Clouds


Saturday 24. 04. 10 This was the week that I was supposed to meet my brother in England and see all our cousins, however due to the volcanic cloud, neither of us could get a flight in so we had to cancel. It was a disappointment but we will reschedule for the Fall. So this week I bought three more large canvasses courtesy of the Dalbe sale and George’s car to ferry them home and I am hoping to do a night landscape of Celles with a white van. I have done some drawings and shot some reference photos so hope to start the painting next week.

Learning French


Thursday 15. 04. 10 Yesterday I went with Gisèle to what I thought was a gourmet wine tasting but turned out to be a high class tupper ware party. We went to the Domaine de la Tour which is a rather grand looking house on a hill overlooking Nebian. Instead of standing around sampling wine we were subjected to a spiel about high end German cookware and cutlery. Good for the French but for me ultimately deadly boring. However after a couple of hours we come away with a bottle of wine and a jar of paté each. Today instead of staying in at the Accueil we had a field trip. We drove out to St Jean de la Blaquière, parked and then had a walk down to the river which is known locally as a miniature version of the Colorado. As we walked Alain pointed  out the various wild flowers, aromatic herbs  and edible plants found there, some of which we sampled. It was the perfect Spring day, sunny but not too hot. After lunch I decided that it was such a lovely day that I drove out to St Jean de Fos and Aniane and shot lots of photos of various white vans. In the evening instead of going to my life drawing class I went up to George and Laurene’s for aperos and caught up on their recent trip to Italy.

Winter Landscape, final, maybe


Friday 02. 04. 10. I think that I may have finally finished Winter Landscape so have hung it in the living room. I’ll know if it is finished if after seeing it there every day I can’t find anything that I want to change. Picked up new scooter yesterday afternoon and have been burning rubber since. It certainly has a bit more puissance than the old one.I went to my life-drawing at Octon last night and the model didn’t turn up. By general consensus we all stepped up to the plate, so to speak, except we remained clothed. The other two men in the class left – I guess it wasn’t worth staying to draw clothed people.