Taylor's Back

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As a climber, I have 'favourite' parts of the body, which fascinate me. Shoulders, backs and hands are particularly important to a climber, and usually the parts which sustain a lot of injuries too - so you become quite familiar with them on yourself and others. Taylor and I went to the 'Bodies' exhibition at the Carnegie Science Museum in Pittsburgh over Xmas, a fascinating collection of preserved cadavers. Some where whole bodies, in 'action' (such as kicking a ball) and the rest were dissected, skinned, cross-sectioned, in all manner of ingenious ways to show what amazingly complex forms we as humans are.

So of course at the hands section, Taylor and I were fascinated by the structure of the tendons, pulleys, and ligaments we've so often injured whilst pulling our body weight up on our fingertips. "Oh, there's the pulley I partially tore on both my ring fingers!, no wonder it made such a horrible sound" Anyway, I spare you the rest, unless you climb, it's as nerdy as Star Wars.

Muse

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Muse: A force personified; inspiration to an artist.

Lavender Shadows

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I'm not much of a gardener, but I'm trying. Lavender is one of my favourites, for the colour, smell and appearance. My friend Sue had a fantastically prolific lavender plant in her garden in Wales, and it looked like a huge crazy afro. Mine are just tiddlers, and I don't know whether they'll survive a winter indoors, but it's got to be better than being buried under 4 feet of Tahoe snow!

One of the coolest things about our house, which I've mentioned before, is the light. In fact, it was the light in the main room (courtesy of 15ft triangular windows) which prompted a rather desperate, undignified outburst when we looked at the place. ("we HAVE to live here!!!! Taylor, please say we can!!) I've done some other larger paintings of these glorious shafts of light, which I'll put on my website very soon. The long shadows which pan around the main living space all day are amazing. I've never lived anywhere like this before, there are just paintings waiting to be done of every corner and every time of day here.

French Press & Biscotti

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Ah, Italy....Coffee and biscotti.. reminds me of climbing trips to the Italian Riviera with my friend Sue a few years ago. The majority of my foreign travel over the years has been ostensibly climbing related, but I always carry my sketchbook and camera. Sue and I used to go to Finale Ligure, and climb great rock, drink great wine, eat great food and drink the best coffee in the world. I had pillar-box red hair at that time - it's been almost every colour, including bright pink (which it was when I met my husband, but he still liked me anyway) Anyway, I'm sure us freaky coiffed, foul mouthed, drunken Brits weren't exactly model tourists, but we had a great time, and I painted a lot from the sketches and pictures I took. Here's a couple:

Italian Paintings and Sketches

Cup & Saucer

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I bought some new brushes a couple of days ago, and it's made a huge difference! I love the marks they make, and no stray bristles means more precision - strange then, that my brushwork feels so much looser in today's and yesterday's paintings. I think it's something to do with confidence, these two feel like the practically painted themselves. I also gleaned a cool tip from Brendy Vaughan's blog via Carole Marine, a couple of favourite painting blogs of mine - use the Munsell Colour Wheel. This has opened up more ideas about my use of colour, which in the past has been fairly limited, as a worked almost exclusively in black and white for many years. It's hard not to go a bit mad for colours and use all my favourite ones all the time, or just be a bit dull and obvious, and use 'natural' colours for everything. This will take some practice, but I've got every day....

My Little Teapot

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Yes, yet again more of my favorite beverage paraphernalia...