Our place

I love coming home to our place on a sunny morning, the sun and shadows do lovely things and make it easy to ignore the rampant weeds, punctured footballs, scrappy grass and dog dug holes. Even though this is literally my own back yard, I still didn't  do this from life. Shock horror.  I have watercolour sketched it a number of times in the past, but even then the shadows move too fast for me; the sun would have moved around to the other side of the house by the time I had even squirted out the oils.

Sketching it helped though, as it meant I had looked at and thought about the whole shadow/bounced light/tone thing going on under the porch a number of times. Instead of the usual and usually frustrating attempt to use a big brush and simplify , I used a smaller brush this time and held it far back on the handle and tried to be a bit looser that way. Not unhappy with the result, may explore that approach  a bit further.
Within the next two weeks all the kids will have moved out, and it will just be me and P here - wierd and sad.

Pifco motorist's lamp

L found this little lamp in a charity shop and gave it to P for his birthday - it's ever so cute though I keep thinking he ( yes, it feels like  a he) is a  little bit sad or dejected.

I should have simplified things a bit more  and probably gone a it darker in places, but it's okay. We got a battery and a bulb for it and lo and behold - it works! the light on top even flashes. I thought about painting it with the little front beam shining out, but actually , it took me so long to draw/redraw/undo/rub out etc etc , his poor  battery would have died a slow pointless death. Ellipses and shiny things - yuk.

And again

This will probably be the last time these poor flowers will pose, but I have found doing the same subject again and again to be very helpful. I think these flowers are much closer to what I've been trying to do, they were done more quickly, a bit more surely and required a lot less redoing. Consequently, even though they are older and more tired,  I think they are a bit fresher looking.

The jars are a different story. It wasn't bright to try and do three identical items, especially as accurate drawing isn't my strongest point.  I sort of avoided some of the issues around the tops, and I know the shoulders differ a bit, but not horrendously. I did feel I was learning a lot today as I went along, so very happy with that.

My set up is professionalism in action, I'm thinking of patenting my lamp on top of box on top of book on top of table on top of desk system, there's bound to be a market for it.