Painting,collage and holidays

We are going away tomorrow down to the south of France for a few days.Since its cold wet and windy here its difficult to know what to take. I spent a long time this morning agonising then gave up and went and looked in the wood to see if by chance there were any flowers left that had not been battered by the wind. I found this little wid rose and some pretty honeysuckle. I choose the rose as it seemed the easy option knowing time was short.In fact I managed to do it in about an hour!!
Then I cleared up and wondered what to do next. I sat at the computor and looked at loads of brilliant blogs. For some reason I was drawn to people's collages and so started to play with my box of small scraps,one thing led to an other but then I had to stop as Tony reminded me of all the things that needed to be done before tomorrow morning. I wonder what I will think about this beginning when i come back?

Understanding more about painting watercolours

After following martha's poppy class and learning such alot I still knew there was masses more to learn. I decided to copy a print I have had for a long long time in the hope I might learn more. I certainly did. Most importantly I learnt I must mix up enough of the main colour to see me to the end. As you can see I didn't, then I realised I must let parts dry before painting in something right next to it. Now I know I need to get something (I don'tknow what its called) to paint on where I want white to stay,and that I can't paint over where I've already painted because the colours mix so.
I was sorry I messed up one of the middle flowers petals, but overall it was well worth doing. I am going to try the same approach to leaves next,then will try again to paint real flowers from the garden.

A lovely present.

Last weekend Tony and I held a party in our wood. All day we worried that it would rain so we begged and borrowed lots of open sided tents. With the help of friends we gave each one 3 sides and al 72 of us could have been seated and under cover if it had rained. We decorated the inside of every one with summer coloured paper flowers we had already made and hung up my many wedding sari's. It all looked very pretty, the rain held off ,it was warm and we danced and danced to a live Irish group and ate and drank to ours hearts content.
The next morning ( and we went to bed extremly late) Tony got up at 5:00 and went to a Brocante!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Lots of people meantime turned up and helped dismantle and restore the wood to its usual beautiful calm self.
Just as we finished he came back with a bag full of treasures which we all duely admired.

The weekend before he bought me the little painting of the young girl,it was framed very badly so I immediately took it out of its frame.Imagine my surprise when I found the other portrait on the back. I love them both ,now have the dilemma of which side to show.