subsiding into autumn

my greenhouse still has a few ripening tomatoes, and there are the small squashes I grew from 2 seeds in a last year’s squash from Pittormie fruit and veg.

I saw this comma while walking back from Ceres. the cloud was gradually blowing away or burning off – there was not much wind, it’s been a week of high pressure with a lot of grey low cloud and inversions/fogs.

lovely to see a red admiral still finding nectar and warmth in my garden.

Little Nons doing her thing at Cambo on Sunday.

that was another still day and sunny after the fog/low cloud burnt off.

I proceeded to start another painting based on this watercolour from almost 3 years ago. The little mirror I inherited from my mother, I think it’s Georgian, which sits of my bedroom windowsill with views of the neighbours and Owlett wood, and in fact just now the pleasing red berries and burnt orange leaves of the small rowan in my front garden.

I got as far as this and began to be very depressed. Even worse when I put the outdoor view in. It just didn’t have the feel of the watercolour.

it was banished to the outdoor studio at this stage.

But the sun came out on Thursday, we went to Tentsmuir

a different day, a different light, after a night of despair … (I can’t paint, etc) so I went and had another look and brought it back indoors. an afternoon of scraping off and scraping back on

blurring detail

adding colour to the window frame

endless chivvying of paint with this –

I got rid of the outdoor view and left it at this. bobble-head wobbling about in the weird mirror contre-jour. and the ceiling light-shade just hinted at. hints and blurs are the thing. it’s 50 x 50 cm.

today an autumnal walk at Falkland, from the Pillars of Hercules (so called because there were stone blocks there to rest the  coffins on on the way to the old burial ground), where I get my order of Wild Hearth sour-dough bread, baked in Perth.

a grey day, but somehow that makes the leaves brighter

we walked up quite high, to the ruins of the Temple of Decision, a fancy manshed in doric clothing

it’s rather sad, it was a pretty little ornamental retreat

designed by Alexander Roos in 1849 for the owners of Falkland Estate, Margaret and Onesiphorus Tyndall Bruce. but was allowed to fall to ruin in the last century.

convenient blocks of stone to sit on while recovering from the mostly uphill walk to get there.

actually about 700 feet. This looks totally flat though!

the next painting on the easel.

the beginnings of a painting just of my echinaceas in their autumnal forms.