Well hello again

Time just seems to have slipped through my fingers this summer and it is only now on a completely autumnal day that I am finally getting round to writing my blog again. So what have I been up to? Well, after the intense first half of this year, I needed a break, so I have been spending time with the family. This is not a euphemism for being sacked, how can I stop myself from being an artist? It is who I am. But it was nice not to pressure myself and just relax a bit. We went camping in Denmark for two weeks, which was fun. I even managed to drag the kids into some galleries. The galleries were more fun for me than the kids. Tønder Museum was fantastic. It was in a group of joined buildings, including a 40m high water tower, which housed chairs. There was an amazing view from the top. There was also some great contemporary art. I’d love to tell you about it and I even managed to make some notes and do some sketches, but my sketchbook got wet. Very, very wet at Legoland and all the pen ran. Thankfully, it was a new sketchbook so that was all I lost. We also had fun playing at being Vikings at the Ribe Viking Centre. There, an entire Viking village has been reconstructed, using Viking methods. You could even see the plant dyed yarns drying and watch them trying to beat the flax into a useable yarn.

I bought some new pens for the first time in ages and they are waterproof and aircraft proof so I think I’ve learnt my lesson.

Since our trip, our middle monster has started school and we are now getting back into a term time routine. Which means more time for me to work – hurrah! I treated myself with a trip to the Burrell Collection in Glasgow the other week to do some drawing. It is one of my favourite museums. Not necessarily for the objects it houses, but for the great building design, incorporating the natural surroundings of grass and woodland. It revived my interest in early Greek figurines or goddess figures, which I spent some time sketching. A lovely way to spend a day. The first photo doesn’t show the objects I was drawing, but I think it gives a better view of the luscious parkland outside. The park also has a herd of highland cattle, which always amuses me as it is in the middle of a city.

After my Burrell excursion, I’ve been doing more and more drawings of these little figures and hopefully it will be leading somewhere interesting soon.

So everything is back to normal or as normal as it gets here (normal including our baby with a broken collar bone as she fell out of bed in the middle of the night. Being a good mum I shushed her back to sleep and it was only in the morning we realised something was wrong. The bed is only a foot off the ground and she has been sleeping in it for over a year. She’s on the mend). And hopefully normal means I will be writing this on a more regular basis.