Archive
More from the Midi
This is a quick watercolour sketch that I love, it is of a bend on the Canal du Midi which was built to provide a short cut from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean Sea 1666-1681. It was lined with plane trees to consolidate the banks making it shady and majestic. Tragically an American disease is now slowly but surely killing the plane trees and whole stretches of the canal are left bare. The colours in this really nail the warmth of the day and the feeling of endless summer. The section in the painting has pine trees on the bank, here a photo of some plane trees:
#216
Lastours the watercolour
This is the view from the Belvedere high up above the village looking over the hillside where all the castles are . The previous sketch was from the café by the stream in the centre of the village where I waited for the boys. It was so hot the masking fluid which I had off loaded from the bag to lighten it exploded in the car…at first I cursed as I thought it had leaked under pressure but actually it had blown a pea sized lump of glass from the shoulder of the bottle. Awful mess which stank but then dried into peelable rubber and neatly cleaned out the little crevices in the dashboard of dust and general grot……latex can be useful.
The weather in France was extreme, there were days of intense heat, sudden swirling winds like desert dust devils and then on the way home a ferocious thunder storm which we drove through for at least 40 kilometres. The other cars were sheltering under the motorway bridges and last weekend I found out why; that day friends of relatives had two windscreens and their roof tiles smashed by tennis ball sized hail stones only 10-20 km away from the motorway we were on. Perhaps the sheltering cars were listening to their traffic news and following advice.
After driving through the terrible storm for some time I learnt a new word “Orages”, it was on the motorway signs but I had to look it up in the dictionary, duh! you don’t need to tell drivers they are in a thunderstorm when its hammering the car roof with ice and the lightening strikes every 10 seconds all around.
#214
Old limonade
A ten minute sketch done to a chorus of “we are hungry can you hurry up?”.
It’s Mont St Michel last summer.
framed SOLD
#209
Parrotmania- a painting a day
Click here to bid size 10in x 6in, 26cm x 15cm
There is a collision of spring and summer in the garden at the
moment to the joy of anyone who likes a “splash of colour”, and the despair of
the person who is trying to make a colour scheme that works without too much
last minute tweaking. Lovely aunt is enjoying it…but she is moving soon so will have to come and view when she comes over for coffee.
The last of the Narcissi are still clinging to the stems that bore
them like so much paper. The tulips are also over the parrot here the very
last. Most years the artists houses in Brighton’s Festival have a brilliant
display of tulips lined up for May Open Houses…they will have finished before
the first house inspector crosses the threshold, sorry art enthusiast.
In flower now are:
Thyme
Chives
Aquilegia
Roses (mostly hedging and climbers)
Hellebores
Erigeron ,the wall daisy. Many lost in the winter.
Forget-me –not
Viola cornuta
Rhodedendron
Peony
Geranium x6
Foxglove apricot
Bluebell
Bugle
Lilacx2
Euphorbiax2
Hemerocallis
Clematis x3
Iris x2
Pulmonaria
Candelabra primula ( had a hard winter)
Italian Arum
Solanum crispum
Scarlet Honeysuckle
Parrot Tulip
Petunia
Veronica trailing and gentianoides
Jacobs Ladder
Scarlet Geum+++
Delphinium
Thrift or Seapink
Perennial Cornflower
Blueberry
Love lies Bleeding
Tiarellax2
Solomon’s Seal
Vibernum x2
Omphaloides
Saxifragex23
Nigella
I could list the weeds too as they are getting on with it….but it’s
too depressing.
#174 a painting a day by Alison Warner on her lemon a day art blog
Tiarella and the new Geranium all grown from seed.
This stuff is mostly self sown.
You could not invent these they are just beyond imagination.
Lemon a day 
