Plans For The Week Ahead

The only downside of my wonderful new table is that my favourite bowl no longer sits where I can see it every time I reach for a new pencil. Sadly it is now tucked behind my drawing board and I must admit that I miss looking at it. I am going to need to reconfigure things so that it is back in my field of vision and so it can go back to being the repository for erasers and the all important remote for the ipod speakers which seems to be enjoying playing hide and seek around the desk. I swear that I have it in the drawer, but then I go looking for it and it has escaped and has somehow buried itself under the drawing board, or is in whatever random place I last put it.

Of course there is an upside to the new layout and that is that I now look out the window, and have easy visual sight of the lovely orchid that my mother gave me for mother's day. I must admit to an even worse record with orchids than I have with cyclamen, but miracle of miracles the orchid is still alive and still carries a bloom, so I haven't yet worked my black thumb on it.

This week is looking very busy and I can't see there being a great amount of time to be able to draw and paint but I am always hopeful that I will find at least a little time each day this week. I have my sister coming to stay for a few days while she awaits the birth of her newest addition, and of course there is the normal end of term madness with sports day and all sorts of other days, as well as preparing for holidays and trying to organise some good scans of my work before I drop some pieces off to the framers. I have decided to frame a couple of pieces and then decide which I will submit for the Queensland Botanic Art Society Show, Floressence, which opens in late July.

I am also trying to sneak in time to finish a miniature of an Asiatic lily before I head to the framers which at this stage has only progressed as far as a drawn outline. I have completed some sketches and colour studies though, so I am hoping that it will go quite quickly. I am also expecting to finish off the beans which have progressed well and have proved to be a valuable tonal experiment using a black pencil, rather than the lead pencil, and is a technique which I am looking forward to exploring further. I have every plan to have the finished beans posted tomorrow or Thursday and hopefully the Asiatic lily will follow closely on its heels, all in time for the framers!