Pot study #12
12.5 x 12.5cm; 5 x 5"
.005 Micron pen

I have been busy converting much of our dried up old lawn to a vegie patch and today I was able to harvest nearly a whole meal - basil, 3 sorts of squash, radishes and shallots. I made pesto, briefly stir-fried the vegies, tossed in some cooked chickpeas and then slathered on the pesto - dinner - so delicious!

I stubbed my toe quite often but it was worth it to feel the world beneath my feet. Maybe, if I had been allowed sneakers...

EDM Challenge #199 Draw a toe

Some Sundays, Daddy got up early and shot rats foraging in the compost heap. Other Sundays, he refused to get up, saying he was feeling bilious - something in the water. Hmmn - tainted water only on Sundays?

After Church, we were allowed to choose something at the sweetie shop. If Granny was with us, she forbad bubblegum and gobstoppers. "All that masticating makes you look vulgar," she said. 'Masticating' is a very vulgar-sounding word, I thought.
When we got home, the paper and comics had arrived. "Do your jobs and then you can have it"... I sometimes took mine up in the loft and cosied into the pirate chest. I had Wonderland, then Treasure, then Look and Learn. My brother got Beano and then Mad.

These are the pieces I did in the second semester of a water colour class, one evening a week with lots of homework.
The purpose of the first piece was to experiment with guache, mixed quite thickly. We used black and white photocopies of flower photos to provide form and relative values. We combined flowers, leaves etc from several photos, as we pleased. Using black and white guache, we first did a grey scale and then light, medium and dark plant sections. Next, mixing permanent rose and ultramarine, we did a purple value scale. Mixing the purple with cadmium yellow we produced a yellow to ochre value scale and painted the plant strip on the left. Finally, we had to use the range of purples and yellow/ochre to do the piece on the right.

In the next piece, above, we were to combine guache with watercolour which we had studied last semester. First, we laid sheets of A4 paper on top of our stretched watercolour paper and spattered with watercolour. Removing the A4 paper, we had white, paper-shaped spaces in which we had to use watercolour to paint copies of pages removed from art catalogues. Then we had to use thickish guache to paint a variety of things on top. It's meant to be from the perspective of looking down but I think I have several perspectives here so it looks a little odd.

In the third piece, above, we began by spattering with watercolour onto a wet surface, then drew direct with nib and ink from 'forest floor findings' that we brought in. Then we used guache to colour some items and watercolour to do shadows. I haven't finished this one - nature studies out of context aren't quite my thing.

Finally, we had to combine watercolour, guache, pen and ink and watercolour pencils in a 'cupboard' piece, one door open and the other closed with a poster or similar on it. In the cupboard, we had to depict a 'collection'. I chose some of my son's trophies, with the idea that once successfully caught in a picture, we could throw the gaudy things away - he took the best trophies away when he left home - these are the 'seconds'. There are also some of his war hammer creatures and 'Potato', a soft toy I won at a fair five minutes before my son broke his arm playing on a bouncy castle. So Potato became the hospital friend but now, after this immortalization, I think he too, is headed for the bin. We were shown how to do one point perspective - all the interior lines of the cupboard, except the hoizontal floor and ceiling lines inside the cubbies, run to the centrepoint of the whole rectangle - then had to do the collection with watercolour pencil, mixing from primary colours. The door is guache with pencil over the top to provide the pattern and the calender is done with pen and watercolour.

I have learnt a lot about the various watercolour mediums in this class, though the style is way more precise than I expected. I still would like to learn 'loose' but must finish my memory paintings first.

I was sketching at the National Botanic Gardens today and of course lots of people stopped to have a look - including 5 1/2 year old Daniel and his Mum. Daniel did this self portrait in my sketchbook. I sketched a wonderful variety of Spring flowers in Kerry's Moly for the Moly exchange - here

St Andrews was divided into 'town' - butcher, baker, candlestick-maker, tinker, tailor... and 'gown' - university people - which included us. Some 'town' people were sort of honourary 'gown' but I knew very few 'town' people. Sometimes, the 'town-school' boys spat on me as I passed by on the way to my school. Us and them...
Grouse - pheasant - peasant - I thought they all referred to poor Scots in the highlands whom the English tried endlessly to exterminate. So when I heard ... I wondered... Just as well we are 'university'.

Then one day, while reading, I noticed on a page that one 'pheasant' had an 'h' and another, not. I looked it up in my dictionary and reality dawned! What relief that I never asked - everyone would have laughed at me.