Far from the madding cloud...

Do you see what I did there?  ;-))

Once of the joys of being on holiday for two weeks is the luxury of not feeling every day has to be spent being a tourist, especially when I get to be in this glorious little cow shed.  

We did have plans for today but we slept late.  It was almost 9.30am when I woke up.  D was still sound asleep, which is unheard off for him these days.  That said, I was awake for an hour at 5am as the rain woke me up. It was absolutely bouncing down.  The noise of it woke me up and it took me a few seconds to realise what it was.  It sounded like the roar of the wind but there was no wind, just heavy, heavy rain.  Oh and a couple of flashes of lightening and some rumbles of thunder.  It stopped just after 6am and I dozed off again.

Anyway we had a late rise and when the sun is shining so perfectly it's just so tempting to make coffee and go and sit outside and listen to the birds.  Then in a blink it's 11am we've still to get showered and dressed. 

That's been a bit of an adventure here as the hot water for the shower is a bit temperamental.  Scolding hot one minute then cold very fresh the next!  Gillie, the lovely lady who owns the place has attempted to fix it but can't work out why it's behaving like this.  A boiler specialist is coming tomorrow at 10am and will hopefully sort it.

In the meantime I have learnt to wash and condition my hair very quickly while the water still has some heat to it.  The rest of me can cope with cooler water in this heat although that said, it was VERY fresh this morning.  D was sitting outside and said I sounded like an opera singer being strangled.  That's how cold fresh the water was!  I forgot all the windows were open!  

We decided to go across to the Stalls cafe for lunch but our late rise had put us out of kilter and it was closed.  Closes at 2pm on a Tuesday and Wednesday.  We were also too late to visit Wilton House and Garden as had been our plan, so we went back to the Cow Shed and had a rather lovely late lunch of cheeses (brie, cheddar, Port Salut and Saint Agur) and biscuits with hummus, olives, grapes and apple.  

D checked what our amended plans were and of course I was more than happy to sit and paint for a while as I have finally plucked up the courage to  practice my seascape on a larger (more expensive) piece of watercolour paper.  So happy knowing I was happy, D headed off to....can you guess?  Yip, pat on the back for those of you who said the driving range!  lol

I normally paint with either Winsor and Newton watercolour paints or Daniel Smith, which I have with me, but I also brought the set of Mijello Mission Gold paints that I bought last year and haven't really used, despite the fact they are amazing, and decided to have a go with them.  

I had just started painting when a lady walked past with a little white Scottish Terrier and a beautiful black Labrador .  Of course since the huge glass doors of the shed were wide open, the dogs came in to say hello, much to the embarrassment of the woman they were with.  She was very apologetic.  I told her not to be as I was missing our dog and enjoying petting her pooches. Turns out her sister lives in the house at the top of the lane and she is dog sitting for her as she's on holiday.  

We got chatting and she asked where I am from.  I said Perthshire then narrowed it down saying near Gleneagles incase she was a golf fan.  Turns out she has been to Gleneagles loads of times so knows exactly where we are.  It's a small world :-) Chatted some more then she headed off down the lane and I got back to my painting.  

Wow, I have to say these Mijello paints are striking!  And they are just as vibrant when dry, which is great.  Watercolour paints usually dry much lighter and something that starts off vibrant can end up quite dull. requiring more paint washes.  Certainly not the case with these paints :-))  (I've put my little colour test painting in extras)  

I've also made a start on the larger painting and what a pleasure it was to do!  It's probably at the half way stage but I left it as I had to be sure it was completely dry before taking it any further.  

I was having too much fun and not ready to stop painting so I started a painting of fish.  It's based on Alan's fish sculpture that we brought him from Northumberland.  Once I'm happy with the painting layers, I will embellish each of the fish with silver and white pens and add some underwater foliage.  

This is what I LOVE about painting on holiday, I have the headspace to be creative.  I suspect we're not going to see / do half the things we planned to do here as the urge to paint is so strong.  I can use the excuse of Summer Solstice at Stonehenge, and Glastonbury making the roads too busy ;-)  D won't complain.  He would live on the golf course / driving range! 

Tomorrow though we will do what we planned to do today.  Well that's the plan.  But we all know the the best laid plans of mice and men......  ;-)))

PS Not mentioned my blip!  I am blipping this cloud as it mesmerised me from the minute it appeared in the sky in front of me, and I tracked it for ages as it slowly moved across the blue.  It was like big white cotton puffs. 


No idea what kind of cloud this is (I hope a member of the Cloud Appreciation Society will pop in and tell me :-) but I photographed it as a great reference for clouds I may want to paint in the future :-))