Valet and Easel

Last week the weather wasn't reliable enough to go for my bike ride. So, I replaced the pedal power with wax-on, wax-off power and gave my car a full valet instead. To be honest a bike ride would have been much quicker but I do feel I've burned off more calories with all the bending and stretching and scrubbing - plus the car looks a lot better for it. My custom-built easel has finally been removed from the boot too - which means I can put the back seats up. This too got a scrub down and I've almost removed most of the oil paint from it (the easel, not the boot). I'll be favouring the stand up easel over the table-top easel for the next few days in my private classes. I should really use this beautiful easel more often when I am at home.

Another one - I'm enjoying this

Celebrity portrait number 2 - stage 1 - was a little more taxing. I took advantage of the sunny weather and set up outside on the patio. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but now I'm not so sure. My fast drying medium became quite thick and sticky in the heat. The sunlight reflected off the pale canvas, which meant I had 2 pairs of glasses on, one's for seeing and sunglasses over the tops of those (!). On top of that, little bugs were sticking to the wet painting too. But I cracked on for a while before giving up. In the evening, I was thrilled when a friend of Steffi's turned up and immediately said 'Hey - that's.....'xxxxx'...' and named the celebrity straight away. Motivated by her comment I carried on working at it until nearly 10pm. A visitor the following day also recognised who it was straight away too.....so that's a good sign. I took a moment today to relax away from the paints and watch Valerie demonstrate the next stages. Her speed is amazing and the effects are achieved so accurately, so quickly. She's been teaching portraiture since 1981 - and if I can have half her speed in the next 20 years I will be well pleased.

The Good Life?

This morning I had some running around to do, delivering art supplies to some more local customers. My last stop was Peggy, and I enjoyed having a leisurely cup of tea with her and her husband John. I took them along a selection of my free range eggs as I know Peggy used to keep chickens when she was younger. I enjoyed swapping gardening tips with John too. I'm getting quite a reputation, not to mention a few nicknames. From Sue 'Have A Cake' Warne to Felicity (as in The Good Life), to name but a couple. This year I hope to grow my own vegetables and this afternoon I shall start propogating my first batches of seeds. Lucky I chatted to John about this, as he has a few of his own beans andseeds to give me - much more personal this way as opposed to buying the seeds over the counter. He did advise me not to bother with the rhubard seeds though - much better to buy a crown apparently. I'll give them a go anyway, but I understand it could well be a couple of years before we enjoy a rhubarb crumble of our own. Hopefully we'll have better and quicker luck with the fruit. With 2 new trees to add to the garden we'll look forward to some Cox's eating apples and some cooking apples.