Spring flowers

It’s almost the end of tulips and daffodils season. Soon it will be bluebells and other spring flowers… Leaves are opening on the trees. Buds swelling with the water that is falling from the April showers. We decided to go out for the day and headed south for a few miles. You could see more leaves on trees the further south we went. I remember hearing on a TV programme once that you could see the spring slowly creeping up the country as the days lengthened and the daffodils flowered. It might have said it takes two weeks to go from the far south to the far north? Not absolutely certain though.

Decorated doorway

Doorway at the Thai temple. So beautifully decorated. Golds and greens, amazing patterns. The celebration was outside so we didn’t go in, but I would have liked to. The skill and artistry is outstanding. I imagine the sort of skills you would need to carve church screens, or old furniture. Those skills are being replaced by computers or 3d printing. But hand carving and painting adds something special. Not clean and accurate, but human and possibly slightly flawed. It is fine art. X

Fighting with Jpegs!

Not showing much, just a glimpse.

I’ve been working on my MA project Al day and it’s driving me mad. I have one image that will save as a .Tif file but not as a .Jpeg, no matter what I do I get a notification that the file is not supported or something. All the rest are fine. I have both sorts of files so I can put them into a website that will print a one off book for you! Argh!

Black and white experiment

Another late night experiment. I added the pink and red this morning, when I could see their colours clearly. Drawing under electric light means colours are not as easily perceived. The yellow cast of the light made it hard to decide what colours were on the felt pens. Pinks and oranges looked very similar. Why hearts? Just because the shapes I had drawn suggested them and I wanted a soft contrast to the strong black and white shapes.

Cats in the garden

Warmest day of the year in the UK so far today. 19°c. A couple of weeks ago it was freezing. Our cats were out in the sunshine. Basking. On the chair on the ground. The third cat was mooching somewhere in the bushes so I missed getting a picture of her. Everything is growing madly so I had a go at trimming the top of a fir tree (not tall) and some branches off an overgrown buddlea. Now I ache all over, eight hours later. I wish I was a cat.