Aye, the Nights Are Fair Drawing In!

Aye, the Nights Are Fair Drawing in as we say in Scotland. It’s getting darker and cooler and wetter and before you know it Christmas Eve is here! Traditional Christmas cookies have been in the shops here now since the summer and yes, I've even drunk my first mulled wine! My mum, actually my family were completely Christmas daft and when the last bit of turkey had been polished off my mum started buying (and writing) her Christmas cards for the next year. I have to say she did send about 200 and she started planning gifts and handicrafting gifts in January. I'm afraid, I've never been that organised and wherever you are mum, I haven’t started! Let’s deal with Autumn first, so this is what’s on the easel! Still just kicking off here but with piles of leaves to rake, walnuts to harvest and a million and one apples rolling around the garden, being arty farty is kind of pushed to the back of my mind. 

Teasing some teasel here, somehow teasel always reminds me of my first holiday in Tuscany, the fields were full of wild herbs and teasel and out walking here you see heaps of them too! So time to pop them into this painting. 

As you can see, I still haven’t tidied up all of my pastels from my last painting, which I couldn’t stop diddling with, 

As a famous art saying goes ''the painting is long finished before the painter'', and that is so true! I like to leave my paintings to mature a little before I move on but the difficulty is the difference between putting in a last few strokes or just diddling around till a piece is fully overworked! Art is about learning to say no! And keeping your fidgety fingers away ….. having cut my thumb in attempting to make pumpkin soup, my desire to tamper with maturing works is somewhat reduced, as is my desire for pumpkin soup.

Every Autumn when I see pumpkins, I always think mmmmh, yummy and then when I make it, I end up with a huge big pot, eat it a couple of times, freeze the rest and then can’t face defrosting it and eating it again. So pumpkin soup has become a ritual just as I say every year, I'm not making pumpkin soup again. No doubt next year when those cheery, orange blobs of goodness appear, I'll be the first one buying one!