Archive
Columbine deep blue – a painting a day
http://www.etsy.com/shop/lemonaday. size 7.5 inx 4in 19cmx11cm
Today I recovered from the weekend; I also went round the edges of the flower beds in the front garden and excavated the mess a rat had made of my compost bin area. The wretched creature had found it difficult to get into the plastic composter so it had burrowed under the concrete pavers that it was sat on sending them squiffy and opening up cracks through which it had presumably got compost to eat. I will have to put a harder mixture under the slabs or I could coil up the remains of the boundary barbed wire to make it harder to dig out. I heard of one farmer getting desperate and making concrete full of shards of broken glass to stop rats trying to chew their way in to his feed store. There must be rats and rats because I usually do not have much trouble with the compost, ie a plastic composter bin does the job but when people start to talk about rats in places where there is a lot of food stored it’s unbelievable , they will try and chew through cans of food I am told.
While I was going round the edge of the flower bed I cut this columbine or aquilegia by mistake. They are very pretty but once you have one it’s too easy to have too many : unlike the forget-me-nots they are not easy to remove as they have a thick tap root.
If the time or energy only reaches a short way the most productive thing to do is to make all the edges look distinct and neat. Then once the grass is cut and the plants in the bed fill it well the eye is at least 90% satisfied. Next time I should do a before and after photo and time it.
Alison
#52 a painting a day by Alison Warner on her lemon a day art blog
Lemons on a blue cloth – a painting a day
5″x6″, 12.5cmx15cm, watercolour on paper for sale on Etsy’ lemonaday’ shop
This is a blog of two or three parts, it will have a painting every day or a drawing or a print.
There will be pictures of the food I buy or cook and of the garden or things from the garden.
This is where I spend my time ; on the phone to the school about teachers who persist in not marking homework, in the studio trying to forget about unfinished GCSE course work , in the garden trying to tackle the weeds and the grubs, in the kitchen, either making something that will do, or in the kitchen enjoying making something different. Before you ask, no, it’s none of it idyllic or remotely perfect. I could make it look/sound that way by being really selective, but I shall try not to.
When I write something I will most likely be rude about things or people, as it is what I do best, and it seems like a really good opportunity. After all there is such a wealth of stuff to complain about.
Please do not expect consistency or a constant stream of lemons, cherries and mandarins…have you noticed they are rarely satsumas when in an oil painting? Why are satsumas not artfully significant? Bananas do not feature much in fine art either, would Cezanne, had he had a good supply of cheap bananas, have painted them? In fairness, I think many of the painting-a-day lemons are lovely and I am amazed that there is such a voracious world-wide appetite for lemons in oils and similar themes. Lucky artists who are able to work like that. However when the portfolio consultant looked at mine she said…”do you have schizophrenia?” in other words I don’t do consistency. Sometimes I sketch, sometimes I print, sometimes I doodle and sometimes I do a cracking great painting. Annoying that if I would/could only do a lemon a day I could possibly be an e-bay millionaire instead of an overweight, cash-strapped, mother of provoking teenagers, with inky fingers and muddy shoes. Perhaps I should try the lemon diet…
Today I painted two lemons on a blue cloth in watercolour just to see what they came out like…ok. Tomorrow I shall find something from the garden and also get some prints ready to sell. I shall continue to chase the deputy head who has not marked my sons course work since at least January 25th when he wrote to us complaining it had not been handed in…it was on his desk all the time we discovered after we had had the house turned upside down and the mother of ‘don’t lose your homework ever again’ rows. When I was at school I spent my time hiding from teachers who were chasing me for homework which I had not done , now I am chasing teachers for my sons homework they have not marked. I suppose the teachers are from my generation and we are all monumental skivers.
Alison
#1 a painting a day by Alison Warner on her lemon a day art blog
Lemon a day 