Magnify

Is it just me or are magnifying mirrors scary?

©2009 nicky linzey for Illustration Friday

Aroma

The weekword is aroma - chosen by Caroline, you can link to all the other entries there after stopping a while to look at her beautiful blog. This word was easy for me as my house has been filled with flowers this week and the fragrant aroma drifted into every room. I'm a big fan of Keri Smith and was given this brilliant book a while ago so decided to draw my flowers by looking through a square hole in a piece of card - exploration #48.

© nicky linzey 2009

Summer's end

The last of my sweet peas for this Summer. This is the first year I've successfully grown them from seed.

perfect day

Thanks to everyone for all your birthday wishes. I did have a wonderful time and the weather turned out to be the perfect English summer's day. Gra and I went to Charleston Farmhouse, the home of artists Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant. It is a magical place - I think they must have painted every available wall and furniture surface! We then had an evening of celebrations with my family in my brother's beautiful garden.

Don't forget to go over to Caroline's fascinating blog to get the new weekword.

Camping

The weekword is Camping and I hope I haven't given everyone terrible difficulties with this word. It's my birthday today and I did consider spending the night under canvas but I'm a fair weather camper and the forecast was for rain. Last week we had our first camping expedition for years and I have recent memories of the very very hard ground making it impossible to sleep, even on my sunbed mattress. If I go again I definitely need more equipment such as an airbed, oh and a toilet! Also My Jack Russell would not get in the tent and when we eventually did get him in, 3 of us in such close proximity was claustrophobic and hot. So a 6 man tent would be good too, preferably a tepee that we could stand up in, not have to crawl around on our hands & knees.

Having said all that, we did have a great time, collecting wood, lighting the camp fire, singing, laughing, eating, drinking and in the morning cooking bacon & eggs out in the open countryside was just wonderful.

Don't forget to visit all the other campers, aimee, alexandra, anairam, caroline, frayedattheedge, fruenswerk, l'atelier, linda sue, sandra, thereza, remistuff, valentina, veja cecilia and yoon see.

I will pick the next person to choose the weekword later tonight - I'm off now to do some celebrating!

I'm picking Caroline to choose the next weekword.

Hectic

What a hectic and varied week this has been: camping, birthday celebrations, festival going, golden wedding celebrations, family get togethers, walks, shopping - apart from the usual working, cooking, cleaning, washing, gardening . . . I've been asked to choose the weekword, which is CAMPING. If you would like to participate in this, let me know, and on Friday post your drawings, photos, stories, poems, paintings or whatever you choose, to your blog and I will do a link to it. Can't wait to see the results.

Detour

Driving through France one year, we decided to travel overnight and reach our destination as early as possible. At 5am our car started to lose power and barely made it up a steep hill, at the top the engine died completely so we had to decide whether to freewheel down the hill in our continued direction or to turn right. We turned right off the main road and travelled down a twisting road, having no idea what was at the bottom. Half way along this road we came across a garage, so we pulled in - it was obviously closed at that time in the morning so we walked down the hill to see what was around - a sleepy little town.

Returning to our car at 6.30am we found the garage owner had arrived and he said he would look at our car straight away and suggested we should go and have breakfast in the town. We found a cafe and although they had not had their bread delivered they went across to the bakery and bought us croissants to have with our coffee. I couldn't believe the service, how everyone was going out of their way to help us.

After breakfast we walked back to the garage and our car had been fixed - it was dirt in the petrol, they charged us the equivalent to £10 for this - unbelievable. We continued on our way arriving at our destination only a few hours late despite our DETOUR. The people we were staying with were so glad to see us arrive safely that they poured us a neat pastis each, it was so strong that I could barely feel my legs when I stood up to go to our room!

This is posted in response to the weekword over at Artsyville, home of the very talented Aimee, go have a look.

Impatience

My Jack Russell shows terrible 'impatience' when he cannot extract his biscuit from his kong. On the up side, it keeps him busy for hours!

PS Think I'd better explain that a kong is a dog toy which you can stuff with treats to keep your dog occupied.

© 2009 nicky linzey for illustration friday

Summer walk

Went on a lovely walk yesterday, then when we got home I made a 'Graham Greene ' cocktail - gin, martini and cassis with crushed ice, lovely but extremely intoxicating. I recently came across this quote from him in 'Ways of Escape'.

'Sometimes I wonder how all those who do not write, compose or paint can manage to escape the madness, the melancholia, the panic fear, that is inherent in the human situation'

I can identify with this, mind you the cocktail helps as much as the creativity!

Modify

I've had a bit of a block when it's come to the recent subjects on Illustration Friday but I was determined to participate this week whatever . . ! Cars are not that important to me as long as they get from A - B but I have to admit I would love a Fiat 500 - especially if I could modify the paintwork with one of my patterns. Out of these 3 I would have the top one, which would you choose?

Thanks to my friend Yoon See for jolting me out of my block.

© 2009 nicky linzey for illustration friday.