A Story -"All in a Day's Work" and a small watercolour to brighten a winter's day.

A Story

All In a Day's Work

The small apartment at the seniors' residence was comfortable but it certainly wasn't his old home.  Gerald, a recently bereaved widower, had suffered a stroke that left him needing extra care.

Melody, the nurse, made him feel welcome.  He looked forward to her smiles and her gentle jokes.  Slowly he began to realize that he was falling in love with her.  Even though she was married, he fantasized that they were in a loving relationship.

He changed his will.

After Gerald died, Melody got a call from his lawyer.  A big cheque was coming.

"Easy, peasy," she chuckled to herself.

A public garden with some nice bright summer flowers. Some colour to enliven a winter's day.

 

The view out the window.  It's been a pretty snowy winter and we are expecting about a foot of snow tomorrow.  Not that unusual but it does mean extra work to deal with it.

Watercolour Cloud Painting

 I challenged myself over the winter months to improve my cloud painting.  I watched several Youtube videos on it and after many attempts I felt this one was starting to get a feeling of fluffiness. 

For anyone who likes watercolour painting, I came across a competition - Women in Watercolour - which has some amazing paintings.  Many of them are photo realism but there were other styles as well. If you Google the name of the competition, you will get to the site and be able to view all the winners for this year and the last 3 years.  I like the fact that they had many prize winners - about 30 I think- and also made a slide show of the 160 honorable mentions. 

I found it encouraging to see so many wonderful paintings.  We get so much depressing news but these women are painting wonderful watercolours and bringing joy to people who see them.

Hope you are enjoying some hobbies these days.  

First November Snow

Yesterday we had our first real snowfall. We got a couple of inches and the temperature is cold enough that it is staying on the ground.  It feels good to have the snow.  It brightens up the landscape and the  air feels crispy and fresh.  No more damp fall weather.

This is a Christmas card I made for my French friend who lives in Quebec. The fuzzy white circles are a watercolour take on Bokeh.

The sky was a lovely intense blue today.  I guess the cold arctic air is very clean. The sky is not only more blue but somehow it is brighter. Normally at this time of year it wouldn't be so blue.  Less air travel is still having an effect.  I wish the eco people would talk more about trying to cut down on air travel.
 

Scilla -Ink and Watercolour Card

I have been trying some ink and watercolour cards.  After putting in the background, I penciled in the flower stems. Then I inked in the flowers, then the stems.  I erased the pencil marks.Then I loosely painted the blue flowers and leaves. I inked around the leaves. Finally I spattered a bit of blue at the top, green at the bottom and some white over the flowers.

With Covid making visiting difficult, I have been sending cards to people just to say hi.  People are often surprised to get something via snail mail.

 

A Pair of Silly Sheep

I wanted to make a couple of little cards for two of my granddaughters.  These small pictures are based on a Youtube tutorial by Karen Rice Watercolours.  Her painting was much larger and featured five sheep.

These pictures are about 4" x 4".

It was fun doing them.  The sheep were masked out with masking tape which was removed near the end so  that I could paint them in. The sprinkled colour in the background is water colour pencil grated on an emery board over the paper. There is a bit of splatter - still haven't mastered good splatter technique. The white on the eyes was done with white gel pen. The trunks of the trees were drawn with a broken Q-tip (any stick-like tool would work) when the paint was still damp. I attempted some salting on the red part but you really need big crystalled sea salt and I only had table salt so it didn't work the way it is supposed to.

I hope people have been able to find some fun things to do in these restricted days.

Spring is coming and hopefully vaccines. Take care.

Prose Poem Story

 In this time of lockdown, I am trying to keep busy with some things I can do at home. Recently I have been working on some short fiction. There are a number of sites that publish very short fiction but the one I have settled on for now is Friday Flash Fiction based in Edinburgh. It takes stories of 75-100 words. It does have a category for stories up to 500 words and for poems but I am concentrating on the 100 words stories. It's bit like writing poetry hence the title for this post. I am aiming for one a week as they publish every Friday. Here is one I submitted a little while ago.

"Country Living

Here was John’s chance to get out of the city. His boss was making distance work permanent.

 

John’s budget was limited but the small town had very affordable housing prices. He bought a quaint older house and moved in.

 

All summer he fished in the nearby crystal clear lake. At night, the stars were spectacular. Every day he heard beautiful new bird songs. He even once saw a bear. He made new friends and hosted relaxing beer-infused barbecues. It was fantastic.

 

On October  15^th winter began with ten inches of snow. John sold his house on November  30^th."

I had commenters from Australia who totally didn't get it but I think anyone from a northern clime will have met a John or two.

I hope you are finding ways to keep busy at home.  

Keep well.

Starry Night Watercolour

 Watercolour based on Youtube tutorial by Sharon Cullen Art.

THE HEAVENS  DECLARE THE GLORY OF GOD.  Psalm 19:1 NIV

Some Watercolour exercises about 4" x 6"

Sand practice

Tree practice

Background practice 

I am very appreciative of all the Youtube teachers. In particular I'd like to mention the following sites:

Louise de Masi

Mind of Watercolour

Melanie Howard

In The Studio with Michelle Webber

They are all excellent instructors and sometimes have posts such as "10 common mistakes beginners make" which are always very helpful.

The right hand edge of the paintings is cut off but it is really only the white border.

Some Little Watercolours

 Little Orange Butterfly

Song of Flowers

The Reflected Light

I've made an order of seeds from Halifax Seeds.  I am indulging myself this year and buying some seed tapes.  One will have a mixture of different varieties of beets, and the other one will have three different kinds of carrots.  I will enjoy not having to thin the carrots. I also ordered a bean called Jackpot which is a cross between a bush and runner bean.  It is suitable for a container and has pretty red and white blossoms so it is decorative as well as useful.

Primula

I watched some Youtube videos by Bill Lupton on painting people in a landscape.  These are people off in the distance so they aren't detailed.  I was so impressed with his skill with a brush.  It felt like I was watching a magician pulling a rabbit out of a hat. I haven't attempted to copy his technique yet but it's next on my list.
We went to see Hidden Figures , a movie about African-American women who worked for NASA during the space race.  It was really interesting to learn about not only these women, but also all the other who did calculations all day.  Ironically, they called them "computers".  One of the women, who specialized in calculating orbits and entry points, is still alive today and, at 98, is sharp and engaged with the world. Another one of the women became an aeronautical engineer and the third women featured in the movie became the supervisor of the mechanical computers.
I'm always on the look-out for movies based on real life events as I find they are more interesting than fiction.

Pottery and Glass

 On the art tour, we also stopped by a potter and a glassblower.  I like the simplicity of this vase that wouldn't distract from flowers in it.

 An attractive display of a variety of dishes.

 The artificial flowers add life to an already pleasing assortment of items.

 A bowl that looks like it could be old, although it's new.

 The glassblower is turning glass on a rod that will eventually be a vase.  I tried to get pictures of the process, but he was always in motion : heating the glass in the furnace, swinging the rod, blowing into the rod, rolling the glass on a table or cup, adding crushed glass for colour, etc.  It's quite a complicated process that took about 45minutes to complete the vase. Always fun to watch glassblowers.

 Some small items made by a different glass worker.  I like the polar bears.

 A colourful swirly bowl.

 Another vendor had some necklaces she had strung for sale. 

Art Tour- Cynthia Gatien

 We went to a few studios that were part of an art tour in our area.  On our way in to Cynthia Gatien's studio in Lancaster, I was struck by the blue shoes that this couple were wearing.  She had on bright blue spikes with matching purse, and he had on royal blue suede loafers. Overall the outfits are casual but pleasingly co-ordinated.  Was that planned, or did it just happen?
Anyway, on to some of Cynthia's great paintings.

 I hadn't been to her studio for a few years.  Then, she was painting rich interiors full of colour and designs.  This year, as well as some beautiful florals, she had some whimsical paintings that were just fun to look at.  This was titled "Wait your turn."

I

 "Leap of Faith".

 "Stop Worrying".

I just had to laugh at this zebra having a good roll.  The poem at the bottom reads:
As he contemplated the unseen,
The zebra was at home in his dream.
Cut from the now 'n tied to the sky
He felt all the reasons he knew he could fly.

 Great poem.  Not too sure what the American flag and bunny have to do with it...  There is a plane in the sky with zebra wings.

 I really like her floral paintings.

And this gorgeous one came home with us!  I will always enjoy it.

Some Interesting Paintings

 We visited the Courtald gallery in London and enjoyed their excellent collection.  We were allowed to take pictures so I decided to post some of the paintings that, to me, seemed a bit unusual. This one is by Claude Monet and reminds me of the Canadian Group of Seven paintings that were done in Algonquin park.  I had to take the photos on an angle to minimize glare.

 We've all seen the Sunflowers and the self-portrait minus an ear by Van Gogh, but this is a much gentler painting with lots of space and tranquility.

 Another painting by Monet.  Very simple, but so well done.

 I love this painting by Henri Rousseau.  Many of his famous paintings feature fantastic jungle scenes with tigers and other exotic animals, but this is a picture of where he worked as a customs collector.
 What an imagination he had!

I was really struck by the expression of this portrait by Gainsborough.  It is a picture of his wife and he managed to capture so much personality in the portrait.  Unfortunately, the glare detracts from the photo, but it is a very special portrait.

 This is the stairwell of the gallery.  It's as pretty as a picture.

Random Shots London

 Swallow Street that runs off Regent Street.

Lots of restoration going on everywhere .  Not too pretty when the work is being done, but what a great investment in the future.

 Eye-catching frieze.

 Jumble of sights.

A rock-steady business with its solid brown base.

 

Ornament at Selfridges.

Italian Water Garden-Kensington Gardens

 The Italian Water Garden in Kensington Gardens is always a pleasant place to spend a bit of time.

 Lots of carvings.

 Can't have a water garden without lilypads.

 We kept checking on a family of coots who live in the garden.  The babies were still rather bald and fluffy.

 Simple but so beautifully designed.

 So Victorian.

 Looking down the lake.

 Primroses, I think.

This is a bit of an odd scene.  The middle child has a gun, the child on the left is holding a dead bird, and the child on the rights appears to be holding the sheep's ear (sheep doesn't look too happy). When you first glance at it, it seems like a quiet pastoral picture, but on closer inspection, a more complicated scenario is at play.