Angel in Brookwood Cemetery

I wanted to do something quicker and looser as I felt that yesterdays Angel was heading towards being a bit overworked.

They are interestingly androgynous; they have long frocks and wavy hair, but I assume they are males. His left hand is ready on his sword for some serious smiting should the occasion arise.  I  quite like my foreground grass for some reason.

Another Brookwood Angel

Well that's it, summer hols over, the girls are gone back to school and I have a quiet house. I much prefer having them around, painting or no painting.

It's fun doing this again, although also a big confusing. I ended up putting on more paint and going over more bits than I wanted to. I think the ideal must be to put it on right in the first place and then leave it.

Now that I have finished my degree and have a Ba ( hons) history, ( big very chuffed grin) , I should in theory have tons of painting time and be able to improve drastically. Except it seems I didn't quite get enough of sitting here sweating over essays, and I have decided to torture myself with another degree.  I've a month or so before it all starts again, and painting simmers away slowly in the background.

Angel , Brookwood Cemetery

 I had great notions that when I finally finished studying and the hols started that I'd have all the time in the world to paint, getting in days and days of much needed practice. Well so much for that. Instead the hols have been spent with my girls, we've had outings, trips, days in , days out, and lovely though it has all has been, I've hardly managed to grab a couple of hours to paint at all until now.

In an effort to kill two birds with one stone, i.e get in some sketching time and have a day out with my daughters, I brought them a cemetery, like you do. We went to Brookwood, It's a wonderful place, one of the largest cemeteries in Europe I think. It is vast and very beautiful to walk around in, with a strange mixture of wilderness and order. I love the old part with the angels and ferns,  and crumbling mausoleums, and graves part lost in the Rhododendrons and meadows with wildflowers. There was a butterfly collector swishing his net through the grasses while we were there. I sat and sketched while the girls explored.

This was done sitting in shorts on the most itchy grass ever, with ants. I know if you are being arty you are supposed to say that you worked up the painting from sketches done on location. I'm not entirely sure I saw the connection between the sketching and the painting, I saw utterly different colours while sketching. Although being there does make you more aware of bounced up light than photos seem to.

The gaps between painting efforts are too long, what is being learnt is being lost again I think.