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. 

Scenes at the Museum

I don't know how, but I had somehow forgotten what an utterly wonderful place the Victoria and Albert is; it is just awesome room after awesome room.( (And I am using the word awesome here in original 'fills you with awe' sort of way, not in twangy American ubiquitous sort of way). And not only is there an astonishing abundance of subject material, there are many people sitting around drawing this astonishing abundance, so I could just, you  know, sort of blend in. Which worked fine in theory.

I began in one of the cast rooms, where, among so so so many other magnificent items, including some whoppingly enormous pillars, there were casts of some relief sculptures with the cutest little figures ever. The casts are from a Spanish monastery, Santo Domingo de Silos, and these little chaps are below a crucifixion/ tomb scene. I am assuming they are Roman soldiers who are either sleeping or have collapsed, but they are really beautifully stylized and I love the composition.

I drew these in a relatively sheltered spot, but I wasn't happy painting there as haven't figured out the painting while standing bit yet. I moved to the corridor with sculptures and found a very comfy bench where I painted these chaps in.  Then I was tootling away on the sketch below when a (very nice it has to be said) woman told me I shouldn't be painting there! oops! I could see her point actually, at this stage I had my water bottle perched on a heater, and the paints balanced precariously  on my lap - probably not idea museum behavior.

This fine fellow is apparently the 'celebrated quack doctor Joshua Ward', who, if I have to be honesst, is a little finer in real life, I have made him a bit squat.

So my plans for drawing and painting were rather quashed - yes, I could have drawn, but I love to get the watercolours out, so it was a bit disappointing. I did this one in the cafe, I assumed the painting ban wouldn't be in force there, but it was a very hurried job, just in case. I was taken by the way the poor statue had to stand there guarding her modesty all day while gawpers ate all around her. 

After a bit more very enjoyable wandering, I head off across the road to look at the exterior. The plan was to sketch the wonderful door arches, but I started at the top and then sort of ran out of space! 

It was utterly freezing ( note the fingerless gloves) and  I spilled my water, so it was time to pack up and head home. Great day out though. 

In need of some colour

We walk the commons around us every morning, and although I absolutely know we are lucky with our access to the countryside around us, and although I absolutely adore being out there - God but it's dull these days. Bleached-brown dead leaves, rust-brown collapsed bracken, grey-brown scrawny heather, and dun-brown bare trees- brown, brown,brown, brown. I'm heartily sick of it.

I felt a desperate need for some colour!

And lo and behold - colour!  in bramble leaves of all things. They are quite gorgeous once you start keeping an eye out for them - there are some lovely rich tones in there.

I started watching out for some more little touches of colour, but with limited success: the wild rose hips were on their very shriveled last legs;  the crab apples were beginning to rot.

All that concentrated peering means I am noticing little colour shifts in places I haven't before. 

It also means I look like an utter mad woman, wandering about, staring into ditches, filling my pockets with mouldy crabs. If I came across me out there, I'd avoid me.

And so this is Christmas...

I love love love Christmas. Well, actually, I'm a ferocious grump on the run up to it and find myself year by year more scrooge-like in my foul-mooded mutterings about consumerism, crowds, perfume adverts, parking, packaging, and, well everything really. And then the kids come home, and everyone is daftly happy, and they still invade the bedroom at ungodly hours on Christmas morning, shrieking excitedly over the charity shop crap in their stockings, (though they are all in their 20s!) and then we all eat far far too much, all the time, and we crack up over charades, and we read and lounge, and life is good.

 I drew some decorations: 

I drew some desserts: 

I drew some drinks: 

And I drew some pressies:

But mostly I cooked and ate, and then cooked again. 

There was one attempt at a salad, which, while it had the merit of being pretty, it was really only a small island lost in a sea of delicious over-indulgence. 

Escape to Seville

We figured we deserved a break and a rest after all Paul's health stuff. Well, he deserved a break and a rest, I just selflessly accompanied him.

So off we went to Seville. All we were looking for was a bit of warmth, some tootling around,  some good food, and if anyone was offering a glass or four of wine to go with it all, well it'd be rude to say no.

 I wasn't sure what to expect weather-wise in November, but it was lovely. Yes, it was a bit showery and a bit cloudy, but there was also some glorious sun and it was astonishingly mild. I sat in the Plaza Espagna doing this ( far too complex a subject) in perfect warmth, with flamenco buskers playing in the background, feeling utterly relaxed and utterly lucky.

We went into the Cathedral one morning in the rain, and came out to gorgeous sunshine, so we sat in  blissful warmth in the courtyard of oranges while I attempted and failed to deal with the radical foreshortening of the Cathedral tower. 

I also attempted to draw from our apartment window, just as the sun was going down. The sky was changing ever so quickly so this is total painting panic.

 Apart from the weather, another thing that felt entirely unseasonal was the food - the tomatoes are still incredibly flavoursome, in November! I was scoffing serious amounts of them on crusty bread for my breakfast and was loving it!

I didn't sketch as much as I would have liked, it was too too nice just sitting about, being dumbfounded that you can have warm sun in November. I suppose I better go back and try harder another time??? 

It's been a funny old summer.

It has been a gorgeous summer weather wise, and a gorgeous summer family wise, despite it being the summer that also included a bit of a dread diagnosis. Still, we'll muddle on.

The girls have gone back to uni - I miss them in all sorts of ways, and I also miss  having them as sketching buddies. Luckily enough Paul is wonderfully patient  with me sitting there staring, concentrating and cursing. Especially if it involves a pub and a pint: This was done in the garden of our local.

A bit of autumn sun still allowed for some walks and picnics and sketching attempt. I don't think a lot of these work particularly well as sketches, but they work brilliantly well as visual diaries for remembering a day out. This was on the top of Chinthurst hill:  sunny, chicken and avocado sandwiches, sketching, distant gun shot, Max freaking out, hurried departure. 

This is a reminder, hardly needed really, of lots of time spent at the Royal Surrey Hospital.Still, it works as a reminder of lunch on a bench, a sunny day, and relaxed gaps between appointments.

And this is my favourite type of sketch, not aesthetically, but it absolutely brings a smile to my face - I had to go to Tilford so I brought the dog, and we had gas craic with sticks and the water - he was being an absolutely  hilarious noodle. 

I suspect that now with the girls gone and the winter coming - my sketching will be less about sun and sandwiches, and more about sitting in car parks while doing the shopping!