Catch up for February 2014

Saturday, 22 February 2014

It’s been a long time, a month or more. The ‘Bobbi’ thing upset me more than I thought but I’m over that now, it was a valuable learning curve and obviously meant to be.
Since then I’ve thrown myself completely into painting. I’ve joined two local art societies and signed on for another term of classes at the college. Both art societies have exhibitions showcasing members artwork later in the year. In fact in total, if I can manage to get all the work done and keep up with every thing, I could have 6 local exhibition opportunities throughout this year. I’ve decided this has to be the year I take painting more seriously. I’m developing more of my own style; I’ve started concentrating of figure painting. I’m using some of my many photos as inspiration. This is the sort of thing I’m doing now, I know I’ve shown some of them before but I quite like seeing them all together, to me it shows some sort of progression. 

The first one is called Red Balloons and Umbrellas; 

Fun in the Sun;  
Jump for Joy;

Red Reflections;

This is what I’m working on now it’s called;
 ‘The painters Granddaughter’. 

I’m actually considering painting over this and starting again because now that I’ve started, I’m not at all sure about the composition. I’m thinking it may be better to miss out a lot of the background, simplify the painting, make the figure bigger and just have her stranding in the field of cabbages without all that other stuff going on in the background. I’m spending a couple of days thinking about it.

 I’m still going down south to see my mum regularly. She’s in her 80’s, generally speaking she has the constitution of an Ox but; she can be quite demanding and she drives my poor sister to distraction. I try to go every second month and my sister who lives in France tries to go in the months when I don’t go. That way at least the sister in England gets a bit of a break every month.
Hopefully I’ll be off to France again in April for my spring visit and this time, I hope to take mum with me for at least the first week. That should give the sister in England a proper break. Our situation is a reflection of the way people live these days. The only reason the care of mum falls on only one of three sisters is a matter of geography and nothing else. Mum plus the youngest sister live in the same village in England, I live in Scotland and the other sister lives in France. It all seems so unfair on the sister left to look after mum but I guess it must happen in a lot of families these days.
On a brighter note, and I still can’t believe my luck, while visiting mum last week, she suddenly said I could have her overlocking machine. WOW….. thanks mum, that’s fantastic. It’s a wonderful little machine but very modern and quite lightweight. I posted it to myself just before I left and it arrived perfectly intact a couple of days later. Quite apart for the value in dressmaking and general sewing, I’m already planning on doing some fabric art with the help of this little machine. I’m not at all sure when I’ll get time for fabric art but at least I know when the time does arrive, I have the equipment.

And while I’m on the subject of family……………what do you think of this?? 

Believe it or not this is my 12 year old grandson. He is so proud, he joined the cadets and he loves it. This is him in his very first uniform. I did have some reservations when I was told he wanted to join but; now that I’ve thought about it, joining the cadets is so much better than lots of other things lads of his age get involved in.

I think spring is almost here, I keep seeing little signs, lots of the trees are in bud and the snowdrops are up in the garden. Soon it will be time to get out there and tidy up the garden.

Every thing is still too wet to do anything out there but soon……..it will be time. I’m hoping the garden dries out sufficient for me to do what needs doing before I go off the France for a month. I made a strategic decision not to invest so much time and energy in the garden this year; I want to concentrate on painting. But every garden needs a little bit of TLC at the end of winter.
Well……………I think that’s it for now. I’ve been sat here tap tapping away for a while now and  think I’ve finally ran out of things to say, maybe I won’t leave it so long next time.