Arty Farty

My Beloved and I visited Tate Britain today. Paintings look so different in reality. The John Singer Sargent painting that heads this post was lovely: the light on the face of the girl on the left was wonderful.

To my surprise, I find I love looking at portraits so I'm hoping we can visit the National Portrait Gallery next.

We're so lucky to be only a train journey away from all the London galleries. Do you have any galleries near you? Do you even like visiting art galleries?

So cute!

from Nakisha

My ACEO cards that I ordered last Thursday have arrived and they're so cute! I've propped them up on my desk as you can probably see from the picture. (The originals don't have the copyright notice but I wanted to protect Nakisha's work.)

They're just adorable and it cheers me up to have them to look at.

Better than chocolate?

Picture by Nakisha

So pretty!

I'm exhausted after too much driving the last two days; yesterday I had to take my son to the sleep apnoea clinic and back, and then I had to go back today to return the apparatus they'd strapped on him. He came home the first day all wired up and they even gave us a piece of paper with a police number on it to show that it was legitimate medical equipment and he isn't a terrorist! I'm so glad we weren't stopped.

So today I've been lolling around trying to recover (CFS really sucks) and I came across these wonderful pictures on Etsy and I treated myself. I also bought two ACEO cards with dear little rabbits huddled under quilts but those have to come by post.

Picture by Nakisha

Nakisha said I can use the images on my blog, so I may be posting more of them in the future. They're just so lovely. It's a less fattening way of cheering myself up than with chocolate.

Art and craft

I seem to be busy with lots of things that aren't writing or blogging at the moment. One of the things I'm doing is making window clings for the hall. I did have a perfectly good window cling but Rufus was fascinated by a bubble in the centre that is now a hole.

I'm getting some more paints for my birthday, so I'm thinking of doing one based on a design of my own. (The one above is based on this template.)

Some time ago, I doodled a witch's cottage:

I thought I might base a design on the cottage, or maybe the bird. I'm not sure how that will work out, though.

When inspiration doesn't strike

What do you do when inspiration doesn't strike? There's an interesting post at The Stellar Café about just this. Peter Reynolds' suggestion is not to write anything but to paint or draw something instead.

I think I might give it a try. Doodling around with a pen seems much less demanding than actually writing something and who knows what it might lead to?

It's worth popping across to The Stellar Café to read the original post.

Picture fairyhedgehog

Writing prompt

Artist Kenneth Tin-Kin

Dennis Cass has this picture as a writing prompt on his blog. You can see a larger version of it there too.

It reminds me of album covers when I was a kid and the 60s and hippies. I always feel I missed out: I was 6 in 1960, just a bit too small to be part of the scene. I remember England winning the football World Cup and the first men walking on the moon. I was in my early teens when we had "Flower Power" which for me meant sticking stylised flower pictures all over my school briefcase.

I shall stop this self-indulgent foray into the past now or we'll be here all night. I wonder what the picture makes you think of.

Visit to the art gallery

I'm sorry I'm not posting much at the moment but I seem to have real life keep happening.

On Monday we went to the National Gallery as planned and it was very swish. We were offered canapés from transparent acrylic frames that looked like mini bookcases, and the soft drink on offer was a mint/peach smoothie. Very odd. My husband had the sparkling wine. There was a live clarinettist there too, playing some very unstructured jazzy music. Not to my taste but it was definitely posh. I don't know if any of you have seen the National Gallery but it's a huge building with high ceilings and enormous rooms. You can see a slide show of it here.

I loved seeing the pictures. It's so different from seeing a reproduction. I remember when I first took my kids to the art gallery and we were all taken with the sheer size of some of the paintings. If you reduce a 6 foot by 8 foot painting to an A4 reproduction, you're bound to lose some of the sense of it.

Later, we walked over the river to Waterloo Station. The South Bank is such fun: there was an interactive display of light columns and we queued for our turn to wander round it. We're so lucky to live near London.

The limits of creativity

In the last few weeks I've made an elaborate birthday card for my son, a window cling for the window by the front door (see above), started knitting a winter hat and bought the materials to make a silver dolly bag to go with a some shoes I bought to wear to two weddings. I've now ordered a crochet bolero pattern so I can make a top to go over my dress for the weddings.

I haven't written a word of my story. Of any story.

Do you think that creativity has to come out somehow and if it's coming out in one direction it doesn't come out in another? I seem to be all art and crafts at the moment and nothing about writing.

Private viewing

My husband has got free tickets for us to go to a private viewing at the National Gallery. It's Italian paintings of the same era as the Impressionists. I think! He wasn't entirely clear about it.

I'm guessing it's the exhibition called Radical Light, showcasing the work of "Italy's Divisionist Painters, 1891 - 1910".


I'd never heard of these paintings before and I'm looking forward to going and seeing them. I shall probably take the time to go and look at some of my favourite paintings if I can. I love the National Gallery.