This goes out to all the Tolkien people out there.
For the next two weeks you can vote on the
"Middle Earth is everywere" - DTG photo contest.

Click here to go to the poll.

You can select up to three pictures - and naturally mine are the best! Mua-ha-ha!

In a few days I’m starting a new job.
It will be very time-consuming and demanding and I expect there to be less blogging for a while.

So stay with me, even if it gets awfully quiet.

I’m a bit particular when it comes to green colours.
There are a lot of greens in my watercolour boxes - but they are all ugly. Well there is one shade of olive green ... but the rest is ugly!

So I went to my secret hoard where - apart from more ugly greens - there are three boxes of really great looking green pigments (with poisonous sounding names like cobalt green, moss green or cadmium green) and a lifelong supply of shells from the Adriatic.


Behold! my! first! watercolours!





And tell you what?
It’s quite easy!
And it’s more fun to paint from shells than from tins!











Aparently in ye olden days you could buy watercolours in shells.
It was the industrial revolution that put a stop to this.
What a shame.

On Good Friday Zelde over at Indigobirds did a very lovely review of my blog.
"Thank you my Dear! I’m feeling very honoured and a bit embarrassed too."


You may want to visit her blog from time to time.

I’ve known Zelde for some time now, at first from the big-bad-needlework-online-forum and later from her blog. (Actually I’ve got a shirt and a tunic that she sewed for me in the course of some fantasy-swapping-activity. I don’t know if she remembers it.)

Although originally from the German speaking area, she’s been living in London for years now , studying physics and creating a lot of creative output. Her blog was created to document her sewing and knitting activities and to gain more motivation for her projects.

Today we find a much broader variety of topics on her blog. The handiwork was joined by cooking, photography, decorating, baking ... and of course living a daily life in London.

Over the last weeks she has given her blog a great deal of attention, made some changes and right now it’s looking really great and shiny.


Keep going my Dear!

I’ve just finally finished scanning all of my pictures of 2008. Well the nice ones. Still a good number.
(No, 2008 was not the year of the one-picture-a-day-project. It was the year I started to like my drawings)

So now I just need to find a good programm to edit all of them.
With 'Windows' gone, and nobody really wanting it back I can’t use the 'Helicon Filter' anymore. Sugestions?
Also I have to calibrate the screen ...

Anyways - here are some of the finished ones for you:

I really don’t want to turn this into a photoblog, BUT look whom I met!



His name is 'Turdus pilaris', but I call him 'Alphonso'.

The Secred Language of Birds

Do you have a song in your collection that reminds you of spring?
Of birds, and flowers and life and hope?
For me 'The Secret Language of Birds' does the job.
It’s from a solo album (with the same titel) of Ian Anderson the frontman of the famous Jethro Tull.

New drawing!
It’s one of those make-do pictures.
The wall next to our dishwasher got a few stains.
Our previous tennant had painted the wall yellow so there was no way of mending it without painting the whole side of the kitchen anew.
I went looking for the old wall paint I used years ago (because it’s waterproof) and guess what! It’s still OK after 10 years!
We had some latex paint too but sadly not the colourless variety.

As you may remember I had a vaguely similar problem in my old flat.
As you may remember I came up with this solution



This time I made every stain into a flower (because it’s springtime), and then I made some more flowers, and some dots and finally - because I couldn't help myself - a good deal more dots.
I like it.



What do you want me to paint next?
I thought about doing more Tolkien.
Also and there’s an ugly mirror in the bathroom which needs attention.
And I’d like some Futurama somewhere ...
And some Dr. Who!

I think I’ve made some pigments. May as well be dirt, I’m not sure.

Remember the colour-sap?
I carefully added a few teaspoons of soda-water (sodium carbonate and water) to the sap. The Book said to use only a few drops but I ended using up about half a cup.
The sap begun to foam, which it should.
After vigorous stirring, the foam was sifted through a thin cloth.
A layer of ... foamy, muddy, greasy stuff remained and was stored in the sun to dry.

Now it looks like this, and it should be pigment.
Also it should be yellow.



I don’t know about you, but I’m not really impressed.
Nevertheless I will consult The Book and try to make watercolours out of it. One can never have enough ochre.

The remaining liquid seems to be also a kind of ochre.


and when painted and dried looks like this:



I don’t know what to do with it.
Maybe I’ll add some gum arabic to make ink.
Or I’ll concentrate it further to make these shell-thingies again.
Or I soak some tissue to make "Glue-size" (the german term is "Tüchleinfarbe")
Or ...
So much possibilities!
What do you thing?