That's Different!

After not getting near paints & paper over the holidays, it was time to get the creative juices flowing once again.  I'm not feeling very inspired at the moment, a bit rusty, but a lovely bunch of bright orange tulips I bought on Friday just begged to have their portrait painted.

This has been painted on watercolour paper with an odd little palette of really intense water colours that I bought from Etsy a while back.  There is nothing subtle about any of the pigments, but it was great fun using them with a large brush and having to paint in a loose, simple style for a change.  I love the way the orange and the deep turquoise just ping next to each other.

Tomorrow, insipient cold/flu permitting (definitely sickening for something), I am going to the zoo with the school and hoping to get some decent reference photographs for some wildlife painting.  So I'm praying the sore throat, aching limbs and muzzy head will have gone by the morning!

How cute is this - my dog and his best girlfriend on a frosty field this morning.  My dog is a cantankerous chap when other dogs leap about on him, but this little collie can do what she likes and he puts up with it all. The feeling is mutual - sometimes she suddenly bursts out of the undergrowth, seemingly from nowhere, has a bit of a play and a hello with Clovis and then charges off into the distance and we never even see her owner.  Luckily the lady who owns her knows by now that when her dog disappears it is 99% because she has caught a whiff of Clovis and not to worry because she'll be back soon.