Art, Chester, Waterhouse and Buggery!
Last Wednesday's art class involved drawing and painting a tree and we had the skill of a visiting watercolourist to help us. The end product for me was quite surprisingly good - held up it even looked like a tree so I was well pleased. Thursday's Welsh was some revision, extremely useful as most of us were floundering a little. At friday's Photoshop we tackled Bezier curves an extremely difficult and tricky thing to master. My concentration was that much the afternoon just disappeared but I did finally get to produce something. Whether I ever remember again is another matter.
Saturday dawned a beautiful warm, sunny day and just right to meet up with some new steampunkers in the area at a BBQ by the river in Chester. Lovely day and lovely people. Very friendly and welcoming and also extremely well read. We shared and compared book lists all afternoon in between eating, drinking. We had to leave a bit early as we were travelling down to London the next day.
This time we decided not to base ourselves in central London basically because of congestion charges and the expense and difficulty in parking. So we booked ourselves into a hotel at East Croydon next to the station. This turned out to be brilliant idea - the hotel was superb with all mod cons and literally across the road from the station for our trip to the Royal Academy Waterhouse exhibition the next day.
After a huge breakfast we boarded the train and made an effortless journey to the Academy meeting up with Claudia there. I had already booked our tickets so it was straight in and, once again, congratulated myself on picking a Monday as it was not too packed at all and we were able to see all the pictures without any problems. And what an amazing collection. All my favourites were there and well as acquainting me with some new ones. Simply amazing to see the originals of many of my prints.The best I think were his sketch books which really illustrated how well he could draw. As a very amateaur artist it's a great learning help to see how artists construct and plan their paintings. I brought post cards, two large prints and a copy of the poster in the shop. After a restorative coffee and sandwich we walked along to piccadilly catching up with the news and then grabbing a train before the rush hour.
Being too lazy and tired to go out again we decided to eat in at the hotel's restaurant and pretty good it was too. Being a buffet arrangement it meant you could grab as much of what you fancied and didn't have to face mounds of stuff you don't like. The first course was mainly fish and was a huge array of smoked salmon, crabs, lobster, prawns, potato and cucumbers salads all displayed on a large mound of ice. There were mains of steak, turkey, sweet and sour ribs, stuffed mushrooms and a large assortment of vegetables, potatoes and rice. There were several choices of gateaux, large strawberries, profiteroles, ice cream and even bread and butter pudding for afters. All for £20 each good value I thought. Slobbed out the rest of the evening watching the film Franklyn on our computer. Wow that was a strange film, amazing imagery and an unusualy story. I shall have to watch it again.
Good journey home yesterday and spent the evening watching the ever colourful Pre-raphs and catching up with my recoded programmes. Amongst which was Rupert Everett's Byron. Oh dear I knew it wan't going to be that intellectual but his obsession with buggery was becoming boring. I thought if I heard the story of sodomy and sherbert one more time I would scream. Oh well we shall see what the next programme has to offer.
This morning off to the doctors to check Colin's chest and breathing levels which have all risen thanks to the new inhaler, excellent news and then to check out the college and car park as want to enrol for their watercolour techniques course in September.
Goodness that's another week gone - back to art class tonight with much PreRaphaelites going around my head. Another lady in the lake? Probably not!
Saturday dawned a beautiful warm, sunny day and just right to meet up with some new steampunkers in the area at a BBQ by the river in Chester. Lovely day and lovely people. Very friendly and welcoming and also extremely well read. We shared and compared book lists all afternoon in between eating, drinking. We had to leave a bit early as we were travelling down to London the next day.
This time we decided not to base ourselves in central London basically because of congestion charges and the expense and difficulty in parking. So we booked ourselves into a hotel at East Croydon next to the station. This turned out to be brilliant idea - the hotel was superb with all mod cons and literally across the road from the station for our trip to the Royal Academy Waterhouse exhibition the next day.
After a huge breakfast we boarded the train and made an effortless journey to the Academy meeting up with Claudia there. I had already booked our tickets so it was straight in and, once again, congratulated myself on picking a Monday as it was not too packed at all and we were able to see all the pictures without any problems. And what an amazing collection. All my favourites were there and well as acquainting me with some new ones. Simply amazing to see the originals of many of my prints.The best I think were his sketch books which really illustrated how well he could draw. As a very amateaur artist it's a great learning help to see how artists construct and plan their paintings. I brought post cards, two large prints and a copy of the poster in the shop. After a restorative coffee and sandwich we walked along to piccadilly catching up with the news and then grabbing a train before the rush hour.
Being too lazy and tired to go out again we decided to eat in at the hotel's restaurant and pretty good it was too. Being a buffet arrangement it meant you could grab as much of what you fancied and didn't have to face mounds of stuff you don't like. The first course was mainly fish and was a huge array of smoked salmon, crabs, lobster, prawns, potato and cucumbers salads all displayed on a large mound of ice. There were mains of steak, turkey, sweet and sour ribs, stuffed mushrooms and a large assortment of vegetables, potatoes and rice. There were several choices of gateaux, large strawberries, profiteroles, ice cream and even bread and butter pudding for afters. All for £20 each good value I thought. Slobbed out the rest of the evening watching the film Franklyn on our computer. Wow that was a strange film, amazing imagery and an unusualy story. I shall have to watch it again.
Good journey home yesterday and spent the evening watching the ever colourful Pre-raphs and catching up with my recoded programmes. Amongst which was Rupert Everett's Byron. Oh dear I knew it wan't going to be that intellectual but his obsession with buggery was becoming boring. I thought if I heard the story of sodomy and sherbert one more time I would scream. Oh well we shall see what the next programme has to offer.
This morning off to the doctors to check Colin's chest and breathing levels which have all risen thanks to the new inhaler, excellent news and then to check out the college and car park as want to enrol for their watercolour techniques course in September.
Goodness that's another week gone - back to art class tonight with much PreRaphaelites going around my head. Another lady in the lake? Probably not!