French window 2017

Jon and I are staying in the French house with the fab view again. I think I am drawn to taking so many photos because I live in a basement in Edinburgh. Dad has had posh double glazed windows put in that open two ways. 

I was amused to find my daughter in the room yesterday taking pictures. I don’t go in for net curtains – but these keep out the bugs and flies so they are allowed …. the changing atmosphere and view is a fascination as you can see below. 

 

I have no desire to paint the images but, can understand why the impressionists painted en plein air – with lots of canvasses to record scenes  at different times of day. 

Advertisement

Migraine mandalas

I get hemiplegic migraines ( which I am sure I must have mentioned in an earlier post) they are exacerbated by flashing lights and hormones. Most of the time they are under control with a very small dose of antidepressants. However, menopause and my irritable bowel has been fun!!! Sometimes, the migraines are brought on by flashing lights – sometimes food (if I am being sensitive). This latest episode was self inflicted really – reading a book and drawing mandalas in 4 hrs of flickering light on a car journey -was asking for trouble. 

I decided to have a go at working through my frustration and anger at my self , after several  reared their ugly heads , consecutive evenings. 

I am staying at my Dad’s house in the south of France with only my travel kit. I painted  loose ovals on lots of sheets of heavy duty cartridge paper with  very diluted acrylic. Then added swirls of neocolours, oil pastels and more paint- it’s warm and arrid here so everything dries very quickly. 

I wanted to continue working with my paper dolls. I tried a design where a female shape is curled up in painholding her head but it ended up looking like white splodges in some sort of fiery constellation. 

A head screaming (below) just looked weird( lol) and didn’t convey what I wanted to express- I like the colours , textures and patterns , so they became backgrounds. 

I needed some figures that worked in circles so I searched on line and came up with an ancient artifact from Mexico 

Practicing blind contour faces in pain ( really getting into the details 😂😂😂😂) 

The above design uses an African figurine as motif but even though it made a lovely mandala in the centre with its arms and legs I didn’t like the proportions of the head and neck. 

Nice uncomfortable screaming baby type figures are amusing me now my head is better and I like the nightmarish qualities – there is an other worldly feeling and out of body experience that I seem to have captured too , which sums up my aura stage quite nicely. Though if I think about it -I don’t experience all that colour 

Mandala teaching

I had fun teaching some of the other people on the retreat how to draw mandalas. Everybody did very well. It was interesting seeing who wanted to follow my examples exactly and who felt confident enough to start innovating from the beginning 

I prepared a sheet which had examples of suggested shapes to use and how start building mandalas. I had a brain wave to do it on stickers so that everybody could take them away or stick them in their journals 

Here are the finished designs. This is only my second go at teaching my style so it was interesting seeing the other people’s designs develop. The first drawing is probably the nearest copy of the design I drew with them 

The design with the lavender on is my tutorial – I was very amused by how difficult it is to draw , teach and talk – my design looks very wonky 😂😂😂

Meditation inspired art making – Portugal

One of the things I have enjoyed at the Omassim guest house is the daily meditation sessions. There has been a variety of different approaches to meditation on offer – an energy bath, candle and eye gazing and chanting. These sessions have inspired me to make art around the ideas explored – I had great fun making my paper dolls in meditation poses. 

Above are a few designs from the energy bath session. I had brought some backgrounds ready prepared with me – where I used pink ink sprayed through a doily. I used a mixture of pen and ink mandalas, neocolours and oil pastel to create the other effects. 

We chanted about the elements. (I wandered into the village one morning and found a shop selling primary coloured papers and oil pastels. These new supplies lent themselves very well to more paper doll mandalas) 

Then I had a very strange experience meditating looking into Jon’s left eye. It felt like everything else fell away except his eye. I got annoyed when he blinked because it broke the sensation. It felt like I didn’t know him at all and that the whole universe was some how available in his murky green eye. ( he he he) 

Palhais Portugal

We have been visiting Portugal this week at the Omissam Guest house. Jon booked us in for a yoga retreat. I was quite anxious because I haven’t done any yoga for years. However, Lia and her team are very adaptable and doing yoga once a day was an acceptable practice. 

The retreat is situated in the small village of Palhais. There is a lot of new buildings but the centre still has a lot of  charm. There are lots of blue and white painted houses and a few examples of patterned ceramic tiles.

The pavements and roads are made of cobbles that are cut into little cubes of various sizes

More examples of tiles – the chicken design was inside a cafe. The majority of designs that I saw are blue and white. 

The tiles are either set in panelled designs making a feature on a wall or a patterned area typically around the main door. 

Every roof is tiled in brown ceramic tiles – there don’t seem to be any guttering and several roofs have pretty ridge tiles and a ‘Moorish’ feel to them 

Because it is early July there are lots of flowers. Agapanthus seems to be used everywhere on rounderbouts, decorating roadside pots and gardens. 

 

Thistles , succulents and morning glory are in abundance too