MY FAVOURITE THINGS

When I received the blog award one of my commitments was to tell you of my 7 most favourite things in life. I have found this hard - because I can't pin it down to only seven!!! My life is so wonderful, I could mention family, friends, home, memories, painting, reading, exploring, blogging, teaching, music, philosophy/spiritual discussions - I could go on forever. I decided to choose the ones where I could add some images to break up all the text - so here goes......

1 Friends and Family - Spending quality time with friends and family - here's a photo of my daughter and her lovely girls. (Hope they don't mind me putting them into my blog)

2 Our Home - Looking around our lovely home, with each displayed object a memory of a friend, family or overseas trip comes spinning back to me - here's a photo of some figures I have on display on glass shelves by the fireplace dividing the sitting room from the dining room. From the top shelf - a figure from the Dominion Republic and a pig from a NOVA exhibition, middle shelf figures from South Africa and small brass elephant from India, lower shelf couple hugging each other in Willow and a lady and child both from my sister in law at different visits.

3 My life long partner - Sharing my evenings with my husband of 50 years after a lovely meal, sitting in our comfy room surrounded by my paintings, often reading, doing the crossword or Soduko, watching sport or a film. Photo of a corner of the sitting room - Oh yes I see Petal managed to creep in!

4 Painting - Planning a new painting and seeing it grow as if by another hand and mind. I will be posting images of stages of the latest oil I am doing for the riverside pub exhibition - probably tomorrow.

5 Reading good literature or biography - often sitting up in bed in what my girls call 'the princess room' all peaches and cream. I recently read the story part historical and part fiction of how the Mona Lisa was painted - it was brilliant bringing Leonardo and Medici Florence to life.

Photo of my art book collection in a corner of my downstairs art space.

6 Exploring new places. You will probably have seen the recent post of my trip to see the Priory at Walsingham. Off to see Venice in June when staying at Lake Garda.

7 Blogging - Reading your amazing comments and seeing how my work is received. So surprising how often a piece one isnt sure of turns out to get the most comments!! Your friendships mean so much to me.

May I say a big thankyou to Rhonda and Vicki for sending me this award, otherwise I would never have set time aside to realise what a very very lucky lady I am. Hope this long post hasn't bored you to death - Its probably the most personal one I have ever compiled.

WALSINGHAM PILGRIMAGES

I have been away from home for four days and one of them was spent visiting the Norfolk village of Little Walsingham, where there are ruins of an Augustian Priory dating from the 1150's, which thousands of pilgrims visit from all over the world every year. !! Above is the enormous East Window, with the 1930's Church and tower of the Anglican Shrine to our Lady of Walsingham in the background (red roof/tower)... and an image of another aspect of the ruined priory on the left. It must have been a collosal building.

The village is full of historic buildings including timber framed and lots of delightful coffee shops. We found this one, where we sat by the fire in large cushioned leather chairs and ate fruit cake with filtered coffees before our explorations.

Then we had the glorious walks through the woodlands, by tranquil rivers and over bridges among the snowdrop thronged natural woods and parkland - all on a wonderful sunny day. Looks like snow but I can assure you it was stunningly carpeted with snowdrops.

We then visited the Anglican Shrine , stopped for tea and then walked down hill through the village to the wonderful Saint Mary and All Saints church with a 14th century tower and lead covered spire. The third snowdrop image above is of the East Window of the Priory from the church graveyard wall. The great interest here is the east window designed by John Hayward in the 1960, when the church was renovated after a great fire. The window has over 15 sections, all depicting the area's history and celebrating a number of saints. Rather a lot of lead so that the whole window from a distance appears quite dark. ... but what interested me most were the STATIONS OF THE CROSS created in carved different coloured woods, but on speaking to a member of the church they had no history of them. Here's one (isn't it marvelous and all the otheres are as creative)

A wonderful day in company of my friend Anne from Cromer. We went to church in the evening and then sat up chatting till late. We took her dogs for long walks Sunday morning before I left for home.

INKTENSE SUNFLOWER ZENTANGLE

Last night I thought I'd see how my thumb is improving and got out my pen to start doodling. I started with the moon shape first followed by the lozenge shapes, and realised as usual my mind had opened up organic shapes, which just goes to show how much flowers are part of me. So I turned it into a sunflower, with different patterns in each petal and circles for the seeds. Then I decided to add colour and turned to my tin of Inktense pencils. I filled the shapes all dry to start with allowing the pen patterns to show through. Then I had the brainwave of using a wet brush over the background at the top leaving leaf and stalk shapes dry and created a feeling of distance. Wish I had done the same to the darker leaves at the bottom.

Anyway I am away from home until Sunday, so thought I'd post this before I left. Hope you enjoy it. Happy weekend everyone.

BLOG AWARD

Rhonda Carpenter and Vicki Greene kindly honoured me with this award the other day, but its taken me some time to work on 7 other artists to receive it from me and think what I would say are my 7 favourite things.

Firstly I could not add Vicki (http://vickigreene.blogspot.com/ ) nor
Angela Shogren (http://angelashogren.blogspot.com/) both of whom I found recently as they were both in Rhonda's list!! but do go over and take a peep. I tell you they're well worth it.

Now to my listing - I know a number of them are so professional and well visited and thought of that they might find an award like coals to Newcastle (English saying meaning sending things they already have in abundance!) but I love their work and blogs so much I simply could not leave them out:

1 Sandy (http://sandymaudlin.blogspot.com/) lots of her posts give the process of her wonderful work and the teachings are so helpful. She introduced me to YUPO amongst other things.

2 Margaret (http://waterblossoms.blogspot.com/) not only is her work outstanding but she adds quotations and poems to her posts. Delightful.

3 Robyn (http://havedogswilltravel.blogspot.com/) Robyn is an Australian who went to Italy for a visit and stayed (dont blame her seeing she now lives in wonderful Tuscany).

These next few are newer blogs to me but have fallen in love with all their work and so glad I found them:

4 Jacqueline (http://jacquelinegnot.blogspot.com/) her blog is called Contemporary Realism and that is just what you get - gobsmacking beautiful watercolour flower studies.

5 Carol (http://watercolourcarol.blogspot.com/ ) amazing use of watercolours - and those naughty lady swimmers!

6 Cathy (http://asketchintime.blogspot.com/) Cathy is in South Africa and creates stunningly bright local sketches with amazing people.

Last but not least - in fact first in my book

7 ANITA (http://artbyanita.blogspot.com)/ my best pal, who introduced me to blogging and set me up just over a year ago. A true teacher, full of inspiration and the quickest sketcher in the business!

Thats it folks - I'll send my 7 favourite things in another post some time soon.

EASTERN OPEN

I have now finished my second piece from my travels for the Eastern Open and my is it different from the image I posted a few days ago!!! I've removed the images of the cave drawings I saw in the Cederberg Mountains as I felt they made the composition a bit messy. Instead, I concentrated on the vastness of the areas we drove through on long straight roads. So I had to have an idea for the bottom centre in place of some of the cave figure drawings, so I came up with a different type of Proteus I had found in Kirstenboch Botanical Gardens near Cape Town.

I developed Table Mountain in the back (ie the top) and decided on only one Artisian Well.

I think it makes a good pair with the Amsterdam Tulips.

VALENTINE'S DAY HEART

This design was created with watercolours and brush only, just developing from the little yellow heart shape in the middle. The final touch was the torquoise background after all the images had been painted, which drew it all together. I see some little rabbits sneaked in at the bottom to help us think of warmer sunny days.

As you may have read in some of my post comments, I have a problem with my left thumb (I'm left handed of course!!) and cannot grip a pen or pencil without severe pain and discomfort. .. but using a brush is so different. As I wanted to create at least one heart on this auspicious day in the year (have you seen Margaret Anne Storer's**** gorgeous lacy hearts all week?), I decided a brush would have to do.

So Happy Valentine's Day to all you lovers. Hope you get lots of chocs and roses girls.

(****For Margaret's lovely hearts go to http://waterblossoms.blogspot.com )

PROTEUS FLOWERS IN SOUTH AFRICA

Needing a second artwork to pair with the TULIPS IN AMSTERDAM, I of course turned to my travels and sketches. I was looking for a similar idea of a flower particular to a country and I decided upon PROTEUS FLOWERS I had painted whilst on my 5 week SOUTH AFRICA trip in 2007.

I squirted large blobs of colours directly from large tubes/pots of ivory, apricot, Naphthol red (very orangy colour) and burnt umber on the 16" x 16" canvas and dragged them down and across to create a thick warm textured, coloured background - like this

Then whilst the paint was wet, I cut into the thick paint with the edge of a palette knife to place the proteus flowers, an African lady, shape of Table Mountain and some figures from my cave drawing sketches.

Then I developed them all and added Artisian Wells and some greenery.
This is as far as I have got to date but have plenty of ideas, such as placing another bloom central bottom in place of the cave figures which should improve the composition and developing the Table Mountain reflection and city buildings more. I had originally planned the background to be the colour of the rock in the Cederberg Mountains but it has somehow gone a bit pink, so I need to work on that. Wish there was room for some ostriches or penguins I sketched, but I think it will make it too cluttered.

Your thoughts would be welcome, but bear in mind it has a long way to go before I can say 'finished'.