Archive
Cep with child – a painting a day
SOLD to another mushroom hunter!
size 5in x 5 in, 12cm x 12cm approx
I went with no1 son, who is very fond of mushrooms for breakfast, to see if anything had come up…There was, as the day before, nothing… but on the way out of the woods I nearly trod on this little beauty. The little side one is often pictured in German and Polish illustrations, not to be outdone I painted it.
No2 son has cooked his goose over a stuffed chicken thigh recipe for food DT (that is what they call lessons in cookery at school in the UK now). Having made all the effort to buy his raw ingredients I then spent the evening reminding him to get it all prepared for the morning.” Don’t leave it to eleven o’clock!”, I said, not thinking that he would leave it until 8.15 the following morning…I was out of sorts for everything , late, furious and forgetful. Boning out chicken thighs in the morning hustle when I could have BOUGHT ready boned had I not been told to get them bone in is so far from my idea of fun there will be consequences for this.
#185 a painting a day by Alison Warner on her lemon a day art blog
#185
Lemon yellow and pink, leaves.
detail of ” Lemon yellow and pink, leaves.”
These are the leaves of one of the lacecap hydrangeas , there is something quite surreal about their pink flush on lemon yellow. A painting which is larger than most of those in this blog, it measures :
22cm x 30cm 9″ x 12″ approx.
#183
Pear leaf
This is a tiny picture the leaf is painted at about lifesize.
Summer holidays: life one long round of slogging round Sainsburys and prising children off their electronic boxes. There are nice flowers in the garden but for some reason I am painting the leaves that fall from the little pear tree.
Only two more episodes of the Hour left to run….I could cry. If Hector is to be believed then my dad must have been in MI6 as I swear his raincoat, or gaberdine as he might have called it, looked just like the one worn by the ill-fated Mr Kish. He always seem to wear it with a trilby which is still a good look in my book, but then he was always hopelessly out of date only giving up wearing trourers with turn-ups when Oxford bags came in in the seventies…ie when they revived a look he had finally had enough of it and submitted to modernity…well almost… he wasn’t going to update the shoes or vests you understand.
#178
Blue food and Beetroot a painting a day
These are the best blueberries I have ever grown. The secret is to keep the perishing birds off without netting the birds and perishing them.
A painting!
this painting can be bought from ( apologies for photo on ETSY page there is a glitch):
http://www.etsy.com/listing/88793554/beetroot-in-a-bunch-watercolour-painting
Beetroot in a bunch
22cm x 15cm, 9″ x 6″
There is very little time in the day when there are so many plants to water and crops to pick, I do not try and grow beetroot as I am the only person besides lovely aunt who really likes it, so these are bought and no less pretty for it.
The allotment has peas and beans in astonishing variety at the moment, diy dad has dug out his early carrots and the maincrop carrots are coming up. I have a forest of flat leaved parsley in the salad bed and the first tomatoes are ripening. The first autumn cyclamen is out as well….excuse me but the proms are only just begun, cyclamen???
#177
Autumn leaves Lilac, Cherry and Lilac – a painting a day
Click here to purchase size 6 in x 9 in, 15cm x 24cm
There are good times of year and bad times of year. This is not my favourite in many ways; the hour has changed and we all feel it. Meals feel necessary earlier as the stomach clocks are struggling to adjust. The weather is mild which is a bonus, the house is warm all day following a short blast from the radiators in the morning, which is a vindication of the warm roof insulation. I love the air and the light at this time of year. There are times when the colours are brighter than anything spring or summer can offer. Hence the leaves in todays painting. There are rows of trees on the drive to school every day that are just glowing at the moment.
I did do a painting yesterday but when I showed it to DIY Dad he asked which way up it was supposed to go…all very well if you are an abstract artist but I’m not.
The nasty neutral magnolia paintwork on the walls in this room did not scrub up well, we therefore repainted it. The walls are still neutral but the carpet will be bright or dark. I know carpet is not fashionable but we have solid floors and carpet is warmer. In fact the floors are the least ecological part of this house as they are only insulated in the kitchen diner. A good carpet will have to stand in for insulation in this room. The walls are now a very pale grey with a warm tone to it. The name is a marketers dream…for a certain section of society…’Egyptian Cotton’. It is not the colour of calico or unbleached cotton or indeed bleached cotton, mind you I have yet to see a Magnolia flower that is the colour of magnolia paint. ‘Its not magnolia’, I think they could call a paint that and do just as well.
Mainly its done(the room that is,apart from the carpet). I ,being mindful of the age of the children ,asked for everyones views on the carpet,No2 son wants a sample very like the old carpet (stupidly pale and neutral),no1 son cannot see the point and thinks the old carpet should be patched (possibly using the samples from the carpet shop?), husband thinks red would be nice but not so red it looks like we are expecting the Queen. I want aubergine but I know that it too will show the dirt. Like all consultation processes on the modern era it will be a scam, I will go back to the carpet shop and choose what I like, come home and point out a) all their ideas had flaws,yes they were rubbish, b) in two weeks they will have forgotten what colour it is and will have covered it in sweet wrappers anyway.
#150 a painting a day by Alison Warner on her lemon a day art blog
Blueberry has the most extraordinary red and yellow leaves before they drop.
apple leaves in the garden
Pear Precoce de Trevoux -a painting a day
Day One hundred and thirty three
size 5 in x 5 in 13cm x 13cm watercolour on heavy weight rag paper
Today I am considering the subject of my blog, I have been asked to do some Morning Glory, I quite fancy doing an outdoor picture but it will probably rain on me, and then again there are flowers and apples in the garden which I like but haven’t put in a blog painting yet…some days to have plenty of choice seems a luxury and on other days it is too much. I have decided upon one of the stored pears ,you can tell its been stored its gone a little crumpled.
I made a big tray of apple sortofshortbread this morning for the weekend, but it smelt so lovely that when my neighbour popped round to look at the builders progress on their house( getting there) we got stuck into it with a cup of coffee. Apparently her daughter K. reads the blog which is lovely to hear.
The shortbreadsortof is an attempt to pass off more apples on the family in an acceptable form. I made a mix half way between shortbread and pastry using butter and stork and plain flour (1lb flour,3/4 shortening,1/2 sugar,1 cup raisins, two large aromatic eaters diced,pinch of salt…I used the Ellison’s Orange, but Cox or anything suitable for a French Tarte au Pommes would do. It’s quite crumbly but tastes good*. There are many opinions on what should go in a real French Tarte au Pommes, something like Calville Blanc d’Hiver apple is classic, it has a very strong flavour and thin slices cook but do not break up, however modern writers including French recipe sites suggest Golden Delicious or Granny Smith ,these will look right but they will not have the intense flavour of the older apples which are used by better restaurants in France. If you tend to think that Tarte au Pommes is OK but a bit insipid I suggest you seek out one made with the sort of apples around which the recipe was created. I wonder how many old recipes we miss the point of as we do not have access to the right varieties of fruit and vegetable to make them special. Ellison’s Orange is actually a cross between a French Calville Blanc d’Ete and an English Cox so it probably is a good candidate for a proper Tarte au Pommes. The apple can seem dry as soon as it starts to overripen , but that I think is the sort of characteristic required.
Last night I put apples in the salad and in the pudding and the night before I made Bolognese sauce with fresh garden tomatoes ( they thought it was marvellous…no of course they didn’t they moaned that it was different from the standard brew).
Method for recipe if you would like to try:
Put the flour and the shortening and the salt into a food processor, blitz until it is mixed and starting to stick together in lumps.
Mix in the raisins and the diced apple, press into a lined tray bake for half an hour in a medium oven or until it is firm and beginning to brown in places. Cut up when nearly cool and eat, but you could guess that bit.
#133 a painting a day by Alison Warner on her lemon a day art blog
Three purple figs in a bowl – a painting a day
size 6 in x 6 in 15cm x 15cm watercolour on heavy weight rag paper
Yesterday was a very strange day indeed, the world wobbled a bit and everything seemed less sure and less pleasant.
No.1 son did not seem keen on going to school. This was a worrying change. In the car park I saw a letter in his bag which he tried to hide. Snatching it I found it was a handwritten note with a derogatory comment about him. It had been used as the name for a quiz team by somebody he knows from his previous school. I started to steam from the ears at this point. However the school seemed willing to deal with it. Later waiting for him to come out of the school I saw two boys knock another off his bike so that one of them could pummel him with his fists and then the kicking started…I can’t abide this sort of thing so went and broke up the fight, it’s amazing what shouting really loudly does…it worked on huge vicious baboons in the Okavango Delta, it works on teenagers. Later in the Co-op the staff were all in a twitter as there was a drunk returning for a second confrontation. At least there seemed to be some will on the part of the school to deal with issues and find out what was happening- I was spoken to by two members of staff.
I am shortly going to drown in apples , the wind is starting to bring down the cookers and the delicious but shortlived Ellison’s Orange are also blowing off. The last apples on the early tree are now bright red and shiny, I picked them all. They are very sweet. It was cold enough in the garden that a jacket was necessary; I suspect that if the dessicator wasn’t pumping out a little heat all the time the house would start to feel cold. I need things to cool a bit so that the cooking apples will get cool in their storage boxes in the shed.
The market had these plump sweet figs so with a little Serrano ham I had a simple starter which pleased me (if no-one else). As a still life I thought they would be set off by the welsh bowl with wild drippy glaze. I think that did work. It would be good to have the bowl at eye level to show off its glazing in another composition.
#127 a painting a day by Alison Warner on her lemon a day art blog
Lily lily rose – a painting a day
size 6 in x 6 in 15cm x 15cm watercolour on heavy weight rag paper
The hunt for this year’s bumper crop of ceps has taken up rather more time than usual. On a normal year, you go out and come back with a few bits and bobs content to have had a good walk. This year a short walk can yield two hours of cleaning and slicing.
That and the start of the school term is my feeble excuse for not blogging much this week. I feel a sense of having got out of rhythm, of getting a little off centre. On the plus side the jars of beautiful dried ceps are quite cheering. Yesterday we feasted on Parasol mushrooms which have to be one of my favourites, their rich nutty taste just goes so well in a proper fry-up. I also raided the freezer for chicken carcases (the remains of several months of Sunday roasts) and made a chicken stock so that I can quickly make cream of chicken and wild mushroom soup. The chives have regrown fresh new leaves so the soup was filled with snipped chives to give the onion taste and slivers of celery to increase the colour and taste.
One evening returning to the car I spotted some pale toadstools under some trees, they were nothing to get excited about but once I was under the trees my eyes adjusted to the low light levels and I saw the biggest cep I have ever found in edible condition. It weighed 1lb 10oz and was a good eight inches across the cap. An unusually disappointing walk had turned to a legendary experience.
There are a lot of other fungi out there this year , we think we have found The Miller and have checked that the spore print is pink….but as there are near identical poisonous species around and divided opinion on how good it is to eat ,we gave it a miss. The recommendation is to spore print check every one you eat before cooking it…. good grief get a life, get a cep- it’s easier.
The flowers in todays painting are a gift handed on; one of my neighbours had a birthday shortly before going away so I was bequeathed her splendid flowers. There were carnations and lilies and roses in addition to what looked like some sort of gentian.
The sheer numbers of apples that have been uneaten and are past their best forced my hand and I decided to help the school lunch situation by making a tray of apple cake and, as I tend to avoid cake due to the egg in it, I also made a flapjack using pecan nuts and muscavado sugar. Both turned out well.
#125 a painting a day by Alison Warner on her lemon a day art blog
Eat me said the giant mushroom.
Ceps for tea – a painting a day
size 8 in x 12 in 20cm x 30cm watercolour on heavy weight rag paper
There are two sorts of fungus, no three, there are those that are interesting because you can eat them, there are those that are interesting because they look extraordinary, and then there are the bbj’s (boring brown jobs ) that are just not interesting in any way, well not to me.
It’s like bird watching, the bbj’s are quite common but owing to their nondescript brownness they are at once boring to look at and difficult to identify. I did a lot of bird watching when I lived in the prospecting camp in Botswana (there was not a lot of entertainment laid on), but I knew that I was not a serious twitcher because I couldn’t be bothered to nail all the boring birds just to increase my list of sightings. I was more than happy to take a daily look at the pair of white faced owls that lived in the knob thorn tree over the tent, and to follow the squabbling buffalo weavers soap opera type existence lower down the same tree. I likewise know my limitations with mushrooms.
Returning to fungi, today I offer a painting of the beautiful sculptural ceps, they boast spectacular curves of the sort mostly found on women with large hips and bums. The photograph is of the more sinister and lumpy boletes that were in the lawn. These come up every year but there are more this year. Thinking about it they would have made a good subject to catch the eye of the judges for the Threadneedle prize had they been growing on an urban dual carriage way.
#124 a painting a day by Alison Warner on her lemon a day art blog
These would grace the mantelpiece of Fungus the Bogeyman, I had to remove them as they were big enough to trip over and the lawn mower would have been ill on them.
These are DIY dads DIY new tomato varieties.
It looks as though someone has inserted a pink LED into this one.
Weirwood – a painting a day
NFS as too pale A4 watercolour on heavy weight rag paper
Today’s painting is the sketch I started on Bank Holiday Monday. It was a very fast picture of a changing sky and the landscape beneath it. Hats off to Turner and Constable, because they really made this sort of view look easy to do. It is not easy to do. It was very pale and gappy , I have worked on it to improve that but still find its got some good parts and some weak bits.
It is not for sale as it is such an imperfect piece. From a long way off the sunbeams look OK but close to they look lumpy.
I spent today driving , No1 son to school, husband to station, Mother from London,No2 son to the uniform shop (exchange for larger size required) and the post office.
DIY Dad has installed a red flashing loo seat downstairs….have warned mother in case she gets a visual shock….let’s not think about the possibility real electric shocks to the undercarriage.
Alison
#123 a painting a day by Alison Warner on her lemon a day art blog
Lemon a day 
