A sunny day…

a good night’s sleep, Wensleydale out and chores done meant that for the first time for ages I felt like doing some college work!

I started with a little painting for the PMS. Somebody recommended this book, and when it came I saw why, but I hadn’t got round to doing anything with it. But on a sunny day, what could be nicer than sitting in the conservatory with some paint and a sketch book?

 

The first two exercises are  ‘wet into wet’ [the circles] and ‘wet into dry’ [the squares]. They are simple enough not to deter the least confident watercolour user [i.e. me], and, once I got going, fun. Because I was using these two little sketchbooks, in which I’d collaged some bit of paper, I ended up using the techniques as colour exercises, based on the papers, and I could have gone on all morning. But it got very hot in the conservatory, so I drifted out into the garden to look for ‘marks’ – as in ‘stitch as mark x 50’, aka SAM.

This made me wonder what a mark is, anyway [according to W. it’s a stain], but I did end up with a collection of photos of lichen, bark, planks and peeling paint – which tells you a lot about our house and garden, really…  These are the edited highlights. I love that daisy-like shape in the top row, which is knot marks in the fence.

After lunch I went out and tried to draw some of them, before deciding that a pen wasn’t a good idea and I’d have been better off with my favourite oil pastels.

So I fired up Photoshop for today’s challenge –’close-up’. This is a photo I took of a Jaume Plensa sculpture at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park last month – I’ll show you the whole thing tomorrow, which is ‘from a distance’. The effect, from PFAEC as usual, is ‘intaglio’ – and was much easier than it looks. Yes, the letters are back to front, but that is not because I reversed it, it’s because I was inside the sculpture when I took the picture. Obviously.

When I’ve finished writing this, I'm going to sit down outside, if it’s cooled off enough, and sew a stitched mark or two while W. sands down the window sills. Mmm – wonder who’s got the best bargain there? I will make him a cup of tea to keep him going first…