North and South with five thumbs

Yesterday was a huge day... first day of summer holidays... gloriously cool for a change... no huge time pressures and commitments and first day without Art Every Day Month... but it turned out to be a bit of a let down... I had thought I would have a day of doing sweet bugger all, but it kind of was a bit boring and I missed doing something and having blogs to visit and all that and so I got stuck into a painting that would take more than a day so that I could post over to Paint Party Friday and Inspiration Avenue and secure my fix of blog visiting.

The topic over at IA was English literature... finally we have a topic that won't send me to therapy... I love English lit and my top two books of all time fall into this... Now top of the list is Tess of the D'urbervilles, but quite honestly it is a bit like being put through a ringer backwards and having your heart completely and utterly trounced upon... which is surprisingly cathartic to read on a regular basis, but couldn't really say I felt like tackling it for a visual feast... so that left me with North and South by Elizabeth Gaskill and some of my favourite lines in all of literature...

one of which revolves around tea... lucky twist of fate there you might say...

So the deal is Mr Thornton is seeking a bit of learned company and he is a bit of a brute... and a Northerner and he meets the lovely Southern lady, Margaret and  there is a part quite early on where he sees her pouring tea, and he is mesmerised by how graceful she is and it is the first time we get a sense that there is more to him... and I always see her using a tea pot that has the leaves and flowers that she refers to from her garden in the south, which she is missing so much...and throughout the books she is pouring from pitchers and talks about the urns of ivy and things like that so I kind of wanted to get those images in there as well...

So I jumped in and did my first image transfers... thanks to all those blogs that kept mentioning them and made me want to try them... and then I did my second, third, fourth.... had a cup of tea and grumbled, bitched and moaned about how they all should have told me it was an impossible process for someone with five thumbs and no patience... then on magic number five they were as I wanted them and so then I draw in an old fashioned enamelled tea pot and I am finally into painting mode.. I added ink and then some watercolour and was pleased with how it was coming along so I decided to write in the quote from the section of the book... 

Of course I didn't allow for the fact that my writing is like a chicken doing the hokey pokey across a page, and adding some water did not help it at all... so I attacked it with paint...

This may have been great if it had not been for not waiting for it to dry properly and hence the odd grey tinge, but it was a bit better, and once I had added more watercolour and strengthened lines and things I finally got the top image... I am pretty happy with it... in parts especially, but it hasn't quite got to where I want to be... almost, but no cigar... still it was great fun to work bigger again and to spend more time on it, and I am sooo looking forward to checking out the work at PPF and IA... if you haven't done so then you have to head over to see some great work!!!