Some of you may recall from last week’s post that, in the true tradition of poor artists, crafts or tradespeople, I was placing the blame of my recent frustrations firmly on my choice of paper. I was pleased then to receive a new supply of Saunders Waterford. In the past I’ve used the ‘regular Saunders… Read More
As some readers may have noticed, in recent week’s my metaphorical painting head has dropped a little bit as I’ve struggled to find my form. My paintings have felt more like a struggle in which I’ve been battling against paint, paper and brushes rather than me working harmoniously with them. As the last time I… Read More
I did go through a stage of reading a lot of Steinbeck books many years ago. I particularly recall The Grapes of Wrath, Cannery Row and Tortilla Flat, however, it’s probably a sign of my advancing years and declining memory that I can’t actually recall many of the details! Should anyone have alighted on this… Read More
Well, my much-anticipated camping trip to Wales ended up slightly different to how I imagined it! For the first time in as long as I can remember we let the weather beat us. We still went to Wales with every intention of pitching the tent but the forecast was so unremittingly bleak that we decided… Read More
After returning from holiday with an almost a full sketchbook I was really looking forward to turning some of them into larger paintings. I decided to start on a painting based on this sketch, which I’d notionally titled ‘A train runs through it.’ I was pleased with this sketch, in particular, I really liked the… Read More
In last week’s brief post from France, I mentioned the mixed blessings of the remoteness of our location and its consequent lack of phone signals or wi-fi and such like. Here’s a very quick video that I hope might give some flavour of the splendour of the location, and also why getting a signal was… Read More
Our campsite is idyllically situated in a forest within a national park. This is wonderful for so many reasons, however access to wi-fi or indeed any form of signal isn’t one of them! Consequently, this post(card) will be very brief and along the lines of ‘having a great time, weather beautiful, wish you were here!’… Read More
Bonjour mes Amis – (and that, rather embarrassingly pretty much exhausts my knowledge of the French language!). Hopefully, as you read this, I’ll be in the Dordogne region of France sheltering in the shade somewhere equidistant between my watercolours and sketchbook and a nice cold drink. More realistically of course I’ll be hot, sweaty and… Read More
I travelled north over the weekend to visit my mum, 93 years young and a totally remarkable woman. On this occasion, I travelled solo which, once I’d done my chores, also afforded me a little time to spend painting. Sadly the weather was a little grey and the light quite flat for the duration of… Read More
Looking at my offerings for this week’s post, I’m reminded of a definition of stupidity that goes along the lines of: Stupidity is doing the same thing again and again and expecting a different result Now I don’t want to suggest I’m stupid (even if it does sometimes feel that way) but last week I… Read More
