Archive
Portland rose–a painting a day
SOLD size 3 in x 4.5 in 8cm x 12cm watercolour on heavy weight rag paper
Today I picked two and a half pounds of strawberries with help from No2 son. No1 son was tying himself in knots with quadratic equations. I know I used to be good at these but I can’t remember how without more concentration than I have to spare. Luckily for all of us his father is very good at maths. I had no problems with maths at O level as our teacher got us through the syllabus a year early and then made us do every paper from 1952 to the previous year; the exam was in no way terrifying after that marathon. Miss Delaney was tiny, a reformed nun and so Irish she had had to learn English at school as a second language. Her hero was Pythagoras who, she told us, had been a methodical thinker and she wanted us gels to be like him and think methodically. She had never got her tongue round the’ th’ sound and so what she asked us to do was to” tink metodically” She had a wonderful kind but sharp sense of humour in addition …she did need it with us.
Today’s picture is also tiny- about life size, it’s the lovely round or rather spherical (maths, it gets to you) buds of the Portland Rose. This is an old rose with a very bushy shape. It has a lovely smell and it loves the clay soil here, it has just got fatter and fatter.
I went into Burgess Hill today and visited some open studios, they were very kind and friendly and there was some good work there. I especially liked the felted image of the sky after the planes started flying again in Crescent Road and the lovely wooden bowls that had been turned at another house opposite. The houses had been busy today and yesterday; I only got round four but enjoyed meeting them all. It seems most places near here have open studio events but not here. Could I face having an open studio, could my family? I think on the whole it’s a very noble thing to do and pretty brave.
Alison
#69 a painting a day by Alison Warner on her lemon a day art blog
Geraniums in the half moon bed,in the foreground G.Clarkei Kashmir white and purple,in the middle G.Patricia and all over the place G.pyranaicum.The taller pink flowers are the fluffy heads of Thalitricum aquilegifolium,the maroon is an aquilegia. This bed was dug out and planted up April/May last year.
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 