Friday 6th November - Flowers

 

I've still got quite a bit of pavement left to write on before I will have to get a bucket of water and yard brush into action.

We still have an abundance of salvia 'hotlips' and a respectable number of salvia 'armistead' flowering, and a small army of bees sorting through the flowerheads. There are scattered communities of cyclamen, mostly arrived under their own steam. I've only ever planted one small clump under the smoke bush which took several years to get settled. This has been THE year for them to choose to become abundant, and I am very grateful.

Only a couple of cosmos plants survived the summer; here they are behind the low brick wall at the front of our house, a variety called cupcake.

Thursday 5th November - Bright

Maybe not the most obvious word to choose on a very misty morning.

I was surprised to find that two trees that I thought were next to each other, at the other end of the road, are not. Next to each other, I mean;

I did this painting back in the middle of September, wanting to record how the tree with yellow leaves stood out so much against the larger tree with dark green leaves.

Today, I could only see the misty outline of the smaller tree; so the dark green tree must be quite a bit further away. I've been living here for 35 years and had never noticed this before; doing all the drawing and painting this year has made me much more aware.

So, the word 'bright' has become a self-fulfilling prophecy. I was thinking more of fireworks and bright lights, and fending off the darkness and gloom, but this afternoon the sun has come out, the air is crisp and clean and I have managed a walk around the block - there is the short walk and the long walk and the medium - and I did the medium route today.

I've got my new box of proper pavement chalks - there'll be no stopping me now! 

 

Wednesday 4th November - Half past Seven in the evening

My eyes are beginning to feel a bit glued together and I am struggling to say awake.

I was thinking about last year - on a Wednesday I would have been leaving the house before half past 8, shivering until the heating got going. Then coping with the last of the commuter traffic driving to the first school of the day, struggling to find a parking space among the craziness of parents dropping off their children (late again) , chatting in the street outside the school, or trying to zip out into the traffic to get to work.  

Hassled and harassed I would work my way through all the security gates, walking lop-sided because of my piano teaching bag, dump my stuff in the staff room and get ready to teach. No, get ready to get ready to teach - I still had to wheel the piano across the hall and into the staff room, go back for the stool, and THEN get ready to teach!

I had sven individual pupils at that school, which would take me up to half past twelve. Time for me to go home for lunch, leaving the piano in the staff room, I am happy to say, as the hall was now full of children carrying wobbly trays of food. Out through all the security doors and stagger back to the car and drive home.

Then, reload the car with a different set of kit (laptop, speaker, guitar, music bag) and go to the second school to teach a whole class guitar lesson for thirty or more seven-year-olds. Having survived this high energy, high octane, high chaos hour, I would stagger back home feeling as though I had done three rounds with a troupe of monkeys.

No peace yet - just time for a cup of coffee before the first of four piano pupils, starting at 4pm. 

I would be finished by 6, supper would magically appear (thank you, wonderful husband). 

By half past seven I would be falling asleep in front of the tv, with good reason!

Now, a year later, Wednesday was like this; 

I got up after a leisurely start at about 10, taught a lesson at 11 (a favourite 'chat and lesson' time with a good friend!), lunch, afternoon spent on paperwork and various projects, and three more piano lessons leisurely spaced out between 4 and 6. The magic re supper is still working;

Compare the two - how come I am nearly falling asleep at half past seven?

Wednesday 4th November - Shine

 I had been vacillating between several words, but in the end the sun decided it for me. It has been a cheerful day, weather-wise, even though the news everywhere is rather more... shall we say 'cloudy'? Squalls ahead? Probably.

Oh well. 

I'm amused that I have taken the photograph after dark in the shining light of the streetlight, with a bit of help from the flash on my phone.

Tuesday 3rd November - Drawing-a-Day Catch-up

 No, don't get too used to this sudden flurry of blogging! I'm just procrastinating from other stuff, ranging from hoovering upstairs to answering emails to moving the next project along. Or planting tulip bulbs, but I may leave that a little longer; the book says later in the month is better so the don't try and start growing too soon.

This post is just the drawings I've been doing since the last time, so feel free to skip and go an make a cup of tea instead.

This was drawn following a pencil drawing tutorial, but as it was #inktober, I used a pen. I added the leaves the next day, 

and coloured in the dormouse a few days later on

Random stuff...

Mono prints - I find them very satisfying to do

I did the next two with the same photograph as a starting point

I'm dead chuffed with the grey cat!

and with the drawing over the paint - I still don't like it very much. It is sort of how I remember the church at Bedham, but when I look back at the photo it is very different

Tuesday 2nd November - Hope

 

Oh look, it's long past time I polished those shoes!

I chose the word 'HOPE' for today.

I hoped it would stop raining at some point in the day so I could chalk my picture - it did.

I hoped we would be able to meet up with the 'children' - what do you call children who are now grown-ups? - and we did; the rain cleared and the sun came out and we all met up at the beach - half an hour for us, an hour or so for them. They live close enough together to form a 'bubble'.

This is an attempt to draw Pandora's Box; as I recall, she was left looking after a box with instructions NEVER to open it. But she did, and all kinds of evil and pestilence escaped from the box and was released into the world, leaving only 'hope' inside.

My rough image has gone now - it tipped it down with rain when we got home after our short meeting, leaving the pavement clear again for tomorrow.