Archive
Third attempt: those primulas again……
5″ x 7″
So then I did it again and although I thought that this one was a bit out of control I probably like it best….its a softer version. It’s painted in daylight …back lit which is technically not sensible.
Life is a bit odd at the moment there are lots of things going on but having lost my aunt I find myself a bit adrift mentally. There are no discernable gaps in the day, not usually a sense of freed up time, more an accusing pile of deferred tasks from when I was too pressed to do them-which now I can do them ( in theory) are not appealing to me. I sorted through my purse which was bursting and failed to find what I need ( a receipt ) I did however find all sorts of oddments which needed dealing with. I know, deeply unimpressive use of a woman’s time I also started stitching a seam which had gone.In my defence I seem to have caught a monumental cold at the Viking exhibition on Monday. I wandered into one of my favourite shops near the British Museum, Cornelissen & Son’s colourman in Great Russell Street….its very little changed from the Seventies (and it looked Victorian then); my school art teacher sent me there to buy a portfolio( which is still in use!) I have never bought loose pigment to work with but this is where to get it should you need to.
Yesterday was sunny and glorious and I was stuck in Kent with No.2 son on a course….I spent the day at a National Trust garden sketching. Now that I know would have been impossible before, I would have had to make cover arrangements and have been worrying about how they would work. The sketches are both unfinished and as I took one off the block to start a second, in order to alter it I have to tape it onto a board to prevent it cockling. Cockling is a word that resonates with Cornelissen’s. To see what I mean look at Making a Mark:- http://makingamark.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/Artist-Quality-Pigments-Artists-Colourmen.html
#221
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
Muscari and Primula in green vase – a painting a day
http://www.etsy.com/shop/lemonaday 11 inches by 6 inches, 27cmx15cm, watercolour on heavy weight rag paper
Yesterday was a missed day, too tired even to moan about anything
Today was meant to be the warm one so like the suckers that we are we invited people over for a barbeque….so it rained for the first time in weeks, then the wind blew a bit, then the sun shone a bit and I thought maybe…then it went in and looked sulky; gave up the barbeque idea. We did go out and find a bluebell wood which was glorious and scattered with white wood anemones. In this wood however some of the anemones are pink flushed, which you don’t always see.
Have done another version of the painting from Friday as I wanted to get more of the lovely little vase which came from a very elderly potter Ursula Mommens. She died earlier this year at the magnificent age of 101.
I bought the vase from the pottery where she worked in the last seven years, so she was in her nineties when she made it. I first bought a piece of hers when I was on a’O’ level geography field trip to the Seven Sisters cliffs; it was a present for my mother .Now I find that Ursula Mommens had worked with Michael Cardew, a well known British potter ,who was married to my school art teacher . She was also a descendant of Charles Darwin. The world is smaller than you think.
Alison
#31 a painting a day by Alison Warner on her lemon a day art blog
Primulas and muscari – a painting a day
this painting is framed and NFS
6”x6”, 15cmx15cm,
watercolour on heavy weight rag paper
This is a funny kind of grape hyacinth with two colours, I love the inky dark lower flower and the way it contrasts with the delicate blue on the top half. If you think these are strange then you should see the wild grape hyacinth in old fields in Greece and Cyprus, they are not even all blue and strangely spiky. I picked the primula from the front where they froth up among the Pulmonaria or lungwort; tomorrow in the sun I will take a picture as that corner of the garden looks good at the moment. The primulas smelt nice in the studio, as soon as you walk out however you catch the whiff of the pear tree…its horrid a chemical doggy sort of smell. The first apple blossom opened today ,now that does have a sweet and fresh smell. This will have to do for today ,as the Geography course work is back again like a bad penny. Alison
#30 a painting a day by Alison Warner on her lemon a day art blog
Lemon a day 