Back from France this evening, can't tell you how wonderful it was to sit in the sun every day and not worry about the weather getting cold, or wet, or both. I have posted the drawings I did there and hope to show you my many photos during the week. Have to check on the garden now, noticed my budlia bloomed while i was away and some of my black currants are ready for picking. looking forward to catching up during the week :-)

Art Sunday; Sketches from France

I arrived back in my house at about 6 this evening.
I know its a bit late for Art Sunday, and I didn't prepare any thing for this week before I left, but what I have done, is practise my drawing while I've been away.
And here they are. 
I've posted them in the order I drew them. I believe I see an improvement in my drawing as the week progressed.
I've had a wonderful time,
taken loads and loads of photos,
all of  which will all be posted eventually,
but for now
...............my drawings.

Song saturday; King of the Road.

I used to love this song, its so old, I can't remember the last time I heard it. It seems like an appropriate song to post just before I leave for my little holiday.

Art Sunday; Koi

Japanese Koi by Azrael-Nekhbet

Its very late/ early morning, and I should be in bed. Tomorrow I’m off to my sisters in France for a couple of weeks. Last time I was there was Easter and she had just bought a whole lot of assorted goldfish for her garden. What I remember most about that holiday is happily wandering around her pond, netting fish, swapping fish from one pond to another and setting up display tanks to show off the best of the fish. Which is why I thought before I leave, a quick Art Sunday post devoted to the beautiful Koi would be appropriate. It’s a little early but  better than not at all. Enjoy the Koi.....................
    

   Koi Symmetry by celestriastars

Both of the above from
 http://www.arted4life.com/nature-art/koi-fish-drawings

  These three below are by Susan Rose

   These three are from here all from here

http://lpkaster.com/koipaintings.html

and this is a Japanese drawing from here

http://janzaremba.com/blog/index.php

 

Africa an the radio. just pottering, have computer on doing virus checks etc, have radio on in background................became drawn into some sort of 'phone in' thing on the radio .............sighhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh so many people phoning in and saying stuff like 'sick and tired of being asked to give to africa', very sad but why is it our responsibility to keep bailing them out? ', reason for the famine is nothing to do with us, they have too many children', it's always happened in africa its natural, its the way they live, its because of corruption in their own country', the list is endless.. there was one woman trying to reason with these ignorant people, but none of them would listen, they ridiculed her. What a bloody sad world we live in, what bloody awful people we share this country and our planet with.

Yayyyyyyyyyyyyy remember this http://forgetmenot525.multiply.com/photos/album/291/France_The_House_and_Gardens two more sleeps and I'm back there :-)

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh headach totally gone now, good days work in the garden, I'm clean, paint free and ready for bed, well deserved rest I think :-)

Garden 2011 no13, Update on the painting situation.

Update on the painting

By midday I’d managed a few hours sleep, the headache was under control, the sun was shining and I knew I couldn’t miss the opportunity to carry on with the painting. Outside painting can only be done when its not raining, not even a little bit damp and preferably when the sun is shining to speed up the drying process. We don’t get an awful lot of days like that in Scotland, so when perfect painting conditions occur, you have to go for it. My iron gate is a disaster, it needs doing again after yesterdays rain but I couldn’t face another day with the gloss paint, not after yesterday.  

This cheeky chappie spent the afternoon stealing my red currants, I would rather have harvested them myself but I guess providing food for the birds is better than letting them go to waste.  No sign of the baby thrush today, I’m hoping that’s a good sign.

Some of the fences and wooden edging was streaky and needed touching up with blue timber paint, but that didn’t take long.

The bulk of my day has been spent with the white masonry paint. It doesn’t smell as horrible as gloss, and it doesn’t give me such a headache, but its equally messy and I find it quite hard to apply. BUT…..I’ve worked long and hard today and think I’ve actually finished with the white paint. I started re-painting all the walls, but then I realised how much paint it would use and how much time it would take and decided to just touch up the bits that had flaked or suffered frost damage.
Most of my day has been spent on fiddly bits. The little white kerb stone on the edge of my garden is now white. I didn’t even know it was there until I had the hedge removed. While I was painting the fence I decided a white kerb stone would show off my new fence perfectly.
The old tiles around the pond were broken and flaky. That happened the first winter, I learnt that interior tiles are not designed to withstand the Scottish winter with its frost, ice and storms and now the whole lot are covered in a couple of coats of external masonry paint. Hopefully that will survive the winter intact.

I built a small breeze block edge along the bed where all the fruit canes are, that had a couple of coats and looks much better for it.
I’ve also made a little corner by the gate to keep the recycle bins tidy. They kept getting shoved around the garden and never seemed to land in the same place twice, they have a home all of their own now which I’m sure will keep the garden much tidier.
When I first painted every thing white a couple of years ago, I never did get around to painting the inside of the steps, until today. That was quite hard work because my walls are textured and its really hard to get the paint into all the little pits and lumps. Once the first coat is on its not too bad but today, it was starting from scratch on the steps. It took forever.
On to my next years corner flower bed. Actually, it’s a big pile of upside down turf, covered in black bags, that I’m hoping will rot down over the winter. We didn’t know what to do with the turf when we dug up part of the grass for the veg patch. So we piled it all up in the corner and hoped it would rot down over the winter. I built a little wall to keep all the earth in place and now that little wall……………is white.
Something else I didn’t get around to doing last year was painting the original corner flower bed, but now it’s done.

It’s a good feeling to know I’ve cleared away the timber paint, cleared away the masonry paint and only have the gloss painting left to do. 

Once that’s done I’ll have to go buy some more concrete floor paint to repaint concrete slabs. Hopefully all of this will be completely finished before school starts again.
I'm still covered in white paint, I look like a snowman,  I have bits of white paint flaking off me and drifting all over the room. I have white in my hair, white under my fingernails, white all over my clothes,  if I don't go get cleaned up every thing will be covered in white.

have had the headache from hell, unable to sleep, stayed awake gazing out of the window and playing around here. Now its tomorrow already and I have to try to sleep.............my head hurts.

Garden 2011, no 12

Garden 2011 no 12

Baby birds, the water butt
and paintings fences.

This little chap is a young thrush,

He seems to be living in my garden. I don’t think he can fly properly and I find myself getting very concerned for his safety. He isn’t afraid of me and allows me to get quite close before hopping away, which is lovely for me but terribly dangerous for him. I'm afraid in case he is exposed and a neighbourhood cat passes by.


Or in case one of the seagulls takes a liking to him. He has been hanging around the garden for a couple of days and still shows no sign of flying away.

 I know the life of young fledglings hangs in the balance, only a fraction of the eggs lay ever grow into mature birds.

Knowing something intellectually doesn’t always tally with what you feel emotionally. I hope he’s Ok ……………….

This is my water butt.

I’ve had it stored in my shed since last year. The problem is/was…………..I have no downpipe in my small garden to attach it too. I have spent hours thinking of ways around this problem. I considered leaving the top off and collecting water as it fell. I didn’t go for that idea because it would fill with mosquito larvae in the summer. I thought of ways to bring a downpipe to the water butt or ways to take the water butt to a downpipe………..but none of them were workable solutions.
And then I thought of this. I upturned the lid, drilled a hole in the middle and secured the whole thing with garden string.
The upturned lid now serves as a ‘funnel’ to catch the rain water and feed it into the butt. I considered using a sealer and fixing the lid permanently, but then I thought about what could happen in the winter when the water freezes, expands and splits the water butt wide open.





So, here is my modified water butt, ready to collect rainwater from my garden, lid secured to the butt, butt secured to the wall, all  with bits of string and ingenious design.

The last couple of days have been spent painting.

I finished all the fences, all the edging and both bird houses, all painted with a fresh coat of blue timber protection paint.

I finished the  last of the edging yesterday but to my horror, when I got up this morning I saw  it has been raining over night and quite a lot of the blue paint  had streaked. The weather seemed settled this afternoon and I decided to press on and gloss paint the iron gates. I figured I could touch up the wooden edging at a later date.

I hate gloss painting, as soon as I open the tin I get the headache from hell (even in the open air), I get covered in blue gooey sticky smelly mess and even manage to walk paint through the house. But it has to be done so there I sat, getting bluer and stickier by the second until the last rail on the gate was finished. I heaved a sigh of relief and started clearing the paint away…………..and right on queue the heavens opened and we had another downpour. The thing that really upsets me is the thought of having to do it all again. I will have to wait and see how bad it looks in the morning, if it’s stopped raining by then.

Art Sunday; Picasso's Blue paintings.

This weekend has been ‘blue’ for me.

I have been painting ‘blue’ fences and edging in the garden, my music choice was ‘Moody Blues’ and now my mood is ‘blue’ because the weather has changed AGAIN and the rain is in the process of ruining my blue fences.


Therefore……………..Picasso’s ‘blue’ paintings seem very apt.


Found this rather nice write up on a poster site and  loved the way these paintings were described as ''These intensely beautiful yet deeply melancholy paintings''


 http://www.thefineartcompany.co.uk/figurative/fig-2.htm



Pablo Picasso's Blue Period paintings are some of the most beautiful works of modern art that you will ever see. Pablo Picasso's Blue Period spanned the years of 1901 to 1904, when Pablo Picasso first moved to Paris.


These intensely beautiful yet deeply melancholy paintings and drawings were a prelude to Pablo Picasso's drastically different and vibrantly coloured Cubist paintings for which he was famed.

Classic Blue Period paintings such as The Old Guitarist, The Tragedy, Child with Dove  and his classic studies of

Harlequins and acrobats are among his most famous 'blue' works'.

And for those who want to really get to grips with his ‘blue’  period, you could do a lot worse than read up on wikipedia.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Picasso%27s_Blue_Period

This last one has always been my favourite Picasso paintings,
its simply delightful.