A lot of my recent art has been inspired from Paint my Photo and this was one of them. I just liked the little girl trying to open the gate. A lot of my art lately has been some fairly quick pieces so that I don't have to spend too long, hence the pencil sketch with just a little colour for focus.
Whilst away in Tenerife, although I didn't manage very much, I still did a watercolour sketch of the view of Gomera. In fact, I bit off more than I could chew, because whilst this looks simplistic, those pillars were the devil to get right. For those that don't draw or paint, anything that is symmetrical can seriously make or break a piece of art. Glasses, bottles, pots or pillars!
As you can perhaps tell, I am back to having quite a short attention span. It makes for some interesting projects although sometimes it can be frustrating. For example, when I find the time to paint, my mind seems to be wondering elsewhere. This is normally where I end up dragging the camera out....
Andy rang me last night on his way home to tell me that I should keep a watch for the sunset. However, all I could see was a big bank of cloud. Unfortunately by the time I realised how spectacular it was, all the clouds turned pink, I was ...a little late! To make matter worse, I had my zoom lens on the camera! By the time I had grabbed it and changed the lens, the sun had sunk and the colour had dimished but there was still a ribbon of fire across the hills.
Then, this morning as I was getting ready for work, the whole room took on a rosy glow. This time, I didn't falter and I grabbed the snap camera instead ;) No messin'!
So this one is a fiery sunrise....I got there in the end. A rather belated Happy Skywatch Friday to all :) If you would like to see more skies from around the world, the Skywatch site can be found here.
This is a slightly different one for me, I rarely do still life. However, I was putting a lot of my art into collages in an attempt to get an idea of my own diversity and progression. From these I could see that my still life representation was sadly lacking. This was completed in watercolour on Waterford 425gms rough paper (very durable).
Meanwhile, as I said, I have been putting quite a lot of things in order. I have had a good tidy up of my Zazzle store which has been sadly neglected. So, I have finally got around to adding lots of wildlife products, now I just need to keep up the momentum. Next in line will be my Fine Art America store but, I struggle with there to be honest, I find it diffcult to know what to include and I don't think that I network enough!
Anyway here are some of my collages, they represent a couple of years and it is interesting to see them collated together;
These are probably the subjects that I have best covered.....pehaps I will do the worst ones next time... I seem to be getting unusually organised lately!
Whilst on a sunny note from my last post, I thought that in light of the rain, I would continue on a similar theme. Andy and I had decided for Christmas that instead of spending money on things that we don’t really need, that we would have a weekend away after Christmas instead. As Andy did not have any time off over the Christmas period and recent events meant that we were both extremely tired, this graduated to a week somewhere warmer which in fact was about the same sort of money anyway.
So, we headed off to warmer climates! We were not sure how we would get on with this type of holiday, which is very much pool based so, not normally our sort of thing. However, it proved to be a good choice and the weather was kind to us, in the late 20’s most days.
Unusually, we took very few images. Los Gigantes is pretty enough, in some ways I feel sorry that we didn’t have a greater look around but, the rest was what we really needed. The backdrop of those Giants was awesome although I am not sure that any photo does them justice. Here, I tried for a panorama view so that an idea of scale can be shown.
We did go out for a day on a whale and dolphin trip. We missed out on the whales but, had a lovely time watching the dolphins. It was a little bit worrying watching the boat driver swallowing sea sickness tablets though!
We pretty much spent our time relaxing around the pool, reading, having just one or two drinks and taking part in the quiz every day (not that we did too well at that).
We saw some unusual birds and also some butterflies that looked very fascinating but no photo’s I am afraid, we really did just take it easy. The food was good and it was so restful to have everything provided for you even down to clean towels for the sunbeds.
I did get a bit fed up listening to one or two people moaning, it seems that this “gold” hotel is not up to usual standards. We don’t know what usual standards are and loved it considering our reservations to start with. But, apparently the food is terrible, the decor shabby………we found a place where all we could hear was the sea! Don't misunderstand me, we met some wonderful people too :D In some ways it was meeting others coping with all manner of things that provided a little perspective on some of my own worries.
A few days watching the waves and soaking up some rays was wonderfully restorative and I had fun trying to recollect my very rusty Spanish and practicing it on the bar and restaurant staff.
We really enjoyed our meals, there was a choice of freshly grilled meat and fish and in a morning the egg man made some lovely omelette's. On an evening we continued with the lounging about theme and watched the sunset over La Gomera or sat on the balcony with Brandy or a JD.
Sadly, there was also a negative, unrelated to the food or decor ;) , so if you have arrived here looking at visiting this hotel/resort, you may wish to also look at my review over on trip advisor. In this I have tried to provide a very honest overview: Trip Advisor
Well, for the first time in what seems like ages, Andy and I went walking today with the camera's. We made a short trip to Attingham Park to view the snowdrops and we were blessed with some sunshine despite a cold wind. It felt so good to see some long awaited flowers. I make no apologies for lots of flowers shots, it seems like they have been a long time in arriving :-)
I always think that snowdrops are quite magical, breaking their way through the frosts, snow and wintry temperatures to provide a glimpse of the Spring to come.
We have both had a dose of Norovirus this last week which has completely taken us off our feet. However, someone we were talking to recently described how after a nasty bug, just how much everything is renewed in it's wake. It is so true, I have had a couple of days sick as a result and I confess that I was quite down...........but, after that all of a sudden it is the little things that take on an enchantment all of their own.
Sunlit snowdrops, carpets of snowdrops, snowdrops by a mossy log and single snowdrops with such amazing beauty, it all seems so fresh after the winter!
We kept our wanderings pretty near to the the house because we are both still feeling a little weak but, as we wandered down to the river there is a lovely sunny bank where I spotted some crocus. It is the little things in life that sometimes fill you with incredible joy. I probably sound twee but, having been grounded for a while this week, all of a sudden, wildlife took over and it was just so captivating:D Whilst Photographing the crocus we realised that there was a whole hive (no pun intended) of bees nectaring on the flowers. It is the first time this year that I have seen any.
It was just the promise of things to come...........:D
Meanwhile down at the river, the ducks and the geese were busy, a different landscape right now. There are buds on the willow trees and the dogwood has turned to those lovely reds.
We took some final images of the snowdrops, I loved these by some mossy roots of trees.
We maybe should have stayed to watch the deer being fed which is always lovely but, I was pretty tired by then. However, I did manage a short browse in the second hand book shop and I picked up a small book of poems by Mary Baker Eddy which is a beautiful little old book (I love antique or vintage books) and also "The complete water Colour Artist" by Jenny Rodwell. So a little reading material for the rainy day forecast tomorrow :)
Have a great weekend whatever you get up to!
For more snowdrop images check out Andy's blog here.
As my last post was somewhat lengthy, I thought I would keep this one short and sweet. Inspired by a photograph on Paint my photo, I rather think that this makes a cute Valentine's message.
