Tag: holiday

Annual Leave

When I first started work (no jokes about horse drawn carriages please), we took holidays, and days off from work. Looking forward to a holiday, or a day off excited me then, it still does now (the picture above is of Carole and Keira enjoying a bit of shopping in Nice last summer). Over time this horribly robotic term of Annual Leave crept in to the workplace dialogue, yet another clunky cog in the lexicon of dehumanisation. Holiday sounds fun, Annual Leave sounds empty, soulless and completely unfulfilling. I don’t know where it comes from but I wish Annual Leave would sod off back there.

I’m taking a day off today to go and watch Keira’s school sports day. Later this year I’ll be taking some holiday with the family.

Annual Leave? Leave me alone!

Learning to Paint – Back to Shore

Here’s a quick look over the shoulder, already! Before I started painting the holiday postcards I sat looking out to sea wondering where to start. As I sat there thinking about beach scenes I wondered wht it might look like staring back to land, f…

Here’s a quick look over the shoulder, already! Before I started painting the holiday postcards I sat looking out to sea wondering where to start. As I sat there thinking about beach scenes I wondered wht it might look like staring back to land, from ship to shore. Before I knew it I had painted this little doodle and promptly stashed it in the back of my sketch book where it remained until last night. It just…fell out. There’s something about it I quite like, I hope you do too 🙂

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Learning to Paint – Postcards From the Edge #6

This picture is of a few old trees in Cimiez, Nice. This was painted on another very hot sunny day and I deliberately left a lot of white space to try and convey a sense of light and heat. This was painted for Sarah Matthews in water colours on wa…

This picture is of a few old trees in Cimiez, Nice. This was painted on another very hot sunny day and I deliberately left a lot of white space to try and convey a sense of light and heat. This was painted for Sarah Matthews in water colours on water colour paper. What is water colour paper? It’s heavy for a start. Typical photocopy paper weighs in around 80gsm, and my sketch pad is 135gsm. My water colour paper is a heavy duty 300gsm and is cold pressed to give it a lovely textured surface. So now you know.

Keira likes this picture, preferring the tree on the right, do you have a favourite tree?

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