St George's Day

We took part in a St George's Day parade at the weekend. It was good fun - I mostly followed Springy around with the camera.

Our puppy is gorgeous. She's getting dog "eyebrows" now which gives her lots of expression. Today she had a fantastic time playing with another dog and they rough and tumbled on the green.

Springy and I did a form drawing session today. We also read Pico the Gnome which is a sweet story. Springy is having trouble finding the ground and the sky in terms of balancing her form drawing but is still doing very well. She made a spell book the other day - we stayed off writing for months and now she keeps writing under her own volition. She decorated the front in the Stockmar crayons and has written some spell-like poems inside. They're copied from My Secret Unicorn, a series of books she has been reading. She also sometimes writes her own poems and is forever telling me ones she has made up, on a verbal basis.

I'm reading a book on painting in the Steiner schools. It's really interesting and has given me a new insight into the colours and the way painting is covered. Rather than using nouns to describe the way the paint colours relate (which is the incorrect emphasis of many of the "waldorf" styled consultants) they say the correct way is on using adverbs and adjectives - the colours are the entities themselves. Having recently taken a workshop on Goethean and Steiner's thoughts on colour this is starting to make more sense to me. The colours themselves are the spiritual elements and essences.

The opposite of the painting is the form drawing which relies on outlines and can be done in bold colours.

Snowdrops and Lilies

Today Lily (our new shih tzu puppy) had her 2nd vaccine which means next week we can take her out properly.

Today Springy and I did a couple of watercolour paintings using the wet-on-wet technique. Springy did a yellow circle, surrounded by blue which was the sun in the sky. I did a snowdrop picture.

Snowdrop painting
First of all use very diluted blue and wash it from the bottom of the paper upwards in horizontal strokes. This leaves stronger blue at the bottom and lighter blue at the top of the paper. Then use yellow and take this over the bottom third of blue to make green. Use the brush to come upward in stalks (green). Then wash brush and dry it and lift off the blue paint where the stalks end to make the white snowdrops.

The story went as follows:
The winter had been full of cold ice and snow.
Then the sun began to shine a little - the grass grew again and then little shoots started to appear - up they came from the ground...it tried to snow again but the sun was too strong.

I will try and post a picture later on this week.

(c) Liz Plant 2009