Things That Go Right. Things That Don't.

I was going to call this post Kids' Stuff 3, because of what I painted last night:

Not a surrealist dreamscape where an orange draught excluder threatens to engulf some blue clouds and an oven glove, but rather a band of orange spruce on a hillside above a cluster of farm cottages that we drove past on the road to Jedburgh.

Look at it! Blimey. I had such a clear vision in my head of what I wanted it to look like -a gauzy haze of colours, scrubbed, scumbled and drifted over underpainting and textured strokes. It is not very much like that.

I was again struck down with The Fear about my work over the weekend, but I suppose the facts that a) I laughed at it (in an amused way, not a "don't make me laugh ... bitterly" way)and b) I reckon I can rescue it shows that I have some confidence in what I can do. I can understand it if you, the viewer, are more sceptical. I shall give it a go.

Unless, of course, you like the oven glove and draught excluder genre of painting, in which case, it's yours.

Better was the time we spent at the coast last week when the sea was up and pounding in after a couple of days of strong winds from out of the east. The power and energy were just hair-raising, so exciting to be near the sea (at a safe distance, anyway) when it's in such a state.

So, some things work, some things don't. So it goes.