Dragged Back From the Edge

From 'The Draught Excluder of Unpredictability Impending Over the Oven Glove of Strategy' to a landscape with spruce trees and a farm.

Laura said that this would end up being posted one of two ways; either finished, or with a big hole punched in the middle. (That's happened before.) I learned that posting the incompetent starting point in public - or as public as my blog gets - is strong incentive to get work done.

I used a box of cheapo oil paints we had lying in a drawer (because they were small, and I didn't want to drag my big wooden box of paints downstairs as I was working on the living room table next to the fire because it was bloody cold, and I sat in a posture that helped ping my back, a process completed by moving a new bed up the stairs, so I'm on a paracetamol cloud this morning, but anyway -) so the colours are a bit garish, perhaps, but I like the condensed-perspective snapshot effect. It's given me the impetus to try some more, but with the Windsor and Newton paints.

They're water-based oils and I know there's some sniffiness about them (always the bloody kit: whether it's cycling, photography or oil paints, there's some bugger there to cast a sceptical eye over what you use) but after using real oils for three days and leaving highly visible traces of my passage around the house in bright green, I remember one reason I changed to water-based oils in the first place.