We walked back through the woods until sunset appeared through the reeds.
I'm a garlic hater, so imagine my surprise when we went to lunch the other day at The Quince Tree near Henley. I had the most delicious Thai fishcakes which after we got in the car to go home my young friend remarked that I reeked of garlic! I still hate garlic - but it certainly cured my indigestion.
Just before Christmas we went over to Woodley to pay a visit to my cousin, Jill. When I was thirteen, during my mother's illness, I lived with her family in Wokingham and it was Jill who taught me to dance (ballroom, that is). So it was a great surprise when she gave me a Christmas card she'd found that I'd painted and given to them at the time. Here it is.
Contrast this with the 5 inch wide miniature I painted a month or so ago. I haven't posted on my blog till now as it was a Christmas present to the lady on the left of the painting from the man on the right who commissioned it. As I had to get perfect likenesses of all four people - and the face of the man in the middle measured less than half an inch high - it wasn't an easy task. The chandeliers and wine bottles in the background weren't that simple to paint either.
Still on the subject of painting this was my Christmas card for 2014. It's a painting of "The New Orleans" riverboat majestically proceeding down the river in the snow.
Finally, having spent the past couple of months painting two very large portraits in readiness for submission to the BP Portrait Award at the National Portrait Gallery in London I was horrified last night when rereading the entry regulations to discover that watercolour paintings are not eligible for some reason. Only oil, acrilics and tempera mediums will be accepted. This is the first time I've ever heard of this type of restriction in a major open exhibition. I'm very disappointed but with only a few days left before submission date, maybe I have time to at least try to get one of my portraits into the Royal Society of Portrait Painters annual exhibition.