Tractor ! Digger! Dog!

Just like when the kids were young and excitedly spotting trains, tractors and lorries from their car seats, I now find myself often going 'look - digger!' Big machinery always looks tempting to try and draw, with good interesting shapes and often wonderful strong colours. Unfortunately, it is also often surrounded by building sites full of rather intimidating looking builders, and I'm way too much of a coward to plonk myself down in front of them.

Luckily there has been a bit of drainage and conservation work going on up on the common lately, and it stops at the weekends, so the machines are left parked out there alone. I found this one on my birthday - we spotted it on our early dog walk, and then I went back later with my sophisticated woodland sketching kit - i.e. a plastic bag to sit on. This was early Feb, and it was an absolutely lovely lovely morning. I sat there ever so contentedly in the unexpected sunshine, smiling like an eejit, sat in a bog.

A couple of days later I spotted this little tractor - if that is what it is - it is like the lovechild between a Nissan Micra and a Massey Ferguson. I had Max with me, but I was near no tree, so I had to attach him to my foot. A bored sighing dog who is keeping an eye out for rabbits concentrates the mind no end - this was done super quickly.

This bit of rusting machinery has been out on the common for as long as we have been living here, so it must be there 20 years at least, maybe far more. Rust notwithstanding, it is a sturdy heavy thing, whatever it is. I imagine it will be out there for may more years to come.

Also out on the common, or beside it anyway, is this cute little green barn - I love the colour of it. This was also done with the dog sitting beside me. At one stage he had an enthusiastic barking fit at something or another, knocking over my water and trampling on my paints in the process - As a sketching companion he has some shortcomings. 

What colour is mayonnaise?

Saturday  mornings float my boat;  I love having an extra large extra long breakfast, with an extra huge pot of tea, I love eating that breakfast while browsing through the paper, and possibly doing the Sudoku, and I love that not long after the whole extended breakfast affair - it's nearly time for lunch!

Lunch usually consists of a good chewy baguette sandwich with decent ham, home made mayo, toms, leaves and mustard; we stray away from this occasionally, but always find our way back pretty quickly. I'm usually sort of okay with my colour mixing, but I ended up staring at the jar of mayo for a ridiculously long time trying to figure out how to make, well, a creamy bland colour.

The curry ingredients came from the Thai shop in Guildford - they have some fabulous looking odd veg in there, most of which I'm entirely clueless about so I chicken out of buying them. I  hadn't bought yard long beans before - kinda longer beans are hardly an adventurous step into the unknown though!

Some days I'm just really itching to sketch-  there seems to be something a bit addictive about it. This is why I ended up sitting over a bubbling pot of  bean and harissa soup - squinting and drooling simultaneously. Good soup!

And then sometimes, I get the urge to sketch, but figure I'll skip the drooling part of the process, and just draw the kitchen.