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Spring flowers in a Wedgwood coffee can (1)
The little cup was delivered by mistake once,we told the supplier- who replaced it with the item ordered, and then said that as it was too expensive to post back we should keep it….at which point customs and excise contacted us for the VAT due on it as an imported item. In reality it had no value to us or to the supplier who did not think it worth the return postage. However the revenue insisted on a notional value and we were obliged to pay tax on that. I put some primulas in it with some forget-me-nots. There are three attempts to paint this all have their merits and all have their faults.
This is what I started with:
#219
Cup – a painting a day
6inx7in 15cmx17cm watercolour on heavy weight rag paper
Today we had a really good breakfast with fresh croissant made from ready to roll dough. We had some with chocolate in some plain and some with chocolate and pear. I have never made croissant from scratch and while I am convinced that with the right instructions it could be achieved I feel life at the moment is too short.
Later we put the roof back on the fruit cage; it came down in the sticky snow that fell in January. I suppose we were lucky the fruit bushes were saved from snapping off by the mesh collecting the snow. There is a fabulous set on the red and blackcurrants and more gooseberries than we have had so far.
Then after a hasty lunch, I went off to Brighton and got round five Artists Open Houses, there were some houses where what was on offer was good but too familiar, at others, the garden was almost the main attraction. From the back window of one I looked into a neighbours garden where a terrace was covered in white chippings but they turned gradually to pink the closer they got to the flowering cherry over the wall. The fallen petals were the same size as the stones so the effect was seamless.
I think there were pictures of hares in about four of the five houses and they seemed particularly repetitive, making me wonder if there are so few hares around that everyone is using the same reference photo’s from the internet. After all what percentage of the population have seen hares boxing in the spring? I imagine very few,yet it is an often repeated image.
My friend enjoyed the sculptures from Zimbabwe in Westdene, AfricArt.The garden was full of people chipping away at stone blocks, sanding almost finished work and waxing finished work. There was an opalstone statue inside of two women holding fish that was just exquisite.
I came back and did a quick sketch of last night’s coffee cup.
Alison
#51 a painting a day by Alison Warner on her lemon a day art blog
Lemon a day 