Ink painting

Woke 3:30. Couldn't go back to sleep, so did phone and tablet housework/paperwork- - those kind of jobs you put off. Fortunately my brain is bright eyed and bushy tailed in the early hours. Will have to schedule a long nap around noon...maybe also a Power Nap mid morning.

Those small birds have half demolished the contents of both fatball feeders already and it is only 6:30 am. Bluetits, sparrows, robins, and the blackbirds and female dunnock who are eating off the ground the bits that get dropped. Mr Heffalump (wood pigeon) is helping clear up the sparrows mess too.

Cat Midnight came in when I locked up last night. He had no intention of being outside last night. I have noticed he is a little bit jumpy at the moment, I can easily startle him. So I am thinking those 4 rumbustious badgers, especially now the little ones are growing, are getting a bit much for him. He doesn't get much sleep out there when they are about. But Midnight tends to explore the bungalow at night, he doesn't sleep in one spot all night. He climbs where he shouldn't be climbing, and knocks things off and over. Not intentionally, if I see him knock a pile of stuff over he looks at me with big wide eyes worrying I am going to be cross with him. But I am not. He is just too bulky to get in tight spaces he thinks he can get in...

A lot of tidying up this morning.

Wildlife camera. Those 4 badgers were in the garden ALL night. I can see why Midnight found it a bit much.
Ma & Pa Badger and their 2 cubs arrived at dusk & stayed until dawn...and Cat Midnight came indoors for the night with that rowdy lot out there & stayed in the bungalow all night...
1min 50secs

https://youtu.be/uael651n9mg

Just took snippets from the clips, or it would have been well over 2 hours of footage of overactive badgers playing and squabbling. They were running up and down the side of the garage, which you cannot see from the swing cameras. They were digging up my garden looking for worms and grubs. Why I seem to have gourmet worms in m y garden I do not know. The were knocking some of my container vegetable garden over. I am managing to secure more and more of it so that they cannot do it. But trying to protect it against 4 unruly badgers is a task.

Creative - I found some watercolour inks I bought well before lockdowns and Covid, in the days when I used to look around shops (something I don't do now, I have got used to shopping and bidding online, and in any case I need it to be a fine day to use my mobility scooter, too much unexpected rain at the moment). I just got these 4 inks in a stationery shop (doesn't exist now) -might have been 26p each or something, so about a £1 for the 4. Yellow, blue, red, and gold. There is hardly any red left, I bought the red for a purpose, no idea what now, so I can only use a drop in each painting, but it makes a nice purple. these are obviously cheap inks, but they are a paler colour which I rather like, as opposed to the intense vibrancy of the acrylic FW inks I have been using.

I have been using pipettes to get the ink out of the bottles to spread on the cheap blank white postcards I have been using. Then using the water spray bottle either before or after applying the ink from the pipettes.

I will be experimenting on other papers...Once these inks are gone, I will be looking to see what other inks I have...there are loads different ones in the drawer..I am very good at buying art materials and art pads and thinking I want to keep that new looking and I can't spoil the first page of that brand new sketchbook....

I like the way this spreads differently to the acrylic inks, in a more softer manner. I find painting a meditation when I paint in this way. It is good painting on the postcards, because I can post them to my postcrossing friends. And so far everyone has been happy with a hand painted postcard!

Time for another coffee with double cream!!!!

And then a nap...it is windy and raining outside, so maybe no sitting on my swing today, depends on direction of the rain...