Wednesday 12 December 2012

Wednesday 12/12/12 - When I grow up...

When I grow up - which means when I no longer spend all my days teaching music - when means that I AM a grown up for 13 weeks of the year, come to think of it (two weeks at Christmas, two weeks at Easter, six weeks in the summer, and the three half terms in between) - when I grow up, I'm going to spend all my time painting the sky.

Oh ha ha, yeah, I heard the one about a long enough ladder yesterday. You are too late.

The skies are a feature of the daily roistering through the countryside from one school to the next. I am constantly distracted by wondering how I would go about recreating the effect of clouds, shading, colours, tree silhouettes...

Inks, probably, for the intense blues of late dusk. Indian ink for the silhouettes of the trees, washed over with every shade of blue garnets. I love Jan Pienkowski's illustrations:


illustration from The THOUSAND NIGHTS and One Night
http://www.janpienkowski.com/books/silhouette/1001/1001nights.htm

Watercolours for grey clouds. There is an amazing gif of a bird drawing created from water and ink. http://salt4life.tumblr.com/post/22692302005/i-make-gifs (I found it courtesy of JohntheLutheran's tumblr site.)

i make gifs.

I WANT to do this! The clouds were exactly like this a few days ago, not like birds, OBVIOUSLY but pale at the top and heavy with rain at the bottom edge.

Water colour pencils for early morning skies; pinks, blues, even a touch of yellow; all pale, delicate pastels. This kind of thing, but the colours more connected, less pencil-stroky. I hope Vivienb (whoever she is) won't mind me copying it here...
http://vivienb.blogspot.co.uk/2009/05/sennen-cove-cornwall-dawn-coloured.html
I'm going to have to follow her blog; http://vivienb.blogspot.co.uk/
just check out these cats:  http://vivienb.blogspot.co.uk/p/cats.html

Anyway, back on topic...

Acrylics for the hot deep blue skies with bright white clouds in Summer? Can't remember. Summer was so long ago.   



The only problem is that it will take time... time...                                 and   patience.

Patience is what we will all need - my mother, the staff, us family... She is working away at getting better; a brace to straighten her knee, exercises, enduring sitting in a chair, coping with The Hoist, a lifty thing that is used to swing patients in and out of bed. We tried playing patience the other night; I dealt the cards, and she shifted them about, or indicated what needed to be moved where. I suppose that's a mini-step on the road to returning to the bridge club?

1 comment:

  1. Good to hear about the mini steps and wishing you all the supplies of time and patience (not to mention 'patience') that you'll be needing as your mother recovers.

    Beautiful pictures. I do love Jan Pienkowski's illustrations. His pocket version of St Luke's nativity was always a Christmas favourite when the children were little.

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