Christmas thoughts in July

It's that time again ....a deadly suffocating heatwave.

Lovely for sunworshippers but not my sort of weather at all.

And, as usual, every July our lovely neighbour Juan decides he really has to plough up the field outside the back door and envelop us with dust.

To say nothing of stirring up the flies.

And giving me the grumps.

So, also as usual, at this sweltering juncture my thoughts turn to winter - and Christmas cards.

I wasn't terribly sure that my Bronte themed Winter Foxes which I did earlier this year was finished. It seemed a bit empty. But a couple more foxes, more snowflakes and frozen vegetation has done the trick, I think.

More lively and appropriate for a Christmas card as well.

The colours aren't quite right on this photograph but it was the best I could do.  

Now it's off to the printer this week for scanning and samples.

I'll put up the professionally done image at some point.

One good thing about this time of year though ... my beautiful jacaranda tree is in full bloom.

Such glorious colour.

Such a lovely name.

Such a sense of insufferable pride on my part too - this tree (which would be way taller than the house had it not been drastically pruned back) started out as a seed in a packet I bought at a local newstand as an afterthought. One of those garish packets aimed at tourists I half thought of as scams.

So here is the living proof they aren't.

That'll teach my cynical self to think better of things labelled "A Souvenir From Tenerife" .

A shipwreck and a desert ...

... taking shape on the drawing board.

A sort of vanity of vanities - all is vanity piece.

I am getting worried it's getting too fiddly.

On the other hand, that WAS my original intention.

Grains of sand and all that.

We shall see.
Or not.
As the case may be...

Moodier blues and the sky at night ....

The grey was a bit dead so after much faffing around I am adding some moody background. Underwater deep sea clippings (chiming with the writ in water epitaph) which double as mottled sky.

It's looking a bit Patrick Moore-ish now......

Chawton Cottage - again

Drawn back to doing a view of Jane Austen's Hampshire cottage from the front, overlooking the busy road to Winchester. Okay, so I am capturing it at a not so busy time of day. Or not so busy day. 

Sunday then.

And it looks a bit churned up.

And there's a visitor calling.

Darn! Right in the middle of a beautifully turned sentence ...

Apparently Miss Austen, who didn't have A Room of Her Own (in the Virginia Woolf sense of a study - her father had one of those), would hide her work (i.e. whatever one of the series of classic works of English literature she was engaged on) under a blotter whenever visitors interrupted her flow of written words. A squeaky door she didn't allow to be oiled would give her sufficient warning to compose herself.

I hope the visitor in the picture is a welcome one.

With lots of the sort of gossip Miss Austen thrived on.

Summer Evening in the Austen Garden

 

Finished at long last! 

Jane Austen having an al fresco writing session on an idyllic summer's evening (hence the golden glow in the west!) surrounded by her flowers and her cats and serenaded by the birds. 

I am relieved to finish it because it seemed to become fiddlier by the minute. Miss Austen's minute eyebrows were the last straw - or should I say last pieces to be pasted down. The cats' eyeballs weren't exactly a piece of cake either!

Detail (what's she writing? A letter, a future classic or maybe just her shopping list?)

birdsong!

While I was searching for suitable pieces in magazines I came across a wonderful photo of an old fashioned coach and horses of the sort that thundered past the Austen cottage frontage and which Jane would have heard as she sat in her garden. I am very tempted to have a go at that scene but for the time being I'm tidying up the studio and my scrappings-littered table and going with the flow and seeing what surfaces in my doodle book ..

Also have to choose and photograph two paintings to send off for the great big British Naives show at Delamore House in May.

Right, time for a celebratory cup of tea and a chocolate biscuit I think

Dove Cottage finished

Done, dusted and stuck down:

Though this image loses about a half inch on either side.

Now on with Gad's Hill Place, which is already straying from my original intention, colour-wise, in the sky at least. 

While browsing through my scrap boxes I came across bits that reminded me of something else that was current in the 1850s and 60s: Paisley shawls, an example of which I have and a photo of which I will upload in my next post. 

Anyway, into the mix they go ...