april where did you go?

it’s been busy as I took on the NaPoWriMo annual challenge of writing to a prompt every day on top of all my usual stuff. A lot of painting happened too.

I finished this one – is it a bird? no it’s a B52 bomber taking off from the UK to go and bomb innocent civilians and commit war crimes, refuelled and refilled on a UK airfield.

The person in the greenhouse looks up at the sound of it, and the daffodils and all the plants in the garden have runny weepy paint. (Though that is how I paint anyway)>

“Even if it’s a lie”, oil on collaged canvas, 50 x 50 cm.

Every visit to Tentsmuir is a privilege and a joy. There are a few other dog walkers around but not many between 9.30  and 10.30, and on a school holiday day that’s good weather, people don’t turn up until late morning.

that time of the morning the light is special too.

a roe deer has been here

the wind has been, painting patterns

and humans leave things too.

At Kemback spring is advancing

very gently

my front wildflower grass is looking good though I have to admit these bulbs are domesticated versions of non-native flowers.

The native wildlife appreciates them though. I think this is a chocolate mining bee, a solitary bee that uses communal tunnels in the ground, or in low walls, to make cells for its larva. Andrena scotica; the adults are only around in April and May.

The hellebores are doing well, and are now setting seed – they will have been useful to pollinators earlier in the spring.

I am focusing in on the next painting, trying things out in watercolour. This version of the sheep at Kemback, although it tickled my picture-making instincts, is not one I know how to translate into a painting in oils at the moment.

drawing with a fountain pen is fun, I think this might eventually set off a small oil.

And this drawing is in fact exactly what I wanted

lending itself to a watercolour which is the basis for my next large painting.

but before that, I have been busy walking this hound – we went back to the Dairsie/Pitcullo walk after a long break

past Craiglug

and Craigsanquhar, where there were no swallows yet,

with views of the Lomond Hills

and Largo Law. It’s a satisfying walk, hills, views, birds, castles …

This sycamore just opening its leaf buds is in East Neuk, on Balcaskie – we went for a walk there after very nice coffee and cake at the Baern café at Bowhouse

calves and mums belonging to the Balcaskie herd.

We had Nonna to stay again

walked along the river Eden

the local environmental people were seeing what state the river  was in – not wonderful, especially since the farmer “tidied” the banks of all the fallen trees and “improved” the banks, not doubt to try to prevent the old water meadows from flooding. This is a baby signal crayfish, one of the non-native sort, that eats all the native ones and the fish eggs and can make a river quite empty of fauna. The otters eat them. which perhaps helps to keep them down.

More sewing has been happening

a shirt for me, in a soft blue and white striped cotton

resulting in the watercolour above and this little oil panel,  25 x 20 cm

a good excuse to squelch some paint around

then a dress version of the shirt, or rather, the dress from the Merchant and Mills pattern I hacked the shirt from

resulting in another watercolour ….

Actually I ought to be doing a lot more of these watercolours, I have so many fleeting ideas, I must start making a note of them.

This demands a painting, I think – it’s the reflection of the sun off a small round mirror on a stand onto the wall in my bedroom in the early morning.

Does this ferocious yow deserve a portrait? maybe …

Meanwhile I painted this 120  x 100 cm one of the veg patch “The bird in my head”

featuring the courgettes

in all their triffid glory

The bird is the wren I hear and occasionally see flitting across,

and an approximation of Bims, Bonnard-style, in the bottom corner. This painting has already been bagged by the Graystone Gallery for their August Edinburgh Festival show, and they want another, so I am digging deep.

Perhaps they might like this, which I painted last year,

I have hidden Nonna in the flickering shadows of the leaves on the step.