Franconia al Fresco

Simperingly romantic this wee 30cm x 40cm pastel painting, done after mooching around Franconian courtyards at an art event! I often see posts of fellow artists who do various ‚ ''demos'' at art events, my landscapes take so long with lots of staring, head scratching and thinking that doing a large landscape just wouldn’t cut and so I decided to challenge myself to a quickie to see how far I'd get. No planning, no thought about palette, perspective or composition just bang on! And here is the result! 

Franconia al Fresco!

I was surprised at the result! A summery palette, that I definitely normally wouldn’t use, yes some very dodgy compo (fudged my way through that) but I think it’s light and airy and says a lot about what I love about summers and especially eating al Fresco, a thing that defo didn’t happen too often in Scotland where picnics often ended up being eaten in the car. 

Speaking of romance and love, trawling through my social media it occurred to me that I was seeing loads of ‚ ''Happy Birthday/Anniversary to my dear husband/wife/girlfriend/boyfriend/dog/cat/gerbil/goldfish…….. I love you darling so much, you are my blaaaa and blaaa and I will love you forever and till eternity and beyond. What is wrong (wondering maybe if it’s me?) with people? Don’t they talk, or have phones, or video calls? OK. I understand the difficulties with gerbils and goldfish but do they read social media? 

Maybe I've been in Germany too long, Germans don’t go for big PDA's in public, in fact there is a saying here which roughly translates as not being grumbled/shouted at is praise enough, so all these verbal outpourings of congratulations and eternal love on social media seem to me very suspect. In fact, I have only ever heard two husband raving about their wives ecstatically, eternal love and so on, and the wives exuberantly explaining that everybody thinks that their's is the perfect marriage…. the first time my husband said there was something fishy and the second time I thought it was odd and yes both times the hubby was cheating (and had been for years). 

I'll just stick to keeping my private life private, I'm not a big social media fan and am very surprised what people share on it …. I remember once coming across a video in my Insta feed of a vacuous looking surgically enhanced fitness ''influencer'' watching her bum move in a mirror and realised that was one complete waste of a minute of my life that I could have spent sitting outside eating al fresco in a summery place, just like in my painting! Now that is romantic.