Painting again

After a lovely time at the hospice yesterday, today I sat down again to play with the paints. The works in progress are now completed and if not great works of art they have been enjoyable to complete - even if there has been a fair bit of swearing over the windmill sails!

And the one I finished at the hospice yesterday:

Pretty morning

After a couple of hours sleep in the chair yesterday afternoon, a few hours dabbling with watercolours and a good night's sleep I've woken to one of those pretty late summer morning, no nausea and a better frame of mind - thanks for bearing with me.

Works in progress from yesterday evening based on photos taken a couple of years ago:

 

Today is hospice day and I'll probably be resuming work on this one based on part of the hospice garden as well as a chance for a bit of reflexology and tai chi.

 

Thanks for stopping by.

Dabbling done for this week

As the extreme heat has largely stopped play outside today I finished off the watercolour pictures I have been dabbling with this week. I ended up painting a second version of the landscape as I managed to flick ink onto the first and wasn't sure how well I could cover it up, so here I give you the finished articles.

This is the original - as you can see I attempted the bird after all - not quite as bad as my first few attempts but definitely more cartoony than I'd been hoping for!

The second one was done more or less on one sitting and is definitely more "inspired by" the original photo than a faithful copy.

Meanwhile I'm trying to decide whether this attempt at a hare - yes really!- is more kangaroo, donkey or Bottom's Ass from Midsummer Night's Dream....

Ahh well I enjoyed playing and it kept me occupied out of the sun, back to the drawing board next week.

Dabbling again

So a few weeks ago what I thought was a rook but now think might be a crow landed on the fence at the hospice car park as I was leaving. I took this photo thinking it might make a good subject for a painting one day.

Today it's been a bit warm for playing outside or being too domestically minded so I started dabbling again and have got this far. So what? Well now I have a dilemma - the reason I liked the scene was the rook/crow but I'm worried I'm going to spoil what it is turning into a fairly decent landscape by attempting to add the bird. So I need some courage - to add a bird and hope it doesn't end up looking like a stuffed penguin! In the meantime I think I'll just let it sit and dry properly...

Dabbling distractions

Bleeping infection back, hopefully can be treated successfully at home this time but it's a bugger nonetheless so whilst I'm letting the antibiotics do their work I got yesterday's watercolours out again and tried to make some improvements to yesterday's dabblings.

At the end of yesterday

As good as it's getting

What it should have looked like....

Farewell to February

This month we've been visited regularly by the pigeons, dunnocks, blue and great tits as well as the wonderfully photogenic blackbird but they've not been our only visitors as the kitchen blackboard helps to remind me. Unfortunately, unlike the blackbird, most of them enjoy disappearing just as I go to grab the camera! 

Most of the species listed appeared during the cold snap at the beginning of the month and all of them have hung around a bit except the coal tit and the long-tailed tits - I presume they'll be back when it turns cold again.

A bookshop to dream of

February has also been a month of dabbling indoors not just in the kitchen but also with jigsaws, glass paints and even with some sewing - just don't look too closely at the stitches!

Smells pretty

The lavender heart was made at the hospice and despite their best efforts the most I can say is it smells nice! I've also turned a couple of terry tea-towels into dishcloths this month as I was short of one but have an abundance of the other and even mended some trousers - and boy does canvas hurt your fingers! 

2nd batch

I couldn't resist trying a second batch of tea-light holders and even added a little posy bottle to the project - this could get to be addictive!





So it's farewell to a good month and on to the next...

Playtime part 3

Looks like i should have read a bit wider before starting the glass works. Apparently there are several different types of paint - it seems I bought the bakeable liner but the no-need-to-bake-but-don't-put-in-the-dishwasher paints. Based on the materials I have it should have gone - use liner, wait 24 hours, bake then fill with colours and leave to dry but don't try to wash them in the dishwasher! If I want the work to be more weather or washer proof then I should have bought different paints. Ah well, live and learn! I will, of course, try again with a new batch but some of these are keepers even if they may weather somewhat quicker outside than I hoped. We have some shepherd's crook hangers in the garden so J is going to wrap some wire around the necks of the jars and then we're going to try hanging some of the jars in the garden.

Hare now has a fire in it's belly!

Burning heart - simplest seems to be the most effective when lit

Amber trees glow quite well but lack definition.

That's all for now off to find some simpler designs methinks, or play with swirling colours, or make stain glass shapes or...... bug-bitten me?

Playtime part 2

My first attempt at painting on glass is complete with several lessons learned - not least that glass paint is very smelly and if at all possible should be used in a room with a window open and it helps to put the lid straight back on the bottle once you have loaded the brush! Also that the liners exist for a reason - painting on curved glass without using a liner is messy and leaves runs; and it's better to use several thin layers of paint rather than one thick one but you need to leave each layer to dry for an hour or so or you risk messing things up.  All fairly obvious now but not when I sat down to play. Fortunately the paint can be wiped, scraped or washed off if the mistakes are ones you can't live with and they are spotted before baking. There will be several clean-off-and-try-agains from this round I think but overall I'm quite happy with what I achieved given my minimal skills. 

These are destined to be tea-light holders for the garden here as I think it will be some time (if ever) before my skills are sufficient to create any decent gifts.

Beginner's kit of glass paints plus a few liners - I spent just under £30 in total on these

tracing round shrunken drawings that are blu-tacked to the inside of the glass, with out-liner tube

Works in progress - old nut butter jars will hopefully make decent tealight holders

Freehand autumn trees (honest) - hopefully will look better with a candle inside.

Dragonfly - quite pleased with this one even if it is a bit splodgy

Hare - I think this looked better before I added the scenery - ah well better luck next time!

What happens when you don't use a liner before applying the paint - a bleeding heart!

Slight improvement but room for so much more!

Baking the keepers tomorrow and then we'll see how they look with a candle in them.

Play-time

Wednesday was a nice gentle day at the hospice giving me the chance to peruse some of the many art source-books they have. I was looking for simple ideas that I can play with to decorate some old jars I have and I hit a lucky streak in a mosaic source-book - bad librarian that I am I failed to note down the book's details so will have to remedy that when I'm next there. Anyway here are just a few of the ideas that I'm toying with to create some tealight holders and mini-vases to use in the garden when it warms up. The hare in particular is calling to me as hares always seem to - no guarantee how they'll turn out but I need to try.

Kestrel

Hare

Dragonfly

Next, I want to track down some simple suns, moons and stars too but these critters will definitely give me a starting point. Watch this space!

Whirlwind Week

Not quite sure where the week has gone! The weekend was fun - J potted up the pansies grown from seed and then shuffled a few of the pots around outside so we'll be able to see them flower from the back door later in the winter. He also popped a couple of seed feeders on to hooks in the front porch so I can see the birds from the front room. These are a lovely addition to the repaired stand in the back garden so I can add garden bird spotting to my list of winter distractions. Hopefully they'll find the feeders soon and I can pepper future blog posts with cheery pictures. We also started a new jigsaw but this one may be even more of a challenge than the previous ones - it's an impressionist painting with all the fuzzy colours that that implies - it'll keep us busy for quite a few weeks I think!

I've had a couple of medical appointments this week with some good news from the consultant on Wednesday - looks like my current treatment is working and keeping the cancer under control so I'm on an even keel for a while with no treatment changes for the next few months if all goes to plan. Hopefully this means I can focus on improving the strength in my back and legs and getting out and about a bit more. Actually Wednesday was a really good day - I had the chance to play with some glass paints at the hospice and came home with a little tealight holder that I had decorated with an owl. This was really therapeutic and quite simple to do once we had managed to get the template positioned on the inside. Then I could trace round the edges with a liner and fill in the spaces. I'm really pleased with the result but you can judge for yourself as it's in the last of this week's snapshots.

Dabbling

With the nights drawing in I'm becoming increasingly aware of the wheel's turn and of the need for me to find things that I can fill my days with now I am no longer working. At the moment I can potter in and out of the garden or in the kitchen using our weekend harvests but that won't always be an option as the season changes. It's important that whatever pastimes I find can be picked up and put down again without ruining them so we've dug my old painting stuff out of the attic for me to play with. Now I need to be clear here - I'm talking about enthusiasm over talent and high quality relaxation rather than high quality art work but so far it's been fun dabbling again and realising just how much kit I had - nothing new needed to be bought for me to start daubing again so this week I have been playing.  Sketching with pencils, mixing colours, dabbling with washes and trying to get a feel for the brushes. As it's been truly distracting and quite relaxing I think this might be something to stick with - Let's just hope my skills improve!