Christmas fare

The smell of peaches and plums is an instant reminder that Christmas is coming, and these with all the other bright and beautiful fruits in season now feels like wonderful abundance. The one Christmas we spent in the USA in glorious snow, with holly and mistletoe and jingle bells, also felt especially blessed, so I suppose one just appreciates the joys of whichever setting you're in at this time.
It is very hot here now, with a leisurely cricket match on TV in the background, a slow, sleepy feeling as Joburg empties out to the coast, with an occasional splash as someone cools off in the pool. All very laid back, but a busy shopping, cooking, preparing week ahead - with a daughter arriving from London on Monday for the holidays - thanks BA for holding off the strike!

Blue bottle & Bear

I did it!...signed up, ie. committed to the WetCanvas Still Life Duo project that Laura alerted me to when she saw my Two Blue Bottles. You have to set up a still life with two objects, paint or draw it, then replace one object with another, paint, then keep the second object, and replace the first with another, etc. Sounds quite fun and I must say I enjoyed painting this bottle more the second time around. I chose the teddy as something totally complementary to the hard, cool bottles. He's the epitome of an old nursery song -
Fuzzy-wuzzy was a bear,
Fuzzy wuzzy had no hair,
Fuzzy-wuzzy wasn't fuzzy, wuz he?
His right front paw was repaired by my childish hands, using an old cotton nappy, which has shredded to bits, and all his other paws have the stuffing exposed to the elements. I just hope he doesn't disintegrate completely, this 51 year old friend, the only remnant of my childhood I still have - and I have to keep him hidden from our dog, who has been found guilty of several teddy murders!

Two blue bottles

I've been eyeing these blue bottles to paint for a while. I thought (briefly) about trying for accuracy and carefully drawing out the shapes before colouring, but being impatient and lazy, went straight in with the brushes, starting with very pale washes and building them up. The light, shapes and reflections changed constantly so I built up far too much, not leaving enough of the very light values in the glass. I was going to leave the background almost white, but felt I had to explain the brown shapes in the bottles, so bunged the door frame and brick paving in at the last moment, then regretted it.
I found a link some time ago on someone's blog on my list, to another blog where he gave some very good advice about painting glass - something about having three values, I think in a certain proportion - and it didn't much matter where you placed them, but if you did that, it would look like glass. And now I can't find either of those posts, so if anyone who reads this knows about that, I'd appreciate the link back again.