Allotment red alert, and art therapy

While we were away from our allotment yesterday, we were told that someone had visited the next door plot looking very interested in renting it......... Oh no! So we're now being very positive and hoping that they weren't as keen as one of our neighbours thought, roll on next Wednesday, when hopefully we find out.

On a positive note look what I found in my local charity shop, this lovely vase to go with the tea cups I found the other day, maybe it's a good omen.

We were also lucky enough to spot some very large pallets on a building site in town and after asking the site foreman if they were going begging my DH carried one back to the allotment, no mean feat considering how heavy they were. Fortunately we had our grandson over for a couple of days and he bravely helped his granddad carry 4 more back to the plot.

If that wasn't enough today he took on the job of taking the pallets apart and pulling out the nails, what a good chap. Thank you very much :-)

   

And as to my contribution, I potted on some possible hyacinth bulbs that got dug up during plot digging, and brought a pic-nic lunch for us all.

Hope they survive the transplanting.

And now for some art work. With my lovely new easel that my DH bought me for Christmas I've been able to return to the exploration of large scale sketching again, A2 to start with. I set up a still life and took the plunge, it's been many years since I worked on anything bigger than A4, so this was quite a new experience. I tried to remember the things I had been taught in my art classes back in the early '90's, not an easy thing when the memory's not as good as it used to be.

I tried to keep it loose, but wasn't that pleased with the result so I put it into iPhoto and put a paint filter on it, which loosened it up a lot more.

The original sketch was done with oil pastels and charcoal pencil, but I much prefer this one that has a more painterly feel, so maybe that might be the way to go next time.

And this one was the same sketch but using a Grunge app, which was great fun and the filters do give an idea of what a distressed treatment would produce.

And  today I had another go with a different still life, this time using chalk pastels, oil pastels and charcoal.

It'll be a slow journey back to working this size and bigger again, but it is a lovely feeling to be able to use your whole body to get the shapes you're trying to create.