The teal vase...

What a beautiful day it's been, and not just weather wise.

The sun already had its hat on at 5am when I was awoken by our resident pair of wood pigeons flapping in the spruce tree opposite the bedroom window.  What a racket their wings make!  I do love them though, pair of comedians that they are.

I checked the weather app on my phone and was delighted to see we've been forecast sunshine at some point every day for the next five days.  Hoping that doesn't change.  

We ate lunch outside and decided to ditch our plans for today (nothing exciting, just indoor chores) and relax and enjoy the garden instead.  For D that involved relaxing in the hammock reading his book and for me that meant painting.  I did hover with my phone set to video mode to capture D's attempts to get in the hammock but to my disappointment he remembered the technique from last year and got in easily on his first attempt.  Wish I'd seen him get out of it though as I am sure that wouldn't have been quite so elegant!  :-)))

Turns out it was the perfect day for painting plein air as the heat combined with the gentle breeze meant no hanging around waiting for the paint to dry and I could get on with the next layer of paint almost immediately.  

Unfortunately I wasn't happy with my first painting effort and was pondering stopping for the day when I saw the shadows of the bluebells on the table.  I turned the painting I'd been working on over, taped it to my board and placed the vase of bluebells at the edge and realised I had the perfect template for a loose watercolour right there.  No need for any underdrawing and all the more fun as I was painting it upside down!  A sure fire way to stop me over thinking.

I had great fun sploshing paint on top of the shadows not really knowing how it would look once turned the right way round.  I had to work quickly as the sun doesn't stay still and the shadows were constantly moving, but that added to the joy and spontaneity.   When satisfied all the shadows had been painted I turned the painting round and was happy with the result.  I will definitely take that approach again, sunshine allowing :-))  Process in extras.

Because of our laid back day, dinner was later then planned but that doesn't matter when one is going with the flow :-)  Watched an old episode of Vera (I do like Brenda Blethyn) and perused the Wool Warehouse website, but resisted the temptation to buy any yarn.  Well done me! :-)))