Making It Up

as we go along

watercolour

Watching paint dry. 

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Playing with my paints again. 

I’ve deleted twitter from my phone and am trying to wean myself off Facebook. I’m enjoying instagram, although I find the algorithm frustrating. 

Hopefully all this will mean less stress and more creativity. I miss the community though, and I don’t know what to do about that. There used to be community in blog rings, comment boxes and so on, but facebook, twitter etc wiped that out. And replaced it with what has become an angrier, shoutier place overall. Too much noise. 

I was clinging on for the friendships I’d found and cultivated there, but I don’t know how much room there is for that sort of thing to grow up any more. Is this a natural devolution, or have the algorithms and tweaks pushed social out of existence? 

(I’ll pop back with the finished picture when it’s finished. )

BeInspired – my watercolour challenge with Cass Art.

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A little while before Christmas, I received a very exciting parcel.

The very lovely people at Cass Art had invited me to be part of their BeInspired art challenge, and to help me get started, sent me a parcel of watercolour stuff to explore.

And what stuff.

Anyone who follows me on instagram (and if you don’t, whyever not?) will be aware that I am quite a fan of Winsor and Newton watercolour.

This parcel included a 24 half tin Winsor and Newton professional watercolour set as here (affiliate link).

I may have squealed. (I’m fairly sure I squealed quite a lot actually.)

So, now you understand why there’s been quite a lot more watercolour activity than usual on here. The candles were painted following youtube tutorials, as suddenly I want to understand how to do it all. But I also want to experiment, and I’m inspired by the natural world, much the same as with my photography. So last night I sat down with the whole lot and did this.

Just in case you’d like a closer view

I’ve got to say that the experience of using professional watercolours with good brushes (these are sable) on proper paper (300 gsm, acid free, hot pressed) is really quite exciting. You can get heavy paper a *lot* wetter, which means you can go to town on washes. Even the pro colours look a lot deeper colourwise wet than they do dry, so I think I may have to get a bit bolder with colours on my next sunset washes. But I’m loving the effects I’m discovering, and I think this year is definitely going to be the year I push the boundaries with art.

And I’ve just read that back and it is so obvious that I am still a complete beginner with this stuff.

Which is the point quite frankly. Established artists are inspirational people, but if you’re anything like me, you look at them, and you haven’t the first idea how they do what they just did. I’m just learning and I’m ready and willing to talk about that lots. So if you fancy being more creative this year, why not let yourself BeInspired alongside me and Cass Art?

Solstice.

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Anyone else who sits there for ages trying to work out alliterative blog post titles, or is that just me?

Anyway, it was solstice today and I dragged myself out of bed in time to walk down to the beach and see the sunrise. Turns out I should have stayed in bed, it was kind of grey and miserable and there wasn’t any visible different before and after the magic moment.

It was kind of bleak tbh.

Which is no excuse for spending pretty much the whole morning moping around the house, but may be some sort of explanation. We’d hoped to go over to spend the day with friends, but the car came back from the garage still making a grinding noise, so it went back to the garage, and we stayed home.

Sometime mid afternoon I pulled my socks up, metaphorically speaking (shudders slightly at the idea of slid down socks) and did some of the annual find a space for the Christmas tree declutter. (It goes up on Christmas eve generally speaking in case you’re wondering.) I even managed to clear a space on the shelves for my sketchbooks, which should cut down on the daily hunting for paper quest.

Speaking of which, I’d better get off and sketch something as it’s getting late. This was last night’s second attempt at the candle, on better paper. The colour got away from me rather though, so I stopped. What do we think?

Potty training no 4 with Huggies Pull-Ups

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tigerboy watercolour

Tigerboy isn’t quite ready for potty training. I keep trying, but given that his preference for doing no 2 (sorry!) is hiding in a corner in best “I’m not pooing” pose (see above), I don’t think we’re quite there.

He will use the potty, but I find that we often degenerate into a Joyce Grenfell-esque exchange.

“Sit on the potty.”

“Yes that potty.”

“Yes, sit on it.”

“To do a wee.”

“Because that’s where you do wees.”

And so on. It’s kind of tiring. And doesn’t always end quite so quietly 😉

He’s kind of got the idea during nappy changes. And he can pull Pull-Ups down, not up quite so well though. (Two legs, one hole. Oh dear.) He won’t tell me between nappy changes though, and although we’ve tried a few garden days without anything in the way of the urges as it were, it’s been very unsuccessful so far.

But I keep plodding on with it. And I’m pleased to say I’m working with Huggies Pull-Ups, and they’re a vital weapon in the war, not least because he likes the look of them. The hidden picture is backfiring slightly though – he likes to see it. Which means he’s less likely to try to keep the pull up dry (the picture only shows when it’s wet). I’ve yet to go for reward chart and stickers, they may feature somewhere in our future though.

So, apart from reward charts, what are your potty training tips? Any truth to the idea that boys are later than girls with this sort of thing? (My unscientific sample of two girls and one boy so far would have them about even I guess. Big was early, Small was next, Smallest was slightly older, but when she did switch to pants, very quick with it all.) And tell me, do your children hide in a corner for that moment, or is that just mine?

Disclosure: I’m a brand ambassador with Huggies Pull-Ups and am being recompensed for my posts related to the campaign.