Colour- just not watercolour

 

There has not been much time for art work as Fiona and I continue our cottage maintenance work - planting out 100+ Crocosimia Lucifer (bright red) bulbs, weeding and painting 4 alcoves - 2 up and 2 downstairs.

We did make time to go to an industrial supply shop to get two new chimney pots for the cottage; and whilst over that way stoped off for lunch in Halkirk with Graham. 

Across the road from the Halkirk Ulbster Arms Hotel was the most amazing display of tulip colour. If you scroll through the post you will see what I mean about colour and form.

I was interested in the furry edged tulips - white and yellow - I had never seen these before.

So while I did not get time to apply colour to paper - nature offered so much colourful beauty for us to enjoy.

Slow progress

  

Much of our time when we are at the cottage is currently given over to cottage maintenance and garden work. We have been given many many red monbrecias to add to our planting of several hundred orange monbrecias - it will look gorgeous in August-September; but it will take quite a few hours to plant the reds. 

That is a very long way of saying there is not a lot of time for watercolours - but I did get a couple of hours to progress the two I had started and start two new pieces as you can see from the opening photo.

I'm not as happy with these works because I did not bring my Daniel Smith watercolours which I think are deeper in colour - I need to remember to bring my colours with me next time.

A few progress-process photos follow.

With a bit of luck I might get these finished before we head back to our cottage in Maleny.

Inspiration for future watercolours

 

Today we took Fiona's dad for a drive down a few local side roads - something he said he wanted to do on this trip. This of course provided me with the opportunity to photograph some of the ruinous buildings and doors and windows that might become the subjects for future watercolours.

My understanding is that the building in the opening photo was a very successful local store in it's day - a fact I will need to check out.

I hope you enjoy the images in the blog post.

I will need to record the locality of each of the ruins as I'm a bit prone to forgetting that by the time I get around to doing paintings of the ruins. That makes it hard when it comes to naming the works.

Assemblage sculpture in the cottage grounds

 

We have been away from the cottage for 9 months or more. It is always a joy to reintroduce ourselves to the plants but also the assemblages Fiona and I have made and scattered about the grounds of the cottage.

This time I particularly like the combination of the daffodils and the assemblages such as in the case of the background to the cube in the opening photo.

Following are images of most of the pieces in no particular order or priority.

I like how the art ages and just seems to settle even more into the garden landscape. We don't have plans to make any more pieces in this trip.

A little bit of art

 

We are settling into life in the cottage and have started to carry out maintenance tasks. We are now trying to find bits of time for art. I got a couple of hours this morning and started on a couple of wee watercolours. 

The opening photo shows where I got to - a reasonable start. Some process photos follow.

The kitchen table became the studio!!! It takes a bit of time unpacking and packing the art box but it is worth the effort.

First fragments from the cove

 

We have been at the cottage for just under a week but have managed to walk to the cove most days and down on to the stone beach twice.

There are still enough bits of rust and stones to bring a smile. How about the delicate tracings of the heart stone in the opening photo - too large to bring home - it will reside on the stone beach for more folk to find and enjoy maybe.

More photos of stones follow.

A few images of the rust and other abandoned bits

Even though the current trip is a short maintenance one I'm sure we will visit the cove and it's treasure on a few more occasions.