to make a strawberry pie. There is a family recipe which is really quite special for making pies with the softest of the soft fruits i.e. strawberries and raspberries.
The recipe was taught to my mother by her eldest aunt, Florrie, she was a very keen cook who would turn her hand to everything from breadmaking and potato pie to whole salmon and jugged hare (which I have never eaten ). There is no way of knowing if the recipe comes from a book of the time or if it was handed down in the family. If it is a family recipe then it is a dish from the East Riding of Yorkshire.
Strawberries and raspberries lose a lot of liquid when mixed with sugar, liquid makes pastry soggy. So you make a rich sweet pastry with butter, roll out a bottom, cover with fruit and then place the top on without sealing it with water. Once the pie is cooked you gently( with fishslices and palette knives)loosen and lift the lid onto a clean plate, you scatter six teaspoons of sugar over the fruit and add five small knobs of butter unsalted is best. Slide the lid back into place and serve warm. This stands well on its own without the addition of either custard or cream and is blooming marvellous as Father Christmas would say.
I picked 10 oz of strawberries today but the boys picked 5lb 6oz, making six pounds…I think we need to make more jam. I also picked two ripe berries from the new strawberry plants which are supposed to be late crop. Ideally we will arrange it so that we have half and half of the two next year.
#78 a painting a day by Alison Warner on her lemon a day art blog
Shirley Poppy II – a painting a day
Sold and on its way to Austria! size 7 in x 6 in 18cm x 15cm watercolour on heavy weight rag paper
What a strange business, I was trying to help my son and his friend with their Geography revision. It seems that of the six questions on the exam paper they have only been taught enough in class to answer three, so if they get a particularly nasty question they are forced to answer it because they won’t have covered the alternative topic. For example they have learnt about rivers but not about volcanoes, they have covered Agriculture but not Development. Call me old-fashioned (no not all at once) but if someone has a GCSE in Geography I would expect them to know a bit about volcanoes. A knowledge of Development meshes with a knowledge of Agriculture; each informs the other.
I had a better session today painting the same poppy which had not dropped its petals; when the weather is hot these poppies barely last a day. It reminds me of the wall paper my grandparents had in their bedroom, which was lush with poppies, there were stripes in the design in a bluish grey and like almost everything in their house, I loved it.
I also made five jars of strawberry jam. My grandmother would have been proud of me (actually she would have quietly approved, she was not given to hyperbole)
I am dissatisfied with the look of yesterdays picture and will re-crop it tomorrow.
#77 a painting a day by Alison Warner on her lemon a day art blog
First Shirley Poppy – a painting a day
size 6 in x 4.5 in 15cm x 12cm watercolour on heavy weight rag paper
Today we picked four and a half pounds of strawberries…i.e. over two pounds a day as we didn’t pick yesterday. I also picked a handful of red currants so need to start thinking about some jam.
I ate one of the white peaches today and it was just lovely. The flesh was not white more the colour of pistachio ice cream.
There were two Shirley poppies out today self sown from some I grew last year. I have tried to get the prettiest one down on paper but am in two minds about it. In fact I have finished last night’s unpublished picture today and am not at all happy with that either.
I talked to an old friend whose husband is very ill, he has been ill for some time, she is a fantastic painter but she shocked me when she said she had not painted for a year ; she finds she cannot look after George and think enough to paint. I am not sure there is too much thinking involved in these paintings, except that they show what presents itself to my mind on a daily basis.
So the poppy in the painting has been picked and is filling the studio with its bitter smell. The one in the photo is growing and has yet to be picked.
Alison
#76 a painting a day by Alison Warner on her lemon a day art blog
Three white peaches – a painting a day
SOLD. size 6 in x 3.5 in 15cm x 9cm watercolour on heavy weight rag paper
Today we went swimming at the local leisure pool, which has an outdoor bit, the wind was nippy, the palms are being taken over by ivy but apart from that, in the blue water in the sunshine it could have been…the Med. I dutifully did my aqua exercises so fully expect to feel terrible tomorrow.
Here are the peaches which smell heavenly. In France you pay extra for white fleshed peaches as they are tastier or rather more aromatic. Here, if you find them, on a market or in LIDL! they cost the same as yellow peaches.
We made ice creams with the strawberries today, one with goats cream as a special treat for me and one with ordinary cream. Heaven was in a glass dish.
Today we picked three pounds of strawberries and there are more to come.
Alison
#75 a painting a day by Alison Warner on her lemon a day art blog
A Blush Pear – a painting a day
http://www.etsy.com/shop/lemonaday. size 6 in x 4.5 in 15cm x 12cm watercolour on heavy weight rag paper
I am going to compile my list of the top ten genera or plant families that form the backbone of the garden for me, then I shall see if there are gardening forums out there who beg to differ.
I think I have to start with the roses:
1) Rosa or roses
2) Geranium
3) Penstemon, important as they take you through from June to October
4) Papaver or poppies these are just such brilliant show offs, but delicate with it
5) Clematis I think I have nine different ones and there are more that I want( like the one in that mans shopping trolley in the supermarket)
6) Lilium or lilies I don’t have many at the moment that that could be changed at the stroke of a key on the computer this autumn,the ones I have I have had for ten years and I love them they are regaining strength again after being dug up three times in four years.
7) Narcissus or daffodils and jonquils etc
8) Tulipa
9) Allium they steal the bed in a way little else can do.
10) Lonicera or honeysuckle this is a canny choice as it can give you hedging plants climbers winter flowering shrubs and summer flowering shrubs.
11) Lavendula sorry I can’t leave this out.
This list will need revising….
We did not go to the allotment today. I went to the market stall in Burgesshill and today I painted this pear, the white peaches will maybe do tomorrow.
Alison
#74 a painting a day by Alison Warner on her lemon a day art blog
Dianthus for the Rainbow Nation – a painting a day
this painting is framed and for sale £50
. size 5 in x 8 in 13cm x 20cm watercolour on heavy weight rag paper
It rained and then it rained some more, but it will be dry for the weekend and it was dry for birthday boy’s barbeque. I am certainly not complaining as the watering was showing up as water on my knee.
It was wonderful to see the winter sunshine in Cape Town and spot how they shifted Gary Linnaker around all the time to get the shots. When No1 son was a baby we went to Cape Town for a long weekend one September (Presidents Day Holiday in Botswana) the queues to get up the mountain on the cable car were huge so we decided to take a stroll up a path, found it went to the top and walked up with the baby in a carrier frame. Amazing place, there’s a different climate on the top even though it’s so close to the town, and the plants…..
The most spectacular things in this garden at the moment are Allium schubertii and the climbing rose William Morris which is heartbreakingly beautiful. It flowers on the corner of the house on the path leading to the front door. I will make an etching from one of the Allium flowers to go with an older steel plate which used an impress of an Allium flower in soft ground (that’s an etching soft ground not boggy flower bed).
I hesitate to mention it but I have not seen a lily beetle here yet this year. The Mina lobata did have a flower which was lily beetle scarlet but something attacked it and it will need to grow back from the base. I have looked for culprits but can find no clear evidence.
One other extraordinary thing, the Nicotianum sylvestris which I neglected to pull up last autumn is sprouting from the base!! I thought it was an annual. The leaves are very strong smelling-tobacco bitter-and no snail has so much as nibbled it. An amazing survivor, it is definitely listed as an annual. It is growing in a bit of a rain shadow so would have been dry for much of the winter and not quite as cold as elsewhere in the garden but I lost things only three foot further out into the same border. N.sylvestris is one of my favourite plants growing about four feet high with hanging flowers of white which perfume the evening air. It is strategically planted near the covered sitting area which can be used for breakfast or a meal on a cooler or even damp evening. Once when some friends were over we sat there drinking coffee in a thunder storm and it was brilliant.
Today we picked three pounds of strawberries. Oh and I slipped and fell over crashing right through the bird netting….damn suffered complete loss of good humour.
Alison
#73 a painting a day by Alison Warner on her lemon a day art blog
Dianthus Rainbow Loveliness – a painting a day
http://www.etsy.com/shop/lemonaday. size 5 in x 8 in 13cm x 20cm watercolour on heavy weight rag paper
Today was another family birthday, all day today little snippets of the day he was born jump in and out of focus. I look at where I held my hand against his and compared the size and then look across the table at his hand now.
Today’s flower is Dianthus Rainbow Loveliness a subtle beauty if ever there was one.
We went out at the request of both boys and tried the menu on a midweek special at one of the nearest chinese restaurants, the China Brasserie, the deal is that for £12 you can order as many dishes as you want but you will be charged extra for any leftover food . Now that is the kind of challenge my boys can get their feet under. It was a brilliant way to test the menu,we ordered ten starters, liking the crispy wontun so much we ordered it twice. They had wrapped a prawn in a piece of fine pastry, tied a knot and deep fried it, it was crisp and very delicate.
The best of the main dishes was the beef with ginger and spring onions which had that zing so often missing from chinese food these days. The last takeaway we had was from a bigger restaurant the Tai Kar and it nearly put us off Chinese food for ever…the chicken bang bang grated on your teeth from the granulated sugar in it -vile,vile,vile,the sauces smelt like school dinner gravy and were underseasoned.
Alison
#72 a painting a day by Alison Warner on her lemon a day art blog
Allotment Strawberries–a painting a day
SOLD. size 5.5 in x 6 in 14cm x 15cm watercolour on heavy weight rag paper
Yesterday was a family birthday (so sorry no blog) and I picked one and three quarter pounds of strawberries, lucky then that everyone likes strawberries for pudding. We had barbecued chicken and sausages with asparagus risotto and a salad. We kicked off with a special bottle of Ridgeview Knightsbridge which was lovely. No2 son made the canapés to go with this…rye biscuits, soft goats’ cheese and smoked salmon. My meringues went dreadfully wrong; I ended up incinerating them in the microwave as I got distracted into searching for something. Burnt from the inside out and smelling really dreadful- just as the first guests arrived. “Hello, sorry about the smell” is never a good opener.
Because two main items came from the allotment this feast came to £3.60 a head excluding wine, and the cheese board which was only really for one person who is on an Atkins type diet. I include the birthday cake and burnt meringues in the calculation….cooking from scratch saves shed loads of money.
My in-laws came back from France with loads of what they call ‘bits’, I call them goodies- jars of rillettes and pate, macaroons, virulent goats cheese, olive bread and palmiers . Actually, thinking about it, I should paint a few cakes ; the only thing I have done in that subgenre is the hot cross bun.
Today there were strawberries for tea and for the painting a day…only one pound two ounces however, perhaps they have peaked. I lost the light as I was waiting for a layer of this to dry, it may be repictured tomorrow with a tweak or two. The variety is Cambridge Favourite.
Alison
#71 a painting a day by Alison Warner on her lemon a day art blog
Allium bulgaricum – a painting a day
a detail from this painting is framed and for sale
size 4 in x 6 in 12cm x 15cm watercolour on heavy weight rag paper
Today I picked one and a half pounds of strawberries.
I planted out about twelve late things: tender fuchsias and dahlias. Found a Canna lily that has overwintered in the ground!!
I painted this unusual Allium which is sometimes known as the other name in the tags. I think the other name means garlic with nectar or it would in Greek not sure what they called garlic in Latin. It’s quite tricky as it’s so floppy(hard to get an angle on it). I’ve seen it standing tall in other gardens but mine is coy and retiring.
Seventieth painting today! I think I shall give myself a treat when I get to one hundred.
Alison
#70 a painting a day by Alison Warner on her lemon a day art blog
Lemon a day 