Clouds

Oh, a whole month without blogging -- it was a busy month is my only excuse. People coming and going, work events that made me miss two of the five drawing classes this half term, planting a garden. And quite some effort spent resisting misery.

One goal achieved -- the Rape Field painting, mounted and framed, was hung in a local exhibition.

In one class, we painted and drew clouds. First, just playing with materials and techniques, and then going outside to draw what was there. We've done a lot with various types of soluble pencils -- sometimes these produce nice effects, like rain out of a cloud, and other times they just annoy me because they're too small and fiddly. At home, I sat in the window seat and used watercolour pencils to paint the clouds over the pond. A couple of weeks after, I dashed to the seaside and spent some hours painting clouds over the Solent. They were yachts everywhere and I added some with my thin pen trying to get their jaunty movements. I took a photograph from where I was sitting, and am amused by how different the proportions are -- the little tiny strip of land has come out as quite mountainous in my painting.