Mini lianer Ldascpnaes

aaaaghh, not enough much and too time to do, so these landscapes done were mini fast and small! A clpoue in late August elary Sepeetbmr while snuinng on the lakse and the Bertschikon ones tnohgit, I’ve trhwon tehm teotgher as I lkie the linear asecpt I seem to grtativae twoards wehn worinkg on tihs scale. One of tshee, and my foaurtvie was mdae by my seevn yaer old daugehtr, can you gsues which? And if your tiihnnkg its ltae and that ltae ngiht G&T is ginivg you bulrerd vioisn, thnik again….as according to boffins at Cambridge University, it doesn’t matter what order the letters of a word are in; as long as the first and last letters are in the proper place, you can scramble the rest and still understand it. Check out douglastwitchell where you can have your words mixed up for free without having to drink anything first.

good sketcher….baaaad painter

SO, I had a couple of hours off…great I thought and I packed my stuff and drove to a nice spot outside Winterthur to paint. It was raining of course, so that meant I was sat in the back of the car trying to avoid getting wet, but I’m just making excuses. Watercolours always look so easy when they’re done right (by someone with more practice than me!!).  I haven’t been painting outdoors in a while and I think by the end of each session I am starting to learn something. The problem is by the time I get to painting again, I’ve forgotten what I’d learned the first time, which says a lot about my retentive memory. In fact it seems the longer I spend on a painting, the worse it gets and here is a prime example.

The first painting was the one I spent the most time on and I totally overworked it. The second took me about 15 minutes and though not perfect, I’m much happier with it. Maybe you disagree? Anyway if your easily impressed with my work and need more proof of how to do it good then you should take a look at the work of the unpronounceable artist Joseph Zbukvic , who really knows his way around a pan!

Sunbathers

Still living a vacuous life (at least on the weekend) of burning under the sun, cooling down, heating up, cooling down and drawing other people doing the same, all dressed in brightly coloured pieces of synthetic cloth and eating ice cream.

Bodensee bathers

I am glad to see that I am not the only one out there with a preference for drawing and recording the style of older folks. I know I said that I didn’t want this to be a fashion blog but this one is more about style and personalities, so I’m letting myself off. Have a look here at one of my new favourite sites Advanced Style, with some great advice on getting old and staying stylish. At 79 years old, Joyce believes, ” that to age is a privilege” and that the real secret to ageing stylishly, “ is being in love with life and realizing what you have.” I couldn’t agree more. The tenuous link to the sketches below, is that one is of an ‘older’ lady, also one who is not afraid of a little colour.

Lake Constance

At last the sun arrived this weekend and we were able to spend some time at the lake, which meant as well as getting in a swim and attempting to convert my pristine English whiteness to something resembling the colour of weak tea, I could also get out my paintbrushes. This time we were in Steckborn and Ermatingen, two small towns on the Swiss side of Lake Constance which have very nice Strandbad’s, (beach bath or bathing area)…Long may the sun shine!