Archive
Spotted leaf-a painting a day
4″ x 2″ 10cm x 5cm approx
Another in the leaf series. Took a walk today inthe woods , wonderful sunshine cutting across the landscape and reaching right into the woodland. It was warm enough to lift the scent of the Daphne bhuloa allowing it to drift along paths and avenues from where it called me like a siren might a sailor. Silly to plant it next to the wintersweet with its less exotic smell I thought, a mistake I have also made -I realised as I got home.
#191
The Shell- a painting a day
size 5″ x 6″
Hmm I struggled with this. I might yet alter it and take out some of the pencil work.
Found out today that I have a relative ( daughter of my father’s cousin) who also paints and sails, now that is extraordinary as I don’t think when I sailed a lot I ever met another painter. There must be some hereditary tendencies behind our characteristics!
#189
Dried cep- a painting a day
size 4″ x 6″ 12cm x 15cm approx.
These are the little slices of dried cep which make the most fantastic soups, sauces and scrambled egg possible. They are such good quality, being home made , that a slice can be crumbled into scrambled egg just before serving or even just eaten as it is. They have none of the stringy dirty look of the commercial dried cep you see in the supermarket and elsewhere. I like their shape too – an angular folded version of the slices which went into the dessicator.
We have collected about eight kilos of cep in the last ten days, most has been dried as the crop can never be guaranteed and I would hate to run out.
#186
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
Beans-a painting a day/week/month
Day 176a
The runner beans and french beans are coming in now, in the mixture are Red and White beans, Jack Edwards, Selma Zebra and some golden mangetout peas.
Lovely aunt thinks that this painting makes the beans look like evil spotted worms! ” Oh . well.” she said,” keep trying someone might like it!” The point being that if I paint on the spur of the moment I paint what is to hand , not a cute cat because it should sell, not a local view which could be of interest to the village dentists waiting room, just whatever is catching my eye in the time available . In doing this the things that end up in the painting follow short threads which break and reform as life tumbles forward. That, if you like, is the philosophy of this blog.
Bat, Dragon, Brimstone and Barbeque – a painting a day
Day One hundred and seventy one
size 6 in x 8 in, 15cm x 21cm
Today was beautiful. There were no appointments to make, the sun shone and I got some weeding done. I bumped into people in town who could do each other good once they were introduced and I had found that one needed to practice Spanish and one needed to practice English. Lovely aunt was happy and to cap it all DIY Dad got to incinerate food outdoors for the first time this year. We sat out in the garden and watched the sun set as we waited for the food to be cooked. A crescent moon emerged among the peachy coloured cirrus clouds and a bat flew high among the oak trees before the light had even half gone.
This morning I saw at least two brimstone butterflies, possibly a holly blue and later a large brown of some sort. I pulled seedling grass from the garden beds and probably thirty seedling of Hypericum , the garden is infested with self sown Linaria, Aquilegia, Geranium pyrenaicum, Prunella, Verbena bonariensis, Salvia, Verbascum, willow, as well as the usual docks, nettles, creeping buttercup, wood avens and forget-me-not. I leave the forget-me-nots and verbena and some of the others but the Hypericums have to go as do the sedges that sprout up everywhere.
The painting is of a strange fruit , I have never eaten it , I will tell you its like next blog. It is certainly colourful.
The photo shows the sky with a tiny moon.
#171 a painting a day by Alison Warner on her lemon a day art blog
Posy- a painting a week
This is as much painting as I have done this week. its a bright posy of flowers from the supermarket: roses , carnations and phlox.
Lovely aunt did one of the same vase , DIY dad went back to work after mystery illness and No1 son and No2 son hatched a plan to get the password which locks the computer from us; this involved a mini video camera and a reasonbly plausible storyline. Treasures.
#168
Dried Hydrangea – a painting a day
Sold size 9 in x 6 in, 24cm x 15cm
The decorating is nearly done; I needed to get the dust off the stairs and in the process nearly pulled the vacuum cleaner on my head. This was dramatic enough to raise a comment from No1 and No2 who being off school with the snow are clamped to the beanbag behind the infernal games machine. A comment only, they didn’t find it dramatic enough to come and see if I was alright. I obviously need drama lessons. No1 did go out tobogganing and No2 is practicing his Christmas song on the guitar,” I believe in Father Christmas” by Greg Lake. It’s quite hard to sing but surprisingly he wants me to struggle with him on this one. I am better with OTT sweeping dramatic tunes but I am doing my best to manage fairly subtle but heartfelt…..
The snow has been the deepest we have ever seen here, actually the deepest we have ever seen in Sussex, just over a foot or thirty centimetres plus. My neighbour who moved here in 1959 said that there were times when the snow was thigh deep on the short slope down to the main road. Tonight has been a strange sequence. First it went very cold and a fog started to form then the fog vanished and the air got warmer now the rain is starting and the sound of a thaw the dripping and the soft thuds of falling snow have taken over from the self-conscious silence of the snowy nights. They say that later the cloud will clear and the temperature will drop again.
The warm roof (insulation between and over the rafters) is brilliant the central heating goes off at 9.30am and with the help of the wood burner I can manage to keep the temperature at around 19C in most of the house. Running the stove everyday and letting it burn slowly overnight is working, there is a residual warmth in the brick chimney which makes a big difference. Some days I have turned the central heating on for an hour after lunch but generally not even when it is 4 below zero outside.
Speaking of the snow and cold, I went to bash the snow off a thick evergreen tree which can break under the weight of the snow one night, I used the broom and cascades of powdery snow crashed to the ground as twenty sparrows burst from the branches fully indignant and no doubt very resentful.
I managed a painting today, it’s one of my favourite mugs with some of the hydrangea which I dried before it went brown and manky outside.
In the interests of fairness No2 son was dispatched on foot to the supermarket to get his chicken.
#159 a painting a day by Alison Warner on her lemon a day art blog
Coffee cup – a painting a day
NFS size 6 in x 6 in, 15cm x 15cm
The decorating is beginning to make the centre of the house look more finished. DIY Dad has got to some tricky conceptual stuff which involves making neat joints in the skirting board where the corner of the room is an oblique angle with a diagonal descending valley board joining (exposed wooden beam). I have the better grasp of 3D problems and in any case the problem is of my own invention as I designed the extension, so I feel obliged to sweat the angles and help make it work. The extension works as a space and it is, I am sure, structurally sound – but my not being an architect can leave some awkward detailing in the final finish. The valley boards are two immense planks of oak which lace through the room and the room opening off it; from the window the triangle they make can be seen clearly. I love that as it was not part of the aesthetic plan but a structural necessity and the way the oak framer worked, yet it has turned out very pleasing to the eye, well at least my eye.
The meal this evening was some home made burgers that NO2 son made in school, but he then made some lamb and mint burgers when he got home as well, the first ones were veal and sage. They were really very good, he dosn’t cook often but when he does he is very thorough and I’m not just referring to his ability to get every last jar of herbs out of the cupboard. Waitrose sell veal that is not the cruel white stuff but more like the oldfashioned suckler herd veal.
Today’s picture is simply a coffee cup in pencil. I also tried to sketch No2 son at the computer but I did not catch him in a still mood.
#155 a painting a day by Alison Warner on her lemon a day art blog
Berries, Feather, Maple leaf – a painting a day
size 6 in x 9 in, 15cm x 24cm
I found the most extraordinary picture on the web it is by an artist from Myanmar or Burma, Win Pe Myint, he is both a painter and a Botanist as I am. It has, I am sure, a wealth of story in the objects chosen. The postcard in the foreground is Picasso’s ‘ Acrobat with Ball’, it has the most concentrated air of still contemplation I have seen in a picture, and it has a very quiet lemon in there too.
Here is the link:
Yesterdays picture is another in the series of things picked up in this autumn, here are some berries, the feather of a green woodpecker and a distorted maple leaf. I am putting all of these for sale on my Lemonaday-shop as it forms a permanent Gallery. Or rather it should do, having checked the links they all seem to have broken.
No1 son should return today, I dread to think what state he will be in the weather has been foul for the last two days. Still no news could be good news…
153 a painting a day or three a month if you are lucky
Lemon a day 