29 09 2024

 That's September done with, barring unforeseen activity - 

26 09 2024

Lack lustre but then cactus ain't my driving passion.

Jumpy with todays frustration; waited all morning for gas man to service boiler - and he did, whilst making me uneasy (=skin disease, eye problem etc. Unsmiling) He'd just driven away when I found a loose pipe dripping. Norbert came round. Tim too. Tim rang the company, twice, and splendidly lambasted them but I cant get it fixed till Monday and maybe not then.

So no 11 has no water, new tank being fitted; no 5 has no water, stop-cock problem; now no 9 is questionable. Put on water in Robins house, will use that (after I've cleaned the bath -) 

Tim rang Saur and managed to get them round to deal with stop-cock. They are coming back next week.

22 09 2024

 Bob drove me to collect pix from Quillan - really really really depressing. No more shows now. Possibly no more painting. Though anxious to continue the drawings;Allenna here till Weds and Bob goes then too, so I get a few days free. Having fun with Allenna.

20 09 2024

 Got collected by nice man Vincent, sent by the Rotary Club to get some paintings off me for their exhibition. Badly hung in a gym in Quillan, exhausting and really really depressing.

Nice people and one can't fault their ambition -

19 09 2024

This gave me pleasure - the hours bewitched by the mice and the process of  drawing them. Used wax to do the gravel so that made the stones invisible to me, until washed over; like those childhood tricks. 

 

16 09 2024

 Holidays continue, self-consciously loafing. Took in the Max Jacob at Ceret, very taken with his astrological readings and their strange beauty.

Bit ho hum about the rest - rather thought someone had found a shoebox of his stuff and stretched it to a show. Padded with his 'circle ' - which was most of the known art world in the early 1900's. 

10 09 2024

 Waiting for the gas man. 

Bob in the UK so sheet washing and drying and ironing devolve to me. ALL visitors gone! Several empty houses, one of which I have relocated to, so it feels like a holiday.

All garden produce has to be cleaned, chopped, preserved. 

So that was yesterday (very first world probs) and today is the gas man.

Was going to persevere with Hobbes, Lock and that lot but found a nice Graham Greene... this is my holiday.

06 09 2024

 spent forever on this portrait - now realise it doesn't look like Raul and anyway its horrible. 

 

05 09 2024

 

Butterfly finished, ditto centipede... fairly inert here, overwhelmed by writing stuff so paralysed by it, Bruno still visiting -weather on the turn. I'm as confused as the rest of the wildlife.

04 09 2024

 

really, ugh... if it wasn't part of a (long) series I wouldn't bovver. 

Which does call the long series into question. 

Spinoza keeping me sane.

The portrait of Raul I did for his feschgrift is out and looks good but nothing like Raul, alas. Bob says it looks warm, which is something.

Apropos, I have to make a video of congratulation for him now, something I've not done before (made a sendable video) and I'm putting off. 

02 09 2924

Rather like the bat, above, though I used the wrong ink (Toby had given me a pot of violet ink and a bottle of brown: I'd intended to use my walnut ink but thought I'd give the new stuff a try. Picked up the wrong bottle. Brown bat becomes transformed. Had to work had to pull it back to a respectable likeness and though I have failed, its very bat-ness is apparent.)

Haven't photographed the other pic., a butterfly - meretriciously dull - might just bin it.