Garden Centre Quickie!!

Ok, first things first, the drawing Class! I was running a bit late as usual but only by 5 minutes, and I gave my apologies and took off my waterproofs quickly glancing at what everyone was industrially busy drawing - squares! Tonight it was all about the shading! So 8 squares in a line, going from black to white. I was amazed at how much the group had done in just over 5 minutes.The light began to dawn, I stepped onto a grey square and tentatively asked "The class does start at 7.30?" I fell onto the white square as they said "No! 7.00!" ( I am talking metaphorically about the squares of course!) So I hastily drew my squares and set about shading! Sometime later when it came to looking and saying if people had graduated their boxes correctly, I realised they all had perfectly regular, evenly spaced squares - mine were certainly not evenly spaced, were not  along a straight line and at times barely resembled squares, more  rhomboids and at times trapeziums! But after much work in Lightroom I could tell which squares were incorrectly shaded and decided that the rest of the group were a little anal in their approach to drawing squares  and I much preferred being irregular!!!
Then, oh joy of joys! Guess what we had to draw? An EGG! Now this may hardly sound eggs-xacting ( oh dear the puns are going to run like a perfectly poached egg yolk!!) but let me tell you it was as hard as a boiled egg! ( Ok I'll stop there!)  The egg threw  3 egg shadows and they overlapped like a venn diagram, so there was much shading to be done! The egg itself of course had subtle shading, and as it was a ducks egg, had faint shadow lines falling diagonally across it. 
Now something I thought was a cinematic, pretentious action, turns out to be a perfect method of calculating the dimensions of what you are drawing! Yes, real artists do hold up a pencil at arms length, close one eye, and slide their finger up and down the pencil! It gives you the exact length of what you need to draw! I actually drew a pretty near as dammit perfect egg shape!!!!
You would think things couldn't get much better - you'd be wrong! Our next class is to be drawing white on white! Anyone doing the #ayearwithmycamera will know this was a photographic assignment! What did I do? A white chicken jelly mould! I went home in the rain a very happy madchickenwoman and the class did indeed egg-ceed my egg-spectations!!! ( Sorry!)

Today was busy so only took a photo in the garden centre as an exercise in different apertures for the #ayear...


Anyone who has any experience of cancer may wish to stop reading at this point, news of Friend. I am writing about  it as it is my day and her journey  and I wish to have it recorded for myself in my journal, but I really don't think you need or may want to read it. 


 I accompanied Friend to her regular 3 weekly  hospital appointment, the last test results had shown an increase in size of the ones in her lungs and today she was to find out what they intended doing. turns out change to her chemo drugs, every 2 weeks not 3, the insertion of a picc line, which will need weekly cleaning, and chemo drugs pumped through for 3 days, then a visit to have the pump taken off. The drugs will in all likelihood cause diarrhoea, which for her is quite majorly so, and her beautiful long blonde hair will thin if not fall out completely. If these drugs don't succeed in stopping the growth or at the best reducing them, then the only thing left is to see if a referral to Hammersmith would result in her being placed on a trial treatment. 
It was obviously very upsetting for her - the hair loss  means it will be obvious to people who don't know about her condition, particularly her Mindfulness  clients. It also brought the reality of her condition into sharp relief. She knows it but doesn't allow it to take prominence in her thoughts as far as she can. So - a harsh and traumatic  reality check.
 Am about to start cooking some tea for her and keep her company this evening. 
If you read this far please do make egg jokes or make any other comments that come to mind re drawing!! We could both do with a laugh this evening and are both up for it! We may consume a lot of gin too!