Buzzing!

Lockdown must be coming to an end...all four of us (yes Lola included) have hair appointments in the diary!  Lola's is next Tuesday, David and Alan the following week, and finally me on the 19th.  Halle-loo-ya!  :-))

After lunch I did some more work on my friend Ann's Chookie Birdie painting.  

I masked out the areas I wanted to preserve whilst I painted in the background.  Once that was dry I started removing the masking fluid and to my horror the surface layer of the paper started to come away with it!  I've never had that happen before.  I use good quality masking fluid and expensive 100% cotton, heavy grade watercolour paper so don't know why this happened.  I know it's not good to leave masking fluid on the paper overnight so I always remove it as soon as I can.  It wasn't on the paper for any longer than half an hour!  As you can imagine I (as David would say) wasn't best pleased!  

Thankfully it was only a small section that I will be able fix, but it took ages to remove the rest as I was being ultra gentle and careful.  What a pain!  That aside, I managed to get the base layers of paint on and I am happy with the result so far.  Tomorrow the fun really starts as I will paint the Chookie birdie that represents Ann, and three little Chookie Birdies who are her pupils plus one other that won't be a Chookie Birdie but a tomato.  It will make sense to Ann :-))

I also received a text from a lady who contacted me back in late autumn about a painting she would like me to do for her.  We agree then that it would wait till lockdown ended.  She was just checking in to let me know that she still wants me to do the piece for her .  So three commissions on the go! 

While I was waiting for the paint to dry on the Chookie Birdie painting I doodled these flowers and added a little bee as there was buzzing outside the window beside me.  I was worried as it sounded as though it didn't have a lot of energy.  I went outside to look for it incase it needed help but it was nowhere to be seen.  

This evening I have been immersed in the RHS website trying to decide on plants to fill the gaps that will soon appear in the back garden.  Many thanks to those blip pals who made suggestions.  I have noted them all and they are now part of a very long list that D and I will go through together and hopefully come up with a planting plan.  

It's exciting, even though neither of us possess a single green finger!