Archive
Blush pears and poppy petals – a painting a day
If you are interested in buying this painting use the link below:
http://www.etsy.com/listing/85812407/blush-pears-with-poppy-petals
size 6 in x 9 in 15cm x 23cm watercolour on heavy weight rag paper
It was eerie and strange today, the whole family disappeared from midday to nine this evening, leaving me to get on with food for Georges funeral and my painting. To emphasis this the sky clouded over and the wind got up making it feel as though there just might be some rain coming …there wasn’t of course.
I half wondered about getting some pickled walnuts to take as my grandmother also came from Portsmouth and she was insistent that you had to have them at a funeral. On the other hand stuffed vine leaves and filo rolls stuffed with feta and olives, courgette tomato and basil will probably suit the modern funeral better.
The lavenders are out in the garden next to the cotton lavenders ,I like the contrast but want to get a plant of the lemon yellow cotton lavender so that I have vibrant and pale in each.
The Colocasia in the bed with the Banana is coming up from the side tubers that I tore off and from last year’s tuber which was hollow and semi-rotten.
Watering is becoming a complete pain in the bottom
#92 a painting a day by Alison Warner on her lemon a day art blog
Red Shirley Poppy – a painting a day
size 7.5 in x 4. in 18cm x 11cm watercolour on heavy weight rag paper
This is beginning to form a body of work, I can look at the ninety pictures and start seeing several different strands; what is interesting is that I can see strands the pictures are not all the same, not consistent as I said but producing so many (for me) shows that there are groups and themes there even when I am making no conscious effort to produce a particular theme.
I picked a poppy yesterday morning which flopped and looked miserable for twenty four hours, today it looked up again so I painted it. The photo shows the bed where the poppies are growing in the morning light.
Today I couldn’t put off defrosting the freezer as someone had left t the door half open and the warm humid air did the rest. It doesn’t matter how careful I am, there is always a portion of loose peas rolling around in the bottom of the drawer. It’s one of those rules like- people who are sick in the street have always eaten carrot and quite often bean sprouts actually.
No1 son went to his grandparents on the train today with his friend. They got there! No disaster occurred! No trains were cancelled! No2 son remembered to go to his guitar lesson!
I discovered something about the taster day at sixth form college…he thought it might be interesting to go and sign up for taster lessons in subjects he hadn’t chosen to see what they were like……he did Geography at one college but assumed it would be the same at the next so avoided it…..so no point of comparison. I wish I had seen that one coming.
Watering? well it’s just fire fighting these days, running from plant to plant finding things that are about to or probably will die from lack of water.
#91 a painting a day by Alison Warner on her lemon a day art blog
Dianthus for the Rainbow Nation – a painting a day
this painting is framed and for sale £50
. size 5 in x 8 in 13cm x 20cm watercolour on heavy weight rag paper
It rained and then it rained some more, but it will be dry for the weekend and it was dry for birthday boy’s barbeque. I am certainly not complaining as the watering was showing up as water on my knee.
It was wonderful to see the winter sunshine in Cape Town and spot how they shifted Gary Linnaker around all the time to get the shots. When No1 son was a baby we went to Cape Town for a long weekend one September (Presidents Day Holiday in Botswana) the queues to get up the mountain on the cable car were huge so we decided to take a stroll up a path, found it went to the top and walked up with the baby in a carrier frame. Amazing place, there’s a different climate on the top even though it’s so close to the town, and the plants…..
The most spectacular things in this garden at the moment are Allium schubertii and the climbing rose William Morris which is heartbreakingly beautiful. It flowers on the corner of the house on the path leading to the front door. I will make an etching from one of the Allium flowers to go with an older steel plate which used an impress of an Allium flower in soft ground (that’s an etching soft ground not boggy flower bed).
I hesitate to mention it but I have not seen a lily beetle here yet this year. The Mina lobata did have a flower which was lily beetle scarlet but something attacked it and it will need to grow back from the base. I have looked for culprits but can find no clear evidence.
One other extraordinary thing, the Nicotianum sylvestris which I neglected to pull up last autumn is sprouting from the base!! I thought it was an annual. The leaves are very strong smelling-tobacco bitter-and no snail has so much as nibbled it. An amazing survivor, it is definitely listed as an annual. It is growing in a bit of a rain shadow so would have been dry for much of the winter and not quite as cold as elsewhere in the garden but I lost things only three foot further out into the same border. N.sylvestris is one of my favourite plants growing about four feet high with hanging flowers of white which perfume the evening air. It is strategically planted near the covered sitting area which can be used for breakfast or a meal on a cooler or even damp evening. Once when some friends were over we sat there drinking coffee in a thunder storm and it was brilliant.
Today we picked three pounds of strawberries. Oh and I slipped and fell over crashing right through the bird netting….damn suffered complete loss of good humour.
Alison
#73 a painting a day by Alison Warner on her lemon a day art blog
Lemon a day 