If you’re not into watercolours I recommend a click of the mouse now before your eyes glaze over.  For those who find sketching outdoors strangely exciting and challenging, here’s another of my colour mixing rants.  It was the last day of term today for my art classes, and it’s become a tradition to escape the classroom and spend the time sketching in Llawhaden castle grounds.  Sketching outdoors refreshes the parts that copying photos can’t reach, as well as waking up your colour sense.  How do you paint a stone wall?  Is it light or dark?  Warm or cool?  It’s usually all these things, speckled with white patches of lichen just to make the task even more tricky. 

Letting patches of alizarin, cobalt and raw sienna blend on the page gets you the soft mixed shades of old stone.   Other variations of the three primaries could be used to get similar effects.  More blue in the shadows, more sienna in the sunny spots.  Plenty of white patches of paper left exposed for the lichen.  In the studio you can see what you’re doing, tubes are clearly labelled and there’s a nice big white palette (cunningly disguised as a ten pence white china plate from a charity shop) to mix puddles of colour in.  But when you’re sitting on a wobbly stool with the wind blowing and your pocket paintbox on your knee, it’s not so easy, especially when you look at the range of colours in the average ‘beginners’ sketching boxes.  Gill had 24 colours in her box, most of them unused and unusable.  Four shades of insipid pink, 4 blues all very similar but no windsor blue.  Umpteen sludgy browns, all indistuingishable.   Give it to your grandchildren and start again, I said.  You need the same colours in your field palette as you do in the studio, otherwise you might as well mix your colours blindfold.  Get half a dozen artists quality half pans in a paintbox and give yourself a chance.  The more limited the colour choices, the better your chances of consistency and remembering which colour does what.  Sketching outdoors is challenging enough, what with wind, weather, nowhere to put stuff, tourists getting in the way, getting a numb bum sitting on rocks, and insects landing on your sketchbook.  It’s tough out there, folks. 

So if all those pretty paintboxes with their dozens of obscure colours are all hitting the bins tonight, it’s all my fault.  My own paintbox is messy, but it works.  It’s still got more colours in it than I tend to use, but generally it’s easy to plonk the brush in roughly the right place when working at speed. 

Colours most used?  Raw sienna, cobalt blue, windsor blue, ultramarine, alizarin, aureolin, light red, cobalt violet, cadmium yellow.  So that’s two reds, two blues, three yellows and a voilet.  The palette could do with a wash, though, couldn’t it.  Glass of wine first, I think.

My studio table and floor is disappearing under pieces of paper and chapter five is well under way.  Writing and illustrating a book has its own pace and momentum; you have to keep a part of your brain connected to it or it’s hard to pick up the threads again.  On the other hand, twelve hours at the drawing board (including umpteen cups of tea, hanging out washing, raids on the kitchen and periodic dips into facebook of course) are about as much as I can manage.  As well as being immersed in all things to do with rivers, lakes and reservoirs, the first few chapters are now coming back from the typesetters for editing.  I have an ambiguous view of seeing the proofs, my haphazard layouts transformed into professional looking pages.  Just don’t ask me if it’s any good or not, I haven’t a clue!  Encouraging phrases from publisher and consulting editor ping into my inbox from time to time, so I’m assuming I’m on the right lines. 

Here’s my take on how salmon are able to find their way home from the Atlantic to their home river:  Caption is ‘Right, what’s our postcode?’

Meanwhile, my Wednesday art class has a few weeks to go until the end of term so we’re spending time drawing outdoors for the last few lessons.  This week a good time was had by all in Sandy Haven.  Everyone says they find sketching from life daunting, but the results were so much fresher than labouring to copy a photo, in spite of challenges like the strong breeze and bright sunlight.  Mike had an unusual obstacle to overcome whilst sitting sketching a bank of wild daisies.  A family of six came and sat between him and his scene, laid out a rug and had a picnic, obscuring his view without appearing to notice he was there.  That’s a marvel in itself; Mike is a tall and imposing presence and had never experienced total invisibility before.  Challenges aside, a good time was had by all -  call me single minded but you can never do enough drawing.   Sketching, after all, is just thinking with a pencil.

That’s enough – brain is not firing on all cylinders tonight, must have used up today’s store of wit and creativity in silly salmon cartoons and duck jokes.  Glass of wine, anyone?

‘Life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass. It’s about learning to dance in the rain’.

Many blogs ago I mentioned our friend Ken Roberts who was setting off on a solo round the world cycle ride.  We’re still following Ken’s progress on www.acrosscontinents.org and his blogs are becoming more perceptive and fascinating all the time.  At the moment, on the brink of entering China, he has been visiting countries that most of us have never heard of or, if we have heard of them, have no idea where they are.   Many of them are torn apart by political corruption or civil unrest; none of them feature in holiday brochures, and most of them end in ’stan.  Through the middle of all of this pedals a lone Englishman, wrestling with visas and bureaucracy, unreadable roadsigns, unkept roads and extreme temperatures.  What it most striking, though, is not the expected obstacles that he faces, but the kindness of strangers.  Wherever he goes people feed him and ask no payment, help him out, offer hospitality.  Ken talks in his blog about the ‘many individual acts of generosity, the extent unimaginable in supposedly more developed nations ‘.  It gives you faith that humanity, one to one, has a connection and warmth that goes beyond nationality or language and belies the world view that the newspapers would have us believe, that the world outside our garden gate is a dodgy place.    Perhaps it confirms the view that life is a mirror to your attitudes; if you expect strangers to be friendly, they will be.  If you expect fear and hostility, that’s what you’ll get. 

Anyway, the blog is worth a look.  It also makes me realise how quickly we have come to take worldwide internet connection for granted; a few years ago we’d have had to make do with the occasional postcard.  It will be interesting to see how far the regular updates continue once Ken is in deepest China.

I think I become more interested in other people’s travels when my own adventures are mental rather than physical.  Yes, I’m still totally immersed in my RYA marine conservation book, which for a butterfly brain like mine is a major struggle.  More than halfway through now, just finished the chapter on coasts and beaches, so next up is rivers and lakes.  Apologies to all my facebook friends who have to put up with my regular rants when I get stuck and need to let off steam.  The next month or so will see the bulk of the work done, after which I am looking forward to a few days’ sailing, if the weather lets us and if I can remember how!   I did enjoy researching rockpools, though.  New knowledge makes you look at everything with fresh and more appreciative eyes.