Last year’s festival was wet and windy, and included delights like shambling across a muddy field in the rain to use chemical toilets in the middle of the night, two airbed disasters and the combined refusal from the rest of the family to ever again do tenting.
This year, too hot. Forty-four degrees in the festival tents, the line for the ice cream van twenty deep; the catering crew next door valiantly serving up cooked breakfasts and roast dinners when sweating in a chair was too much like hard work. Good fun, though; and a nice change to be able to go and see some bands in the evenings without a dozen jumpers and some wellies.
That done, followed up by a last-gasp family holiday – it rained, we loved it – crates of art supplied cleaned and cleared away; time at last to actually paint and print. I bought some oil-based printing ink, having avoided it for ages because of the expense and the huge capacity for mess. And both these things still count, but I got small tubes on sale, and it’s beautiful to work with: loads of pigment for good strong colours, great for picking up fine details without flooding or clumping, workable for hours on the slab. Not even that hard to clean up , although I’m not wild about how it smells and you really wouldn’t want to get it in your hair. Overall a big improvement on the water-based inks and mediums I’ve used up to now, although it taking a week to dry will need some thought.
Three paintings to finish too now, before the dark and the damp and time to bring everything back inside.
Mostly painting