Three flushed pears
Thats the first painting for at least a week. Still Easter holidays are here and there maybe some more time to be found.
SOLD
#199
Three speckled plums II
6in x 6in 15cm x 15cm approx.
Now I seem to have lost my bloom and gained definition on the spots or is that just the natural aging process…of the plums,dear, of the plums, I can hear Frankie Howerd saying this.
The difference between these two pictures is that the first painted the spots in negative ie by painting a dark background round them and in this one I used masking fluid to keep the pale spots pale. Or you could say I painted them in positive with masking fluid which is removed later.
Three speckled plums
size 6″ x 6″ 15cm x 15cm approx
Click here to buy http://www.etsy.com/listing/95201997/the-speckled-plums-watercolor-6in-x-6in
There, I finally did another painting, I started it yesterday evening and luckily got straight back onto it after breakfast this morning which would not usually be possible. The rest of the day has been swallowed up in other peoples trips and visits and unexpected double bookings. Then just as I was actually doing something useful getting stuck into a bramble root, the new neighbours walked through to the back of the house and stood there calling me over as though we actually knew each other. I say the new neighbours, they could be the developers who wish to double the next door house in size taking masses of our sunlight. There was rather a lot of emphasis on their neighbourly status which has made me wonder why they feel the need to stress it. They have not moved in and tell me they will not do so until after the summer……he presented a card and tells me he is a builder. As most of the builders I have met since we moved here have lied to me in an accomplished and persistant way I am feeling very nervous indeed.
Spots on a spherical object are a challenge. I feel they are too prominant in this picture but the idea was to get both the spots and the bloom, which dark plums so often have, on the page. Its a bit technicolour, I am having a really bad run of not liking my paintings. I did one in oils and, while I enjoyed the smell, I was outraged by the result- too horrific for the blog.
I do think this is a painting which is flattered by the scan and the screen. Honestly it is worse in real life.
The garden is on a roll, the Daphne bhuloa is nearly finished, the D. odora is opening, the small daffodils are all out and some big ones too. There are hyacinth, the honey smelling Osmanthus blooms , and even the first forget-me-not. The little camellia which I bought is still tiny but this year it is covered in blooms…single small white blooms with a whiff of pink. There are flower buds on a tree paeony which has never managed a flower yet, I can live in hope on some fronts. Dogstooth violet and foxtail lilies are poking through the ground so its possible they will reflower and flower respectively and establish themselves in the shady part of the garden.
The corner of the garden planted up two years ago( I think )is now a tangled mass of self sown Verbena bonariensis, Geum and bronze fennel; but look inbetween and underneath…. there are brambles germinating, twitch grass lacing and ivy creeping. There are also masses of Hypericum seedlings which I pull out on sight but am losing the battle with at the moment.
Talking of lacy effects I was passing a municipal bed on a slightly misty but bright day and there was a bed with wonderful spires of creamy lace erupting everywhere…winter ornamental cabbage going to seed – it looks fantastic.
#197
Narcissus in a Poole vase – a painting a day
Click here to bid size 12in x 7in approx
The winter seems gone; today there was an air of spring about …everything really. Even Clapham Junction felt as though something had lifted. So of course the weather man tonight after the news has to smirk and offer colder weather later in the week and beyond that a possibility of more snow. Hmm I dislike turning into the sort of old person who bewails the snow rather than enjoys it…but I feel we have had quite sufficient for now thank you. It was only yesterday I was congratulating myself on the amount of wood left in the store; there might be as much as a third left to help with next winters supplies if it stays as mild as it has been. It is midnight now and I am sitting up typing wearing just a T-shirt and it’s not unbearably cold.
This painting, strictly speaking, was a two day painting, however as I was out of the house almost all day today collecting lovely aunt from her holiday in Suffolk and calling on mother as a bonus I have justification in calling it a daily painting, well a days painting. I am not at all sure I like it…I like bits of it. It would normally at this point be put away for me to think about but as there is a big gap on the blog where the paintings should be, it is going public.
Using the same sort of warped logic that applies to “Embarrassing Bodies” on TV, here’s a picture I would cheerfully hide from myself -now watch me put it where anybody can see it . DIY Dad, who is having something of a Revival in DIY enthusiasm at the moment, thinks I am a pathetic perfectionist , he can’t see anything wrong with it, No1 son says its “OK really, no really I do like it” No 2 just reminds me that anything I do ( at all ) is crap. Not in so many words or those exact words ( he’d be fined if he tried that-again). Which averages out at “ No Comment” pretty much. As the person who has the casting vote I come round to sticking it on the blog but pretending it’s in a cupboard and ignoring it for a safe period after which, by magic, I will be able to tell if its good or not or at least spot the mendable parts and then reassess. Hopefully.
#196 a painting a day by Alison Warner on her lemon a day art blog
The “Forest” Floor
I tidied this up today, the sketch was done last week on a visit to the Living Rainforest which was an almost on the way a to stop off over half term. I fell in love with the birds there, especially the little metallic partridges which bustled around the paths and in and out of the bushes. They are called Roul Roul Partridges, they quarrel ,they chase each other and make a funny noise. Much more attractive qualities in shiny feathers than in grungy jeans and dubious t-shirts.
Two days of tulips, artificial light and natural light- a painting a day
12″ x 9″ 30cm x 22cm approx. 200g/90lb paper
Both these paintings are a full page of my medium sized Fabriano block sketch pad. They are not entirely to my satisfaction. The first uses artificial light and the second the fading natural light of this afternoon. I think I could almost do a Hockney cut and paste, adding the parts I like from one image to the other image. Well I could except it was the two tulips to the left that went off in each case. Tulips are swines for moving by the way; in a half hour period leaves curled and twisted away from their starting positions.
#193
The snow has not all melted and today I met a man cross country skiing on the South Downs. It was beautiful but very cold up there. In Ditchling village the pub window boxes are still showing blue in the flowers ( now freezedried) of the summer lobelia. In the last half hour fresh snow started falling.
#194
Jack Edwards beans on a striped plate-a painting a day original watercolour AND a design for a collagraph
8cm x 16cm, 3.25″ x 6.5″
These two are work in progress,
The beans on the plate are almost abstract and I am fine with that. They grew on the allotment and we have dried them for use in stews. They are rather good in stews they get very soft and smooth, better than shop bought dry beans. The plate is a bit of a disaster zone, but it’s an easy picture to set up and do, so I should try again.
The print-like image is a wax rubbing of a collagraph plate which did not work. I made it to remind me of how to proceed when I sort out the technical problem caused by the waxy leaves. I have read of someone using a mixture of polyfilla and pva glue.
The snow has finally proved to me that my sons are no longer children. It snowed on Saturday night, instead of leaping out of bed and getting out there they came to in their usual morbidly slow way and cursed the fact that there was the whole of Sunday to clear the roads making school closures less likely!” But it means you’ve got today to go sledging!”, I said weakly….a short time ago they would have been cock a hoop that the snow arrived on a weekend for maximum exploitation.
No2 son has returned from school with an appointment with the deputy head for throwing snowballs at school, and there was I thinking as I thought everyone thought …its only muppets and cissies that don’t play with the snow.
#192
Spotted leaf-a painting a day
4″ x 2″ 10cm x 5cm approx
Another in the leaf series. Took a walk today inthe woods , wonderful sunshine cutting across the landscape and reaching right into the woodland. It was warm enough to lift the scent of the Daphne bhuloa allowing it to drift along paths and avenues from where it called me like a siren might a sailor. Silly to plant it next to the wintersweet with its less exotic smell I thought, a mistake I have also made -I realised as I got home.
#191
The Shell- a painting a day
size 5″ x 6″
Hmm I struggled with this. I might yet alter it and take out some of the pencil work.
Found out today that I have a relative ( daughter of my father’s cousin) who also paints and sails, now that is extraordinary as I don’t think when I sailed a lot I ever met another painter. There must be some hereditary tendencies behind our characteristics!
#189
Lemon a day 